Happy Birthday Baronlaw, Gaaneden!

And many many more! 

In honor of your birthdays, I'd give you a Traditional Irish Toast, but I'm afraid they sound too similar to Traditional Irish Death Threats.

Instead, I give you a classic W.W.II cartoon courtesy of Toons at War (no good reason, I just think they are fascinating)

Maybe I should go for 20 questions?

Normally when it comes to racerxmachina and I, our being so sympatico in tastes is an advantage.  But not this time.

I think everybody's been in this situation.  I thought of a most excellent gift for RxM today, and I nearly rushed out and bought it, when it occured to me that it would ALSO make an excellent gift for me.  And RxM knows this.   In fact, she might have already bought it for me, and it would be pointless to have more than one of this gift.

So I am going to have to do some delicate questioning to find out if she's bought me this item, without revealing to her what it is I wantto buy her.  Hmm.  Tricky....

Gimmie that Old- Time Santa

As in Pre-Christian Santa.  As in Pre-Christian, Shamanic, reindeer urine-drinking, tripping his eyeballs out Santa. 


I've been seeing this statement of the orgin of Santa floating around the interwebs recently,  the argument basically being:

• Old time shamans used Amanita muscaria mushrooms in hallucinogenic rituals.  It was too toxic to take directly, so the 'shrooms were fed to reindeer and then the shamans drank the urine, 
• The Christmas tree is representative of the World Tree, and the Star is the Pole Star.
• The sleigh represents either the Big Dipper, Odin's Chariot, or both.
• The flying trip aropund the world is well...the shamans tripping and thinking they were flying.  

OK, so it's from a pro-cannibas magazine, and it is about as fanciful as the Thomas Nast version.  And I can even find pages that go further, that had shamans dressing in the color of the mushroom (red and white), going to snowed-in huts and entering through the roof smokehole, to deliver bags of dried mushrooms to the community, which would be dried by hanging in front of the fire....

Isn't it just the perfect Just-So Story?  Really it's too cute to be believed, and probably has a similar origin as "A Visit from St. Nicholas".   Obviously there are elements of Germanic folk customs surrounding the story of Santa Claus, but  there's no real evidence linking the tale to shamanic traditions, mushrooms, or anything of the sort.  But it IS a tale that's making the rounds of the New-Age and occult websites, so it's interesting to meditate this winter, on how legends can evolve and be distorted or flat-out appropriated according to the agendas of given groups.  From a Christian parable, to an icon of middle-class comfort and then commercialism, and now a pro-drug symbol for New-Age religion. 

It's a reminder that nothing, not even classic legends, is static; over time, everything changes.