Tonight, the first of the pro-fun Christmas trolls arrive.

There are 13 of them, and they start arriving one at a time, and hang around until Christmas; then they leave one at a time, in reverse order, the and the fellow who arrives tonight won't leave until Jan 6.

They weren't always pro-fun; in past times, their mother, Gryla, used to make a stew from the flesh of naughty children.

But since the old folks have passed away, they've mellowed a bit, and now, just like to generate some playful mischief, and leave little pressies in the shoes of good kids.

Tonight, Stiff-legs is due to show up. He likes to drink sheep's milk straight from the udder. However, as he can't bend his legs, this is quite a challenge.

If you want to read more about him, and his brothers, you can look here The Icelandic Yule Lads, Christmas boys or Yulemen.

Enjoy!

Is Love... a few versions...

I've seen this a few times, but I finally broke down and clicked the link in blinovitch's journal:

fairy tales are love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

humor is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

poetry is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

art is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

So -- Clement Clarke Moore multiplied by eight, or maybe just four?

Surely, this excerpt is one explaination to the question of where 'Santa Claus' got his reindeer:

From Santa Claus: Last of the Wild Men by Phyllis Siefker (1997, MacFarland and Company, Publishers):

. . . Dressed in goatskins and wearing a frightening mask and horns, the Yule buck visited children's houses, giving gifts and threatening the nonconformists. Sometimes this character, wearing a buck head, "went after" children. In some areas, the Julbok survived as a straw puppet tossed from hand to hand in games, and in still others, survived only as a buck-shaped cake.

According to Ruth Cole Kainen, in America's Christmas Heritage, the Yule buck is one European creature who made the crossing to America, where he lived on on Hatteras Island, North Carolina, late into the 1700's. Christmas there began with a parade of fife and drums, and shortly before dark the townsfolk dressed in "grotesque" costumes. Then Old Buck emerged from the woods, where he had lived all year. With a steer's head and horns on a pole body covered in quilts and adorned with a bell, Old Buck rushed at the crowds awaiting him.

[. . . ]

The Julbok survived in another capacity, pulling the sled for the gift-giver known as Jultomten, a Yule elf. [. . .]

Despite Jultomten's popularization as a fun-loving gift giver, however, an undercurrent of fear lives on at Sweedish Christmas. Adults in the mid-twentiethe century considered Jultomten a destructive spirit, and set out porridge and milk on Christmas Eve in the hopes of warding off his malevolence. And, although the Yule goblin brings gifts, there is a dark side to the visit as well, and the whole family sleeps together on the floor on Christmas Eve as protection against the goblins who roam the earth during Yuletide.

---

Thomas Nast, credited with inventing our popular image of "Santa", drew this cartoon of Santa visiting a military Union military camp during the Civil War. ( this picture here, see: )

Looks to me like he's just got two "coursers" pulling his sled, and they look more like the American white tailed deer than the European Carribou. Also note that his coat is decked out with stars, something like a wizard's. In an reply to a recent post in stellie's Journal, someone comented that Prospero from The Tempest could double as "Santa". Seems that, at least in the beginning, Nast would have agreed. ;-)

(And I am still working on my Yule song... Got one verse down, still sort of fiddling with the second, and hope to have at least 4 before I call it finished. This post goies a long way toward explaining why I've chosen a rather "dark" melody)