Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

This is what it looked like at the September Equinox, at 4:19 Eastern Daylight Time:

[Image description: A Mercator projection map showing the land in grey and the oceans in white, minus Antarctica. Overlaid on this is a sine curve like silhouette that shows where light and shadow is falling on the Earth at that moment. The sides of this are almost perfectly vertical, showing equal daylight for all points on the map, no matter how far from the equator they are. Description ends]

This is what it looked like, yesterday, during the December Solstice, at 3:19 Eastern Standard Time (officially, the "same" minute):

[Image description: the same map, but this time, the sine curve indicating sunlight is steeply angled, being narrower in the Northern Hemisphere and wider in the Southern Hemisphere, showing the land in the arctic circle in complete shadow, and where the land in Antarctica would be in complete sunlight. Description ends.]

So now you know: the "Reason for the Season" is the Earth's axial tilt!

Glad Yule or Litha! Depending on which side of the equator you reside...

(Consider this journal entry properly bedecked).

This "Christmas season" is hard on everyone -- even those who enjoy & celebrate it can find it exhausting. And for those of us who don't -- or can't -- celebrate it (for whatever reason) it can be especially isolating -- particularly for those of us whose primary social connections happen through these here Interwebs.

So:

I'm posting this entry as an open discussion/chat thread, so that we have a place to chat and commune through the comment threads.

Come sip a warm (or cool, depending on your season) spiced beverage of your choosing, and grab a plate full of virtual goodies.

I'll be checking back in frequently over the next 72 hours or so.

Welcome! Welcome!

Edited to add:

I also can't forget (or, rather, I can, but should not) that today is also the first day of Hanukkah. So have a video that ysabetwordsmith posted a couple of years ago:



Because I also know many are over saturated with Christmas songs, by now...

(Note: I actually focus my celebrating on the New Year/my birthday [the 12th-18th of January])

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved to make up recipes in my head -- even though I don't have the means to actually make any of them ... So would you? If I post my ideas here, would you try converting them to recipes and making them (and tell me how they turned out)? No need to send me the results; I'd just like to know they saw the light of day and the dark of someone's tummy.

I am an omnivore with no dietary restrictions -- but PLEASE feel free to adapt to vegan or gluten-free, or whatever...

( The 1st real recipe I remember working -- Mom helped )

( These are definitely not suitable for the mail )

( Variations on Peanut Butter Cookies )

Here is a story I've told before, on my personal journal. But Christmas-Yule-Saturnalia is a time for retelling tales:

Like most children, I eventually grew out of a belief in any literally existing "Santa" (though, actually, his name is Claus -- calling him Santa's like calling him "Mister"). But when I was grown up, I came to believe in him again:

I was twenty-three, and a junior in college -- one of two mobility-impaired students on campus. The dorms we lived in were converted apartment buildings from the 1920s: two storeys, with a flight of stairs leading to the second floor right inside the door. ... I never went up the stairs.

So "Secret Santa" week rolls around, and our socks got tacked up to a wall in the common room, with our names above each. We each pull a name out of a hat. The name I pull belongs to someone who always went right up the stairs when she came in from class, and hardly ever came into the common lounge to hang out -- I wasn't even sure what her face looked like.

As I use a wheelchair, and don't drive, the only access I had for presents was the campus bookstore -- and the cafeteria. Unsure of what to get my mysterious "santee," that first day, I snagged an orange from the fruit bar, because that's at least traditional for a stocking stuffer. But it wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of the game if I left it at that. So I went into the bookstore and perused the shelves of cute, deliberately made, Christmas gifts, which were alongside the boxed convenience foods that could be made on a hot plate or microwave, in the dorm room...

My hand to the Powers, I swear I heard a voice whisper in my ear: "Get the chicken soup." So I do.

Then I hurry back and put my gifts in her stocking, and duck out of the common room before anyone can see me. I was putting the key in my dorm room door when I heard someone come in, and head for the "Stocking Wall." The next thing I hear:

"An Orange! And Chicken Soup! Just what I needed -- I'm coming down with a cold!"

---
Now, I ask you: Who else but the Claus would know that?! So I am a believer forever: whether a spirit or corporeal being (or both, if the circumstances require), I believe Furry Nicholas is the Muse of Generosity -- the one who inspires us to find the perfect gift for the perfect moment, even if it is our name signed on the gift tag.

Io, Saturnalia! and Glad Yule!

Yesterday I wrote about how I kinda want to write a "Santa Claus"/Christmas story, because "The Big Winter-Gift-Giver" is one of my all time favorite para-mythical beings, but how I am put off by some of the fundamental tropes of the genre:

1) Naughty / Nice dichotomy. That's comforting, perhaps, to children who are privileged enough that they can expect to receive fun presents on a yearly basis. But if you're not privileged enough to have that expectation, it carries the subtext that both wealth and poverty are morally deserved.

2) The "You've got to Believe in "Santa" before he'll bring you any presents: I.E. skepticism/disbelief is "naughty."

So that's where I left off. There's a third peeve that I didn't get to before falling asleep at my keyboard:

3) That a Happy Ending = "Big Shiny (fancy-complex) Thing to own"

So, I got to thinking about how I would/could subvert some, or all, of those (at least one would be dandy:

1) Redefine the boundaries of "Naughty" vs. "Nice": Has nothing to do with whether you get good or bad grades in school, do or don't talk back to your parents, Shout, or cry, or pout, or scribble on the walls in purple crayon. Has everything to do with whether you bully others, or deliberately try to squelch their spirit and sense of fun.

2) Easy enough to have the skeptical kid get a present, anyway. Doesn't even matter if the kid comes to believe in Santa (elves) at the end. The Winter-Gift-Giver doesn't need to make that kind of demand.

3) This one is harder -- but what if the "Gift" that the underprivileged kid gets is a 'gift' in the sense of 'newly discovered talent or strength'?

As I said, in a recent, circle-locked post, Saturnalia is my favorite of the Publicly-celebrated Winter Bash festivals (or would be, if it were still publicly celebrated). So much so, I made a new icon to celebrate, just now :-)

I first learned about the holiday in high school Latin Class, and, one year, a combined Latin Class party (all the Latin students from fifth to twelfth grade -- 11-18 year-olds) was the one time in my life I got to actually celebrate it in an organized way.

This is what I learned way back in my personal Days of Yore:

Once upon a time, after Saturn was deposed from his kingship of the Gods, he came to Earth, and taught humans all about agriculture: how to plow the earth (pointing out how the wild boars did it, with their tusks... and it was based on that inspiration that humans figured out the plough).

During his reign on Earth, before civilization got too advanced, there were no social classes, and everyone lived as equals, and no one did any more work than was necessary (and since there was a God of Fertility on premises, very little work was needed to get things to grow). This was the Golden Age of Man, and there was peace, and no wars, etc. And then, as people acquired more wealth, they started to stratify into social classes, and develop slavery, and start coveting other clans' lands, and so forth, and they, too, banished Saturn, and began to worship Jove as the supreme god.

But for a week, around the winter solstice, Saturn was welcomed back to the world, and, to make him feel at home, we humans are asked to try our best to act like we did during the Golden Age, when social class is forgotten, and masters serve their slaves at dinner, and people spend more time playing than working, and official government bureaucracy stuff is put on hold... Basically:

"Grandpa is coming to stay for a week! Can we at least try to be extra nice to each other, to make him feel at home?"

Of course, it's make-believe. The slaves are not really free... and everything goes back to normal on the 24th, so even when they're given the "liberty" of voicing criticism of their masters, it can only go so far.

And yet, there's an acknowledged value in "acting as if" -- just to practice exercising those thought muscles.

In my high school Latin party, that one year, it started with the Seniors (or at least those who'd been studying Latin for the full seven years) reenacted the liberation of Saturn from bondage: one played the role of the God, himself, in a long yellow, robe/toga, and wearing a fake cotton wool beard. He came in wearing paper chain-and-shackles, which the the student acting as priest tore asunder. Then, "Saturn" gave a speech in Latin all about the values of human equality and peace, and freedom. And then, he went around and handed out (what would have been, in "Roman times") little cakes that were shaped like the god Saturn (only, those being unavailable, our Latin teacher went out and bought a couple dozen Santa-shaped, red-sugar-dusted, butter cookies from a local bakery).

Then, since we were excused from our other afternoon classes, we shared a meal of Italian food, and honey-glazed cakes for dessert, while each of the different aged students put on short skit parodies of Roman mythology.

Then, right before we left to get on our buses home, we sang Christmas carols in Latin.
---
Anyway, it's always kind of baffled me why Saturnalia, out of all the old Holy Days, is the one that has become the most demonized as Teh Evol by the Christian Evangelical types, while Lupercalia, was allowed to survive, be sanitized and prettified (That is: transformed into Valentine's Day), and pushed onto schoolchildren as a series of mandatory class activities (though my aide, who has been working for a young school boy at nursery school, kindergarten, and now first grade, tells me that Valentine's Day is no longer pushed in school... which I think is a healthy trend).

( Valentine's Day origins (content warning: discussion of animal sacrifice and D/s sex) )

So, on Monday and Tuesday, I was browsing through YouTube to see if I could find anyone reading excerpts from Martial's (Roman Poet) Saturnalia Epigrams (little comic verses about -- or sometimes in the voice of -- different Saturnalia presents). Sadly, I could not. I did, however, come across many Christian Evangelical videos espousing their hatred of the holiday, and by extension, all the jolly, fun, parts of Christmas.

And then it occurred to me (the proverbial light bulb, or considering the context, Saturnalia candle): Lupercalia may have been filled with sex and violence, while Saturnalia at least gave lip service to peace, equality, and freedom. But Lupercalia was turned into lovey-dovey day, and Saturnalia became equated with evil because it :::Drum Roll::: CELEBRATES ANARCHY!!!!

(Noooo-oooo-ooo-ooo!)

Now, a note on the shadow / dark side of the ancient worship of Saturn: it was acknowledged, in the ancient Roman myths, that while he ruled over the Earth, Saturn did demand human sacrifice as part of his cult, and to be presented with the heads of his victims as offerings. Over the course of several centuries of observing Saturnalia, contemporary Romans came up with varying ways to acknowledge this practice without actually performing it, including making offerings of masks of human faces or offering and burning candles shaped like people. For modern folks who want to observe Saturnalia, may I suggest offering the heads off a few of your gingerbread people? Just a thought.

Another clip from Old School Electric Company, this time, showing the influence of adult sketch comedy, like The Carol Burnett Show:



And really, I think: If this had been first released through some other (aka commercial) venue, rather than PBS children's programming, it would have been as popular a novelty song as "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas," or "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus." For one thing, it tells the truth about Christmas that's rarely acknowledged in kids' music, especially.

I also really like the ending (how much do you want to bet he was hoping for a shot of bourbon?).

As I said the other day, I'm a Born-Again Atheist who believes in "Santa Claus"*

In my own imagination, this figure is the personification of Father Nature in the form of a Wind Spirit.

And that's what I've tried to draw, here:



And since I'm getting ready to divest myself of LiveJournal, I decided to take this oportunity to start a flick'r account. My account name there is "Capriuni_Still," because I needed to create a new Yahoo account years ago for reasons I can't remember, now...

Anyway, happy-happy Yule (third day after the Solstice, nine days before 2011, and if you don't celebrate any of that, a "Very happy Thursday" [/Pooh and Piglet]).

*Though, personally, I prefer the name "Belsnickle" because it's descriptive without the religious honorific (and because it's silly-sounding). From the German for "Furry Nicholas"

This time, it's full of holiday cheer!

(Coulton's lyrics, with a gloss for the ASL translation [useful for showing that ASL is, in fact, a different language, with its own sentence structure and grammar] can be found here, in his info section)

So, I've started writing my first Blogger post.

For (what feels like) a long time, I couldn't decide what I should put down there. Then I woke up today and decided it should be an introduction: to myself (basically, that I love my subject, and it makes me squee), and my approach to the whole idea of "authentic folktales" (basically, that I used to cling to the idea that there is such a thing, and I was a bit dogmatic about it, but I've now relaxed a bit, in my middle age).

I've been working at it for a couple hours, and I've got two and a half paragraphs written. And it feels like my eyes are crossing. So I'm taking a break (most of the time & mental strain is finding sources to link to / quote from, for the claims I make -- once an academic, always an academic).

Once I have a first post up, I'll change my settings, so the blog will appear in Google searches, etc.. And I'll put a link here.

In the meantime, Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer was on my TV, night before last; I caught it just as they got to the Island of Misfit Toys. And I got to wondering:

There's been a lot of tie-in merchandizing and spin-off stories around Rudolf himself. But has there ever been any tie-in (in the form of actual toys, or Christmas tree ornaments, or greeting card images) with the misfits themselves? 'Cause I think an Ostrich-Riding Cowboy would be lots of fun... same with a pink-spotted elephant. Not to mention the Winged Lion who's king of the island.

You know?

I mean, the whole point and moral of the TV story was: respect the misfits, dammit! And yet, the misfits are still totally forgotten.

...It's almost enough to make one almost cynical about the whole Christmas culture...