Racing Turtles

The Golden Girls - 2.11 - 'Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas

Horror for the holidays.

thought you would appreciate :) they milked that old man

my mom didn’t believe in lying to children so when I first asked about santa claus as a small child she was like “oh santa claus is another name for a man named saint nicholas who lived a long time ago. he was a very kind and generous man and he loved giving people presents and he would do things like put presents in people’s stockings when they were hung up to dry by the fire, so they would find them and be surprised. so now when we give presents at christmas it’s fun to pretend saint nicholas or ‘santa claus’ brings them. and we hang up stockings by the fire and when we get up in the morning there are presents in them, just like if saint nicholas was still alive to bring them!”

so that thanksgiving one of my uncles said jovially “so mac, are you being good for santa claus?” and little (not quite three year old) mac looked up and raised an eyebrow and said witheringly “he’s dead.”

my mom didn’t believe in lying to children so when I first asked about santa claus as a small child she was like “oh santa claus is another name for a man named saint nicholas who lived a long time ago. he was a very kind and generous man and he loved giving people presents and he would do things like put presents in people’s stockings when they were hung up to dry by the fire, so they would find them and be surprised. so now when we give presents at christmas it’s fun to pretend saint nicholas or ‘santa claus’ brings them. and we hang up stockings by the fire and when we get up in the morning there are presents in them, just like if saint nicholas was still alive to bring them!”

so that thanksgiving one of my uncles said jovially “so mac, are you being good for santa claus?” and little (not quite three year old) mac looked up and raised an eyebrow and said witheringly “he’s dead.”

It’s Christmas Eve post Nichijou Santa

Freddie Mercury Riding on the Shoulders of Santa Claus at The Forum in Inglewood, 22nd Dec 1977

Paul Bench

(via @xaveria​)

as someone who grew up in an interfaith family it’s time to take a stance on christmas/hannukah cards. the best ones are for sure the ones where santa is gay married to a hasidic man

like. slay.

honestly the whole santa mythos kinda slaps from a theological perspective

like the fact that it’s overtly a fictional mythos intended to teach moral lessons, getting around the problems inherent in religious literalism. the way it takes concepts from christianity and just does whatever the fuck it wants with them. saint nicholas, a real person who lived in turkey in the late 200’s to early 300′s AD, now lives on the north pole, with elves (possibly an elf himself?????) and rides in a flying sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, one of whom has their own sub-plot. unironically love it. do this to all the saints. joan of arc lives in the center of the earth and rides a sasquatch.

Most of that’s just the strain of trying(and mostly failing) to stretch a highly fictionalized christian cult-figure over older pre-christian ones. Though: where and when Odin’s midwinter drinking buddies transformed into knee-high factory workers is an interesting question(i’m BETTING it was during industrialization).

I myself think that Batman is the flip side of Santa Claus, who - as I’ve said - in turn is the modern vision of the Christian God.

The lineage follows that in the age of desert nomadism, God was a force that created water and food in the desert and rearranged inconvenient geography - mountains, seas; that in the age of early settlement and tribal war he demanded ethnic solidarity, granting in return victory in war; that in the era where settled tribes were subsumed into Mediterranean empire, he was a fisherman/shepherd who unified mankind and ended war; that in the era of courtly feudalism he was at the head of heirarchies of angels, saints rewarded with face time to press their clients’ claims; and so obviously in the age of bourgeois democracy he’s an industrialist who rewards socially approved behavior with consumer goods and punishes its opposite with violence.

“Santa Claus is a god. He’s no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed of animal which doesn’t ordinarily fly, the prayers (requests for gifts) which are annually mailed to him and which so baffle the Post Office, the specially-garbed priests in all the department stores. And don’t gods reflect their creators’ society? The Greeks had a huntress goddess, and gods of agriculture and war and love. What else would we have but a god of giving, of merchandising, and of consumption?”

—From “Nackles”, by Donald Westlake

Also he’s LITERALLY Odin; Like, just centuries and centuries of syncretized permutations on, and evolutions of, Odin.

I just feel the need to remind all of y’all of that u_u

googling ‘christmas octopus’ was such a good decision

So THAT’s how Santa squeezes down chimneys! He’s an infinitely flexible octopus!

Aren’t those reinsquid flying back-to-front?

Aren’t they cuttledeer? And yes, probably back to front. But they’re also *flying*.

They could be cuttledeer, but the point is they are flying the wrong way and that makes no sense whatsoever, I have never seen reinsquid OR cuttledeer flying backwards before and it totally spoils an otherwise excellent depiction of Christmas.

Dec 4: Remember that time we learned Clark Kent totally peeked at all his Christmas presents with his X-Ray vision? (Justice League, “Comfort and Joy”)

Because Clark is awesome and loves christmas.

remember that time we learned clark kent is a grown man who still believes santa exists

He’s an alien and a superhero who knows other superheros in a world with a talking telepathic Gorilla, ofc he believes, anything is game.

Thats because Father Christmas/Santa Claus totally DOES exist in the DC universe, and  every year, without fail, Santa fights through Apokolips’ defenses just to give a lump of coal to Darkseid.