Part One: Keep the Yuletide Gay: Saturnalia & the Puritan War on Christmas

Margaret talks with Garrison Davis about how the Church tried, and largely failed, to stop the wild revelry of the winter solstice.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to Wheel of Death. Every week on
Wheel of Death week, No, Sophie's I liked it, go
for it, Okay, Wheel of Death. I'm your host, Mario Kildrey,
and each week I tell you about cool people in
his No, I have to like continue the Wheel of
Death thing. I can't just cut back to the This

(00:21):
week on Wheel of Death, we talked to you about
a cool thing that is a wheel that that leads
to death, which is also cool. We're all strapped to
it's the cycle of time. We didn't really do it,
but we somehe did it. Yeay, Okay. I'm your host,
Mario Kildroy. I'm cool people did cool stuff, and every

(00:42):
week I tell you about cool people in history like
rebels and queers and rebel queers and you know, people
who dress up like animals and throw bricks at rich
people's houses sometime vaguely in the name of God. With
me today is my guest Garrison, Davis Garrison, how are
you hi? I was excited. I was. I was really
on the edge of my seat with the whole Wheel
of Death bed. I was like, oh wow, there's so
many places that this could go. Yeah, it didn't It

(01:05):
wasn't considered well ahead of time. That's all right, a
metaphor in there, but the real wheel of death is
just living in collapsing capitalist dystophia. That's right. And Garrison,
who are you besides someone who lives in a collapsing
wheel of death? Um? I write podcasts a lot of
the time for a show called it Could Happen Here. Um.

(01:28):
I also occasionally do investigative journalism and spend a lot
of my time looking at upsetting things and most importantly
have really really cute cats. Yeah, yeah, I do, I do. Yeah. Okay, Well,
the other voice that you've heard is Sophie, our producer. Hi, Sophie,

(01:49):
are you excited for the break? Yeah? This is the
last the last week of episodes for the year. Um,
cool people to cool stuff and cools. The Meani are
taking time off for a little it to. I was
gonna say take a break, but I really feel like
we're not catch up on work. Every year every year

(02:11):
Robert and I are like a time off and then
it's like no, a yeah, but I get to pet
some some cool dogs and some cool cats and some
cool goats, and uh, it's going to be a good time.
Yeay our audio engineers, Ian. Our music was made by

(02:32):
the incomparable musician on Woman. Thank you Ian for editing
our stuff all year your We are very appreciative, Ian
High I So Garrison. This week we're going to talk
about something dear to my heart, near to my heart, whatever,
it's both we're going to talk about have you ever

(02:53):
heard of this holiday? Christmas kind of So? I grew
up very putting christ in Christmas pilled. Yeah. I I
never really got to experience any like secular Christmas. Like
I never once believed in Santa at all, because that
was because if you re arrange Santa at Satan like,

(03:16):
it's it's never yeah, it's I it was very like,
you know, we have to read all these chapters of
the Bible and will exchange gifts and stuff. But it
was it was, you know, we'll we'll go to like
the the Christmas themed like Nativity show, and you know,
it's it's all all all that kind of thing. Did
they ever in this, in this upbringing that you had

(03:37):
around Christmas? Did they? Did they refer to it as
like a traditional way of handling Christmas? Ever, I'm just curious.
I mean they traditional in the sense of like they
would they would complain about how Christmas has been like
commercialized by like secular corporations and been turned into this
thing about that's just about buying things now, not that

(03:57):
they're actually against buying things, because they're still all like
list Christians, but they'd be like, oh, they're they're trying
to trying to just all of the malls and all
of the all the big businesses are trying to distract
from the true meaning of Christmas in the traditional sense
of of of being you know, in the major Well,
today we're gonna talk about traditional Christmas, which is not

(04:19):
at all what your family celebrated. It's it's not a
historical We're going to talk about the War on Christmas,
and not the way that we usually hear about it.
We're going to talk about the seventeen hundred year long
war on Christmas, waged by people who hate fun, who

(04:39):
have tried to sanitize and strip away all the beauty
and glory and gayness and rebellion out of one of
the most riotous and wonderful times of the year, the
fucking winter solstice. We're going to talk about feasting and
was sailing and Saturnalia, Yule Christmas, actual bona fide Christmas,

(05:00):
and we're gonna talk to some ship on Purison's ready
for the Saturn back in Saturnalia. Yeah, I guess I
don't really know enough about Saturnest. Yeah sure, yeah, yep. Okay,
I'm going to start by covering a bunch of different holidays,
because there are so many holidays that share this time period.

(05:23):
And I'm not even talking about or like yeah, so
I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about stuff
within the sort of Christian origin, so like you'le tide
greetings and we're like kind of in that, all right,
all right, yeah, And I want to start with the
like weirdly most earnest one that I'm excited about, and St.

(05:48):
Lucy's Day. You heard of St. Lucy's Day? I have.
I just heard about St. Lucy's Day earlier this year,
but I did not look into it. I just I
just saw it was the thing. I was like, oh,
that's not St. Nicholas. I wonder who that is? And
then I continued on in my day fair enough that is, uh,
I am new to St. Lucy's Day. So okay, you

(06:09):
know how any given group of people can be oppressors
or oppressed pretty much just based on their relationship to power.
Yeah that is yeah, I mean, huh so. The Christians
were oppressed for a while, like a long time ago,
for about two thousand years ago until the early three hundreds,
you know, when they became a whatever. The opposite of
oppressed is. I'm not sure you saying there's still not

(06:30):
the most persecuted religion on the planet, because that's because
that's what I was taught as well. Oh interesting, No,
I genuinely do not believe. So while they were actually
being oppressed, they did all the stuff they should have
done while being oppressed, which is fight against that oppression.

(06:52):
And the early Catholics were like pretty notorious for mapping
all their stuff, all their stuff on the pagan holidays. Right.
The story that usually gets told is that the crafty
church was like, how do we steal stuff from the Pagans? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
And that part's sort of true. But the other thing
that was happening is Catholicism in particular is famous for

(07:13):
its syncreticism. Yeah, or syncretism or you think I would
have looked up how to pronounce the most important word
and what I'm talking about today. The Catholic Church shows
up somewhere and it's like, you're all Catholic now, and
people are like, all right, what does that mean? And
the church is like, we'll tell you in Latin. And
people are like, I don't speak Latin, and the church says,

(07:36):
non meh cury est, which is my my Latin joke.
It means, that's not my problem. Very funny. Yeah, thank you. Um,
I don't speak Latin either, I yeah, me neither. Ye.
So you know, it's the it's the fucking forever ago times.
People don't have radio yet. So the pope in the
Church and even the Roman Empire of a little bit

(07:56):
of a problem with power projection and that they can
conquer places, but communication is so slow that places continue
to have a decent bit of autonomy. Um, this is
an oversimplification, but you get syncretics. Syncreticism based based on
this ship that's halfway Catholic and halfway whatever else people
already had going on. So people kept celebrating their holidays

(08:17):
and the Church was left with little choice but to
accept those holidays and kind of do the best it
could to rebrand them. But in many ways and That's
the sort of central argument I'm gonna make today, is
that people just kept doing the things that they were
doing for thousands of years and just being like, okay,
it's Christian now, yeah, now they got told that there's

(08:37):
like some jesusy wrapping over top of something that that
predates all of that. Yeah, yeah, And as long as
they can still cross dress and like bring trees inside
and demand ship from rich people, what do they care?
And you know, the most famous like the examples of
this we can see is like Easter is really obviously
fertility spring, like yes, spring thing. There's nothing to do
with Jesus. It's about eggs for fox sake, and like bunnies.

(09:01):
So Christmas happening around Solstice is not a coincidence. But
there's another not a coincidence Catholic winter Solstice celebration. And
this one was like in some places and specifically in Scandinavia,
it's even more explicitly not a coincidence. That is a
Solstice thing because it's a celebration of light. And the
reason Catholics ended up with more than one Solstice holiday
is because of the calendar funk up. So like one

(09:22):
of them is December thirteen. One of them is December twenty,
and it's because of weird Julian Gregory and ship that's
totally over my head, got it. The Feast of St. Lucia. St.
Lucy's Day especially popular in Scandinavia for some obvious reason. Uh, Like,
it's dark there. It happens on December, and it's a

(09:43):
celebration of light, and it's the story of a martyr Lucia.
But it's also the story of mutual aid done at
a terrible risk, which is why I like it and
also not wanting to marry some asshole you don't like.
I'm gonna quote a zine by my friend Renna Ry,
who has been on this podcast before. St lucy official
hagiography or a Catholic saint biography is violent and sort

(10:05):
of boring. In brief, she was a Christian living in
the late two when Rome had a policy of rounding
up and executing members of this at that time fringe
religious movement. When she was forced to marry this high
up Roman government dude, Lucy tore out her own eyes
to prevent the wedding. In the midst of all of this,
Lucy's Christianity was discovered and she was executed in this
horrible way. I won't go into and became a martyr,

(10:28):
but I find Lucy's death to be way less interesting
than her life as a well off Greek Sicilian Greeks
ruled the island before Romans did. She had resources and
used them to support fellow Christians and hiding in the
catacombs beneath her hometown of Syracusa, sneaking out of her
house at night, she brought them food and to keep
her hands free to carry provisions. She lit the path

(10:49):
through the catacombs by wearing a crown of candles on
her head, which is just an image I like because
it's really fucking metal. Yeah, And to quote a little
bit more from that z and the Zene is called
on St. Lucy, the Solstice and mutual Aid. The story
doesn't begin with a martyr plucking out her own eyes
or a saint sending a ship full of grained with
starving city, which is a later part of the whole

(11:11):
thing that I'm not going to go into. It starts
with a simpler miracle, a young girl walking through catacombs
beneath an occupied city, her arms full of emmer loaves,
cheap wine, garam and oranges. The limestone path lit by
candles bound to her head. She moves slowly, careful not
to drop her load or cry out when hot wax
strips on her shoulders. Roman centuries guard Syracusa and are

(11:33):
always listening. At the end of maze of tunnels is
an alcove where herodics worshippers of a tripart god, a
sort of Orpheus, have made a home. They reached for
her bundles, stuffed bits of bread into their mouth, take
swigs of wine, say bless you, bless you daughter, and
a lot of the rest of her story, basically all

(11:54):
of our story. It's buried under so much fucking I
I Am a Catholic saint thing that it's impossible to
tell what actually happened. Right. She was like versions where
she lost her eyes that got added a thousand years later.
The earlier ones don't talk about her losing her eyes.
Wren makes the argument that maybe the whole thing about
a suitor and all that stuff is beside the point,

(12:14):
and it was actually just the mutual aig ship that matters.
So that's that's the setting, the scene that's going to
be the one of the Solstice days. I mean, I
have so much more sympathy for this era of Christianity,
especially the people who are kind of more on the
gnostic side of it at this point. Yeah, before the

(12:34):
before the Catholics like teamed up with the state. Yeah,
because like all of this type of stuff that you're
talking about sounds way more cool and metal. It's like
it's been it's people trying to like it's it's it's
it's doing way more interesting like mysticism that's divorced from
a lot of the like um dogmatic practices that were
that were common at the times. People trying to sort

(12:56):
through trying to trying to build stories about about like
spiritual development in a world that is currently under threat
of empire, and that that's why they're trying to find
new ways to build other forms of spirituality. And it's
it's so much it's so much cooler. And then, as

(13:17):
as is often the case, the people then once they
gained power, became the oppressors themselves. Yep, yep. No that
this is the fact that you come from a conservative
Christian background and then also are really into narcissism and
ship was like why I really wanted you to be
on this sweet. So there's another holiday that the Christians

(13:40):
celebrate around the same time of year. It's that one
that again you've you've heard of many people are familiar with.
It's called Christmas, and the canonical story of Christmas goes
something like this. There was this couple Mary and Joseph.
They weren't fucking for whatever reason. Maybe Joseph was gay
and was keeping Merry around to be his beard. I

(14:02):
think supposedly God was like, hey, don't fuck your wife
until she has a son. I don't think too hard
about this anyway. One night, an angel shows up visits Mary.
He's probably a series of spinning, concentric rings or something
like one can help. Yeah, and he's like, this is
totally chill, don't don't freak out. Let's let's do it.
And Mary is like, yeah, let's do it. And then,

(14:23):
I mean, I would if if a series of concentric
eyeball rings showed up at my bedroom at three a m.
I know what I would do immediately. But yeah, I mean, like,
there's to be at least seventeen eyes or I'm not interested. Yeah,
I mean, and thankfully there is there is eyes eyes
within eyes. So I think I think the bases are

(14:44):
are going to be covered. Yeah, I I think much
like Mary, we were good. That's enough, right, And she
gets pregnant. Joseph is like, sweet, this is totally cool
with me. And then at the end of December in
the Manger, they give birth to a kid who was
pretty much guaranteed to be a transman since um, the

(15:04):
kid's name is Jesus Christ, but he has no dad
so therefore he has no Y chromosome, so he's sex
to say nothing of course about Eve, who was cloned
from Adam and is there for x Y. So so true. Yeah,
this is what's really important, you know. There's also so
like there is this version of the story that that

(15:24):
we're else that is often taught in church, but some
people in church would also teach a slightly different version
of the story in which we don't actually know when
Jesus was born. Oh yeah, but the date of December
comes comes from the comes from the magicians coming to

(15:46):
visit Jesus, and they mapped out where he would be
based on like star charts and and and that, and
that led them to figure out where he would be
on December. So like years later, the magicians came with gifts.
They came on December, which is then why we give
gifts on Christmas. That that is the other story that

(16:07):
they were that was told, which is weird because it's
not only including like astrology, it's also including like actual magicians,
which most most ambodied Christianity doesn't really like to talk about. Yeah,
the fact that three sorcerers are like an important part
of the Jesus story is really interesting. It's so weird
and in the like more medieval Christmas that we're gonna

(16:28):
be talking about. The Maji show up twelve days later
as the twelve Days of Christmas and it's called Epiphany.
It's January six. And then there's like I read like
five different versions of how they came up with December
twenty five. I didn't hear that one. That one's really interesting.
It doesn't say anywhere in the Bible when no, this
is this is pure pure speculation. Yeah, okay, So our

(16:51):
guy Jesus, he grows up to be really important, he
gets murdered by the state, like actually a lot of
our heroes. I'm not really trying to pain him as
a cool people that whatever. He's fun and complicated. I'm
not opening that. I've opened a lot of cans of
worms right now, but I'm not opening that one. People
celebrate his birthday by buying PlayStations or whatever and then
getting really mad about living in a multicultural society where

(17:13):
not everyone believes in Santa Claus who is totally not
aware goat from Finland. But we'll talk about that later.
Based So that's the story of Christmas. It's boring. Let's
tell a better one. Christianity's whole claim to fame is
that it's not paganism. Like they pretty much defined paganism
as like not us, right, that is like what it
means to be pagan in a lot of ways. But Christianity,

(17:37):
especially Catholicism, is so fucking pagan. It's extremely pagan, and
that's kind of the main thing it has going for
it from my point of view as a you know,
folk Catholic or lapsed Catholic, whatever the funk I am.
There's blood sacrifice, there's blood drinking, there's cannibalism. There's tons
of gods with shrines that you can go around and
pray to, like you're in Skyrim visiting DeAndre Trent is

(18:00):
like transmutation of it's it's weird stuff. Yeah. You can
walk around with a crown of thorns. You can walk
around with a crown of candles. You can weave branches
into wreaths, you can decorate trees, you can cross stress,
you can carry a horse skull around. You can demand
rich people give you ship. You can get drunk and
accost the aforementioned rich people. Um, lots of stuff. You

(18:22):
can do. Christmas, nowhere in the Bible doesn't mention jesus birthday,
and the fourth century the Church was like, let's say
it's winter solstice nine months after spring equinox, which was
when he was conceived, because the angel and Mary got
dirty during the fertility rites, which is like again, if
if if you're looking at this from like a from

(18:43):
like an anthropological standpoint or like a standpoint of like
pagan folk rituals, you're like, yeah, that obviously makes sense.
There's a reason why the story is told in this way. Yeah, no, totally.
And let's have our God be born on the exact
day that the sun begins to return to the world,
because truly not pagan and this isn't also the holy
day of soul in Victus, which was declared twenty five

(19:04):
years earlier or twenty six years earlier or something. Jesus
totally isn't just another Sun god, Nope, son Sun Sun God,
son of God anyway. Yeah, yeah, so December twenty five
had or rather this I think is specifically December twenty five.
I should have put this in my notes. I've spent
so long reading a million different fucking holidays and it

(19:25):
got all confused. Uh, the holy day of Soul in Victus,
which is the unconquered Son, which is the official religion
of Rome before Christianity took over, but not by a
long time. So Soul in Victus is fucking weird. Um,
And most of the people I know who are like
most of the people I read about who're into Soul
Invictus or not. Like, if you meet someone who's like, man,
you know what rules like Imperial Rome, you're not meeting

(19:48):
a good person. Red red flag. Yeah, So it would
be too easy to say Christmas is just the continued
celebration of Soul in Victus. It wouldn't really be true.
The a lot of arguments happening about how the worship
of Soul and Rome, which was sort of predate soul
Invictus or doesn't. There's like lots of fucking arguments you
can get into. But specifically Christmas revelers took more from

(20:13):
other traditions, specifically medieval Christmas, which is my favorite. Christmas
took a lot from saturn Alia. Yes, so let's talk
about saturn Alia. Saturn was a god of time and
abundance and agriculture and liberation and a bunch of other ship.
Roman gods had very expansive portfolios. It was very impressive.
They do seem to collect a lot of like I

(20:35):
don't like magic cars, Like they have a really strong hand,
you know. Yeah, um Rome was around for a long time.
Rome is still around, but like ancient Rome as a
sort of imperial force around for a long time. And
before there was the Feast of Soul in Victus, there
was saturn Alia. It was a week long festival centered
on winter solstice. And there's not like a specific pamphlet.

(20:59):
Historians have found that's like in Latin and it's like
how to celebrate Saturnalia. Instead, people have had to cobble
together the best that people can understand, and so it's
probably like conflating a lot of different times because this
was celebrated for a very long time. But Saturnalia absolutely happened,
and we know some stuff about it, and it's fucking interesting.

(21:20):
For a week, masters served their slaves and every which
is this role reversal thing that was going to come
up again and again. Everyone wore bright, tacky clothes against
the style at the time. Everyone got free speech for
a hot minute, so everyone basically told their bosses and
their masters and ship what was up. People gambled, which
wasn't normally allowed. They used coins and nuts for their gambling,

(21:42):
and they gave everyone presence. The festivities were presided over
by the Lord of Saturnalia, which was decided by drawing lots.
Everyone got together and drew a lot. If you won
or lost, depending on how you looked at it and
depending on how anthropologists are interpreting this particular thing, you
become king for the week. You're the King of Saturnalia.

(22:04):
You're not actually really in charge, although everyone has to
do what you say. It's but you're in charge of
sewing chaos. You give commands everyone has to follow, and yeah,
I'd be like, I don't know. Everyone stand on their
head and run around and do whatever weird? Should I
come up with a lot of pressure actually to be

(22:25):
the the Lord of Saturnalia, you'd be like, I have
to be the most hedonistic that anyone has ever been.
I have to plan to be the most chaotic thing,
which is it's challenging. It's it's it is. It can
be challenging to plan to plan out chaos because chaos
is often spontaneous. Yeah. Do you know what else is

(22:48):
chaotic and disruptive of our narrative? Oh? Is it capitalism?
Trying to convince you to buy things? It is um
in this very well fitting here, learn about some ship
you can buy while I complain about what happened to
traditional Christmas, which is supposed to be about chaos, not

(23:09):
Christ and not well presence. Yes, actually maybe it is
a return to traditional Christmas. Who's to know? Return with
a V. Yeah, here's some ads and we are back,
and I don't get the reference. Return with a V. Oh,

(23:30):
I'm just I'm just doing a just a small Yeah.
I was like, I was like, you're you're doing some
light fascism right there, like the Roman, like when you
like carve it into stone and like to use a
V instead of a you got it. I'm I'm aware

(23:52):
of contemporary politics and how they refer to ancient things.
That's literally my job is ancient ings. That's true too.
So there's also human sacrifice, which is fairly chaotic, I
will say, because like chaos is not inherently good or bad, right, No,

(24:12):
chaos is beyond pastic like leading. So yeah, thanks, thanks,
So the exact type of human sacrifices subject to debate.
Dead gladiators were definitely offered up to the god's saturn,
and I feel like that's like halfway cheating in terms

(24:34):
of human sacrifice because the guy is dead already, right,
But yeah, also at the same time, he died because
you had a being a gladia Yeah yeah, yeah, which
the whole gladiator thing whatever, I'm not gonna do a
total tangent on It's way different and more interesting. You think,
it's not just two people go into a death pit

(24:55):
and one person leaves. It's not beyond thunderdome gladiators actually
like often survived and lived fairly long lives, and people
didn't die every time because it was this fucking sporting
event that happened for hundreds of years. Like, it's more
like how people play football and get horrible concussions to
shorten their lifespan. Yeah, it's like halfway between mm A

(25:17):
fights slash professional football and what we conceive of as
gladiator fights. I feel like it's the actual gladiator fights.
Got it. But people did die and probably more during
Saturnalia for some because they needed some dead people get
offered up to the god. Later, the Romans were like,
what if we use candles as representatives of human life
and we sacrifice these candles by lighting tapers. So it's

(25:40):
possible that the tapers part of Christmas where everyone has
taper candles, It's possible that that traces back to fast
advising humans. Really really makes you look at those candles differently, huh. Yeah.
It's also possible that the Lord of Saturnalia, after being
king for a week, was sacrificed to Saturn, which is

(26:04):
like way more metal and full car of a story. Yeah,
what a weird few weeks that would be. Wow. I know,
I know you're like, you just like go out with
a bang, you know. I guess so you just you
you don't care what happens because it doesn't matter for you.
That would increase the chaos, yes, yeah, and uh and

(26:29):
I this is not my favorite part because I don't
think you should slit fake king's throats. Um, that's what
real kings are for. Yeah. Shortly after Saturnalia was the
first day of the new year Colens and Colens is
actually the first day of any month, and this whole thing.
You got a holiday first day of every month, but Colens.
The first day of January New Year's Day was like

(26:49):
a real big one. And Colens, there were gifts. In
the northern regions of the Empire. There was cross dressing,
just like a fuck ton of cross dressing. It gets
called ritual trendsvestis um unfathomably based. And this continues for
thousands of years. I will just say, someone say, people
are still doing it now. I know. If you want

(27:12):
to celebrate traditional Christmas, go to a drag show that
is more traditional of for Christmas. I I that is
what my plans are, all right, great, and also dressing
up like animals just part of it, all part of Colens.
This goes in great because I'm going to a dreg
show dressed up as cat will because I'm going to

(27:35):
a Batman Returns themed drag show, which is as we know,
the best Christmas movie, so I will be both both
both cross dressing and where it could animal costume true
Colenn's spirit right there, Michelle Piper is really a Clen's icon.
Absolutely do you know? And this? Do you know who

(27:56):
that is? Margaret? Yes, as an actress who is in
movies that were around when I was younger. Yeah, I'm
I couldn't pick her out of a lineup or tell
you what movies she's in. Besides, apparently she's Catwoman. Hilarious.
And in my defense, I am both name blind and

(28:17):
face blind. I pretty much keep track of everyone based
on their haircut and if they could change their haircut,
they're different people. Yeah. So sometimes when I write my scripts,
I forget to put in names because I'm like, no,
one don't remember a name. It's a meaningless signifier. Why
would you names? It's just red to both flaps, It
doesn't matter. Yeah. Uh, this is the closest I can

(28:42):
find to a true origin of Christmas is Saturnalia. There's
other stuff and we're gonna get to it. We're gonna
get to Yule in a second. But celebrating the darkest
time of the year with chaos, revelry, and roll reversal.
So let's talk about more of that. Let's talk about Yule.
So Christmas barrows a lot from Saturnalia, but Christmas gets
called Yule sometimes, right, And that's the stuff of Germanic paganism.

(29:07):
We don't know a ton about Yule as it was
actually celebrated because a lot of Germanic pagan information was
filtered through Christian observers, which is really interesting. For this
is my main one of my main arguments that used
against like the Nazi Germanic pagan types is that I'm like, oh,
you like specifically think all of these specific things that
are very similar to Christianity. That's totally not because a

(29:30):
Christian monk told you that a single man was the
most important fucking anyway, whatever. What is important is that
we're going too adds again again. Just it's really important
that we get to add breaks in this episode. That's
what's important in life. So here's here's some of them,

(29:58):
and we're back full. It was a twelve day celebration. Uh.
The name Yule literally means Odin um oh I did
I did? I did not put that together? Yeah. One
of Odin's many names is j O L with some
marks over it. Yeah, it's pronounced basically, you'll from Old

(30:20):
Norse and you will the big old feast. There's ale,
there's sacrifice, including probably human sacrifice at various points. Um,
there's a lot of stories about prisoners of war from
Rome being human sacrifice. People can get a fun arguments
about this stuff. Um, I'm like more worried about offending
the Norwee Boos than the Christians in terms of like

(30:41):
people who are going to get up in my mentions
about this ship. But and when they would do these
sacrifices um called block I think was the Germanic pagan
style of sacrifice. You intentionally cut the throat so that
arterial blood goes all over everyone in the audience. And
so then they would sit down a feast and this

(31:02):
I know more about them sacrificing animals. But then they
like sacrifice the animal and then they eat the animal,
which doesn't seem like a sacrifice. Yeah, that's that's that's like,
that's like preparing it for slaughter to like eat, yeah,
and be like I don't know, like yeah, I don't know,
it doesn't seem like you're given up much. If I'm
like I've I'm prepared to sacrifice a lot by continuing

(31:25):
to have what I have. I'll have it in your name,
dear all Father. But you know whatever, I'm who am
I to tell them that they're doing their sacrifice wrong.
They sit down and eat feasts covered in blood, and
if I had anything to say to them, they would
murder me so and they would feast. The burning of
the Yule log comes from this tradition, and the Yule tree,

(31:47):
the Christmas tree, you'll be shocked to know comes from Yule. Really,
it's it's not a representative of the Tree of life,
like what I learned. Oh yeah, no it is not.
I mean, it could be many things, uh, but yeah, no, yeah, no,
it's about like basically like if you're cold, they're cold,
bring them in about like tree spirits. That's that's great,

(32:10):
But um, that's actually that's actually pretty rad. Yeah, because
I actually assumed that the bringing the tree inside was
like a when it became a Christmas tree, because it
seems like a very modern, destructive consumers thing to like
cut down a living tree and put it in your
house and watch it slowly rot. But they bringing the
tree inside to decorate was was often part of it.
And they would also like decorate their houses like branches

(32:34):
and wreaths and ship and they would decorate trees with
images and icons of everything that they wanted to bring
in with the new year. So it wasn't even just
specifically like oh, we want the tree to look pretty,
but like like it in my house. We you know,
decorate the tree with all of these different Christmas ornaments
that are very like specific and particular in all of

(32:54):
memories associate with them. That is very fucking traditional Yule Christmas.
And also deck rating the tree with nuts as probably
a fertility thing. Everything was a fertility thing that obsessed
with sex. What's wrong with these people? One problem with
researching anything pagan is that there's a ton of fake
history around and or not even like fake history, but

(33:15):
like incorrect information or like best guesses that get presented
as fact. And I mean, I'm literally doing my best
guess is presented with as fact. But I'm trying to
be aware of that. There's this persistent rumor, and I'm
wondering if you've heard this rumor that the decorating of
trees and Pagan times was like and trails of sacrifice. No,
I've not heard that, but I mean I could, I

(33:36):
could see how you would be like Christmas Garland. It's
like hanging intestines around the tree. Yeah, I can't find
any information besides like lots of people talking about that rumor.
No one's like this is a true thing. Well, there
are some things, but they're on like really, they're like
on websites that might as well be geo cities with
like animated gifts of candles or whatever. You know, it's

(33:58):
completely possible. I don't fucking know, but candles and nuts
and fruits and icons and shipped on the tree. Absolutely,
And like Colens in Rome, ull came with men dressing
like women, women dressing like men, and all everyone dressing
up like animals. Because as soon as you have a

(34:23):
moment where you like drop social norms, everyone's like fuck
yeah timed to cross dress and that rules. The dressing
like animals was like probably a little bit less like
modern furry culture and a little bit more like I'm
a spooky ghost. Here's the skull of an animal or whatever. Yeah,
it's kind of more more more in line with some

(34:43):
of our current Halloween stuff. Yeah. Absolutely, there's actually a
lot of weird overlap. We're gonna get to a sailing later.
There's a lot of overlap between Halloween and Christmas and
all of these like chaos traditions. They basically kind of
split out the chaos parts of Christmas and gave it
to how Loween. Also, both Collens and Yule had leaving

(35:04):
food out for the deities, I mean, Santa Claus whatever
the angles like of the Anglo Saxons called the main
knight of Yule Mother's Night, only they called it in English,
sort of English. And the food was left out for
the Hungry Mother spirits because they just wanted to be medalist.

(35:24):
Fuck right, And I'm really into this, especially since I'm
pretty sure it was my mom who left eight the
cookies we left out for Santa Hungry Mother. Missiletoe may
or may not have come from Yule specifically, it wasn't
a Christmas thing until the eighteenth century. The missiletoe got
like added either back in or added in for the

(35:45):
first time. But missiletoe is pagan as fuck. The white
berries are the semen of the gods. Alrighty then, okay,
it was like everyone who's like doing something else will
into this episode. Is like everyone which is interesting because

(36:07):
they're poisonous as fuck, you know, you know. So Nope,
not gonna make too easy, too easy, too easy of
jokes to make not doing it. Okay, Well I was
gonna say, it's a note to self about don't go
down on God's Oh ah see, I can't. I can't.
I cannot support that though. Sorry, you're willing to You're

(36:28):
willing to risk the Yeah, the poison. Yeah, here's here's like,
as a matter of fact, that's what I'm doing after this. No,
this like a series of concentric eye rings shows up
in the background on the Gears screen, mistletoe garlands everywhere. Amazing. Um.

(36:57):
But yeah, and this is like, how so is this
incredibly potent fertility symbol the missiletoe because it's like the
Seman tree or whatever. Um. And so this is how
powerful syncretism is because it said, the fucking eighteenth century
and people are still adding new fertility rights into Christmas ship.

(37:17):
This wasn't even one that like held on the whole time.
This was like in the eighteenth century people were like,
you want to you want to bring that which ship
back into this and everyone's like yeah, I do. Like,
let's make out under the fucking under God's semen um.
Another thing that comes from le so Odin is one

(37:39):
of the central figures of Yule because it's literally named
after him, and Yule is famed for the Wild Hunt,
and the Wild Hunt is found in a ton of cultures.
I really like the Wild Hunt, especially the Canadian two
thousand nine film called The Wild Hunt. I watched that.
It's a large gone wrong movie. Oh, I feel like you.

(38:01):
We have talked. We have talked about this before. Yeah,
I've tried to make everyone watch it. We almost watched this,
and instead we watched night Writers, Night Writers, which was
not a bad choice. Writers thing. Again, Robert will hear
us and then bring it up in every conversation for
at least two months. We don't okay, we don't need this. Well,

(38:22):
the movie The Wild Hunt. A lot of my LARPer
friends don't like it because they don't like any Larpe
gone wrong movie. But um, I enjoyed it anyway. The
Wild Hunt is this thing that's found through a ton
of cultures. It is this like ghostly hunt through the heavens.
Sometimes it's led by Odin. Sometimes it's led like hunters
or the ghosts of the dead. It's in like it's

(38:44):
not always led by Odin, right, because it's a ton
of cultures and there's just like pale riders and just
all this ship is like really fucking common. It's this
thing that people fucking see and they either see it
in the woods on the ground or they see it
in the fucking sky in the heavens, and then they
like attribute all this foclore to it. And I'm really
interested in it because I've spent a lot of time

(39:04):
living alone in the woods and sometimes at night you
hear the Wildest Ship, and I'm just like, like, I
have a night where I was like convinced I heard
the Wild Hunt. I might have been sleep paralyzed. A
lot of my understanding of mythology comes from the fact
that I suffer from sleep paralysis. I mean, yeah, because
that's that's that that makes sense anyway. Sometimes the Wild

(39:27):
Hunt abducts people. Sometimes it's an omen being like you
see the Wild Hunt, you're gonna die. I didn't die,
to my knowledge. There's versions of it all over the place,
and Santa Santa riding around in the sky bass the
fucking Wild Hunt. I mean that that's that's super interesting
because like like this this, this, this, this idea of

(39:51):
like the wild Hunt, right, some of that in a
folklore sense. Has the modern version of that would be
like alien abductions. Oh yeah, right, Like that's kind of
like the that's kind of like the high strangeness idea
of like there's been these types of stories and that
that are that are either like referencing some type of
hallucination or some type of like dream state that we

(40:12):
enter to sometimes and it always filters through whatever stage
our culture is in. So sometimes it's stuff like this
in the wild Huse. Sometimes it's more like sci Fi
with the with like the little gray aliens. Sometimes it's
you know, a weird sleep paralysis demon coming into your
room and transporting you to to another place. There's like

(40:33):
always always like slightly different versions of it. No, it's
I like that, I really like that. Um. Alien abduction
is the new Santa I mean the new Wild Hunt.
And then Santa himself is a mixed match of a
ton of different ship and a bunch of different European cultures,
was sort of claim Santa Um. But for my money,

(40:54):
Santa Claus is a mix of old St Nick and
this finished creature Julapuki, the Christmas goat who was a
pre Christian figure, and he's basically aware goat. Sophie, have
you've heard of You've heard of this creature? I have not. Oh,
gare you'll like this? Yeah, I've been like I've been

(41:15):
like Crampus pilled for a long time. But so, yeah,
he's this like man who turns into part goat part
man sometimes. So he's a fucking wear goat and he
wears red robes like lined with white fur and rides
around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer and scares kids.
Oh really, huh curious? What what? What does that remind

(41:39):
me of? Yeah? So Santa Claus is a fucking wear goat.
Sometimes he's an invisible spirit who helps bring in the
new year by helping the light return. It's like worth
noting here that Finland has its own pagan traditions, um
several different ones, the different Finnish tribes of different religions
and pagan cultures that are separate from like the Germanic

(42:00):
pagan traditions and also separate from the Slavic traditions closer
to the Slavic ones as far as I understand, but
please don't quote me on that or please don't yell
at me fins and if you do, um, just the
altbatically beat the soft and not at me, and I'll
be like, hey, I know what those words mean. And
then if you yell any other words, I won't understand them,
so oh yeah, and then like St. Nicholas, the whole

(42:20):
thing with him is that, well that's the Protestants fault.
I think we'll get to that later. Okay, basically everyone
has Solstice holidays, usually filled with weird demons in the sky.
How could you not? And now let's talk about medieval Christmas.
Just kidding. Now it's in the episode and you have

(42:41):
to wait till Wednesday to hear about medieval Oh, I'm
gonna be on the edge of my seat till Wednesday.
I know. We definitely don't record these back to back.
We record these when they drive to be peering, peering
out of the night sky, hoping not to be taken
away by a scary ghast man. I was so, I

(43:02):
was so scared of alien abduction as a kid. Yeah,
it actually tracks magpie. Now I live alone in the woods,
but I still feel like you're afraid of bilion abduction.
I don't know. I like, like sometimes my friends come
over and then they're like, what was that noise? And

(43:23):
I'm like, I don't know, something outside And They're like,
how does that not scare you? And I'm like, the
outside makes a lot of noises. I'm in the forest.
Yeah no, But like that that the whole wild hunting
is very reminiscent of the type of like forest like
forest alien abductions that people talk about, and it just
it it just connects connects to the overall high stranger,

(43:45):
this idea of of you know, of of these types
of of being taken to these other places that we
see throughout folklore, even stuff like um ali jab being
carried to heaven in like chariots of fire. Like it's
it's it's the same, it's it's the same idea. Wait,
I don't know that that's just like well just like
um you know there's a bad Christian if that's a
Christians just multiple multiple stories in the Bible of people

(44:09):
being being being taken up and then sometimes sometimes returned.
Um Enoch being one, which is you know, resulting in
stuff like the Emerald tablet. We have, we have Elijah
being taking being taken up, um inside inside a chariot.
But you know it's like that's like an alien craft

(44:30):
coming down, picking you up and taking you up into
the sky. That's that is what that story is. Um,
we just have different different versions of it. Let lasting
now and then. I love that like lights in the
hills and the skies is like a persistent part of
folklore and they're just like a part of people's like
lived experiences of just like what's that fucking light over there?

(44:52):
Is just like a thing that happens when you spend
a lot of time away from cities. Cool. Okay, Well,
we're gonna talk about Revelry on Wednesday, Garrison to play
Harrison Davis. Do you have anything that you would like
to tell our listeners? What are you plug in? What

(45:13):
do you plug in? Well? I just wrapped an fast
series that I that I I just I just trapped
up a series that I wrote with my colleague James
Stout about trans people living in a ranch in Rule,
Colorado and how they survived in attack by fascists. So
that's that's on. It could happen here. It's a four

(45:34):
part series. So that that just that just wrapped up.
That's kind of the most recent thing that I have
that I've done and I should have. I should have
a very interesting article coming out soon, but I do
not know when that's gonna be fully fully published. But
you can if you follow me on either Twitter Instagram
at Hungry about I, you will certainly certainly be alerted

(45:58):
when when this bizarre, bizarre thing is finally is finally published.
And if anyone would like to get to know Garrison, well,
please transform yourself into a series of concentric rings embedded
with eyes within eyes and show up at their po box.

(46:20):
You know, sure if if if you go through all
that work and all of the transportation, then I'm I'm
surely I'll probably talk to you. That is that? That's
that does seem slightly impressive. Margaret, You are you have
a book that is available for pre order? Correct? I do? Yeah.
My goal is to always have a book available from
pre order the entire run of this show, apparently. My

(46:42):
current book available for pre order is called Escape from
Insul Island. It is a adventurous science fiction adventure novel novella.
Um it's very short. You can read it in one day.
If you're the kind of person who's like I like
the idea of being someone who reads books, but I
have a hard time paying attention to something for a
long time. I highly recommend Escape from Insel Island. And

(47:05):
if you're an in cell and you live on an island,
I highly recommend Escape from Insil Island. But also you
have to stop in and in Cell first. That's oh.
You could buy it by going to trink Tangled Wilderness
dot org and it is available for pre order now.
And Sophie, do you have anything you would like to blog?
Just at cool Zone Media on Instagram and Twitter. Yeah,

(47:27):
oh yeah, I work because this is all part of
the cool Zone Media, which is cool by everyone. Cool
people who did cool stuff is a production of cool
Zone Media. But more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit
our website cool zone media dot com or check us
out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.