Pull up the stool and get comfortable, as I spin a few yarns for you to start the season. And just like most such stories, they could have taken place long ago and far away, or even now.
I offer you a mere group of trifles, as a distraction from the vicissitude of this year. It certainly proved to be a profitable vein to mine for Charles Dickens, not that these words lay any claim to such importance.
It’s easy to fall into the embrace of a type of nostalgia, particularly when it is an echo of a past that actually is not one’s own. With that degree of separation, it is easy to make whatever you might desire of the story. Culturally, we still remain as slightly distracted three-year-olds, always on the teeter-totter, between one side urban, the other rural. For some this might seem as a desire to get back to the simple life on the land (where we can refer to as the Green Acres part of the brain). It’s easy, on paper or Instagram, to pull off a cottage core attitude, similar to Marie Antoinette when having built the Petit Trianon, with her own dairy.
However, it was easy to lose one’s head in that particular situation, so let’s move on to a different image that might be better suited to the season. We all want to return to the woods. There is a woods, and in the woods is a small cabin, and you’re in the cabin. There’s a fire, food in the pantry, tea and coffee, drink enough, paper to write on, some books to read. Enough light comes through the one window to illuminate part of the path that leads to the nearby settlement.
A mysterious stranger laden with a rucksack shares a bit of your hospitality. After all you are living in the woods, and a decent kind of folk. They could be an itinerant peddler; after all, they are carrying the sack, as it is how the various sorts of odds and ends that you can’t produce for yourself come to hand. At some point in the night he visits those who have extended kindness in the past, and leaves a present.
This is one of the layers in the nesting doll that comprises the individual that we might deem Santa. There are so many other layers to the Santa “onion.” The nice bishop that pays the dowry for indigent virgins; the possible Dutch relative of Falstaff, with his pipe and rosy nose, with a hearty laugh and generous nature; or the one who’s shilling a carbonated beverage, who like Bacchus can offer a cornucopia of delights and treasures to his followers.
A pagan could elevate such a figure from folklore to a minor deity, if so desired, in the same way that the images of Roman Catholic saints can act as an embodiment of deities in the Yoruba pantheon.
In the 1970s, there was a tendency among many writers in the pagan revival to lay claim to all manner of spiritual beings followed by others to be derivative or borrowed from the “old ways.” This included Santa being Odin in disguise. Of course, if you wanted to play this game, it helps if the attributes of the deity are actually mirrored by the avatar that you’re laying claim to; there would be no reason to associate him with a jolly sort that’s in charge of producing a myriad of delightful presents.
So, I will see what I can do with elevating the figure here pictured onto my altar at home and see what results may occur. I’m not quite sure what offerings to make to him. I suppose chocolate might help, and I suspect that the hard ribbon candy that has existed in candy dishes on grandmothers’ tables all over this land probably are not a fitting offering.
I’ll keep you posted.
Wishing you and yours every happiness (and your own version of a snug shelter in the forest, where you can renew your spirit) as we move through the dark time of the year. Rest up, save up.
