THOR

Ok, forgive me, because this is rambling.

Even by my Christmas standards!

 

I started with this

 

On 19 December 1643, the puritans banned Christmas  - an ordinance was passed encouraging subjects to treat the mid-winter period 'with the more solemn humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights'.

 

From this point until the Restoration in 1660, Christmas was officially illegal.

 

Why? Because then, as now, the experience of Christmas releases something in us. The puritans called it sin, and unholy behaviour. The rest of the country didn’t want to give it up, rioted and held pro Christmas protests.

Since 1660, we have decorated our homes with lights, and greenery. Some of us have Elves (from Gubba, or people like her). We hear jingle bells in the night. We expect magic.

Because Christmas is not all about a baby being born. It is a liminal time between an old year and a new and it feels special. Our ancestors survived the long winter by spinning magic into the darkness and celebrating, and we feel it still. Like the brush of a touch, a glance of the past. Something we recognise but don’t quite know why. so many of our traditions and rituals were born out of their art of survival in the darkness. Coloured with their magic.  And that is  a gift from the past worth celebrating. Alongside Jesus. Of course.

SO.

This year –on Christmas Eve this year, at the threshold of a new year, we are going to celebrate the old magic of Christmas. Unlike the Puritans, we are going to embrace the magic of those that have gone before us and we are going to sprinkle it into the year ahead.

And it is going to be fun

To get you going – maybe give you an idea of where Christmas magic can take you, let me introduce you to a rabbit hole I particularly enjoyed. It started with this sentence:

​

WELL, IT’S THAT SPECIAL TIME OF YEAR AGAIN. HOLy MUSHROOM CONSPIRACY THEORIST RAMP UP THEIR PROPAGANDA,

​

​

(Holy mushroom conspiracy theory? I can feel Kit’s ears pricking up from here)

 

Turns out this holy mushroom conspiracy is based on the hallucinogenic properties of the (highly toxic to humans) red and white amanita mushroom. You know the one. Brownies dance around it. Red with white spots. It happens to be a reindeer’s favourite food. One which makes them jump about like rabbits, seem almost to fly. Imagine the reindeer herders, sitting huddled in their frozen north and endless night, watching their furry friends prancing about and wondering why the hell they look so damn happy.

Somehow, and I don’t want to think how, the Laplander herders worked out that they could get the same hallucinogenic impact – and not die - by drinking the reindeer’s pee (this could really only happen in a place where the sun does not shine for half the year).

So revise the scene. No longer miserable, stuck in their snowed in houses, waiting out the long dark winter with only bored elves and dwindling firewood, Please now picture our herders high as kites, celebrating time off the daily grind with feasts and songs, firelight, greenery inside and out and stories. And, of course, all round party animal Thor, famous always for his party tricks, thunder and lightening, (Dunder and Blixem). And he comes, bringing gifts for good children, in guess what? Yes. A chariot pulled by goats across the sky.

 

I am sure you can see where this is going.

 

Fast forward a few years, through a Christian invasion, which confuses the already addled brains of tripping ex-Vikings and now Jesus has been born. Enter the shepherds, and wise men with gifts. But the reindeer are still peeing in buckets, it is still pitch dark, and Thor, or someone just like him, is still out there being dragged around with his gifts for good little Vikings. He is now sadly goat-less, and must rely instead on a pack of flying reindeer (two of whom are Donner and Blixen). I mean.

 

Move south, add a few MORE years, and a German princeling called Albert with a pretty puritanical wife. Albert loves all that Norse stuff (except I imagine the reindeer pee), he brings trees into the palace-house (as they did), and is totally cool with a gigantic magic red and white  (still amanita mushroom coloured) man who flies around with a pack of floating reindeer dishing out presents. It does start to look as though Thor and his magic have never really left the building.

 

The puritans were right.

 

If you are reading this and thinking, what is she on about? Is this Christmas about magic, or about magic mushrooms? I’d say, ok - it’s a fair question. But I only invited you down that one rabbit hole to show you what winter magic you don’t even know you know.

So, don’t focus on the mushrooms, focus on what people did with them. THAT was the magic. What they did with them. In their heads.

 

So, back to this year. The space ship bearing the possibly extra-terrestrial descendants of Jesus Christ our Lord, will visit briefly to check on plans for the bunker. So please be ready to explain to your fellow space travellers what your plans were or are on that front. You won’t have long though because before you know it, we will be slipping back away from the star, into the darkness of the north. Into the space between the years. over the threshold. Into the magical realm, for a few days of space and breathing room to open ourselves up to the Otherwordly messages that are trying to come through at this time, during this years version of the ancient Yule celebration that the reindeer pee-drinkers and their like gifted us. a celebration of the magic of worlds we have been told are there, but which we don’t always see.  Magic from the past to sprinkle into our futures and bring us joy and get us through the darkness, as it got those that went before us through.

 

Come ready for old magic, and hopefully a little déjà vu!