Some of you may be aware of this, but before I awoke this morning, I knew very little about Christmas outside the USA. It seems in many parts of Europe, Santa Claus has companions when he's delivering presents to children. Now, I know what you're thinking, but I'm not talking about red nosed caribou or Will Ferrell.
Father Christmas has backup and they do his dirty work for him.
Depending on where you live, Santa's minions come in the form of demons, trolls and devils. If you've been bad in the preceding year, these fellas will beat you with sticks, chains, whips, whatever. Now, of course, this is all stuff of legend. However, there is a town in Austria to this very day where a thousand or so young men dress up as these monsters, get tore-up drunk and hit girls with sticks. It sounds like a party at Chris Brown's house but allegedly, no one seems to mind.
All I'm saying is this: where's our trolls, our devils at Christmastime? Shouldn't mom and dad be able to call on someone (or something) to lay a giant smackdown on the little ones if they've been bratty? If anything, it could ease our economic burden. Parents could justify the beatings in lieu of gifts. It's almost as if you're writing off your child's ass-whoopin' on your taxes.
So there you go, America. The mighty euro can once again take it's rightful place behind the US Dollar. I just fixed our economy. Damn, I'm good.
By the way, if you want to see some proof of what I'm talking about, so you don't think I'm completely full of crap, click here.
Actually, in Germany St. Nicholas (aka Santa Clause) comes on December 5th. St. Nicholas was a real saint, a bishop (hence wearing a pointy hat, which in the American version became the hat that Santa Clause wears). I find this topic absolutely fascinating.
ReplyDeleteAll of these celebrations have the same origin, but things just developed slightly different in the different cultures.
Dude smack that little kid for getting greedy around the holidays.
ReplyDelete