24 Dec 2006
Where "Santa" Got his "reindeer"

Yule Buck

Dressed in goatskins and wearing a frightening mask and horns, the Yule buck visited children's houses, giving gifts and threatening the nonconformists. Sometimes this character, wearing a buck head, "went after" children. In some areas, the Julbok survived as a straw puppet tossed from hand to hand in games, and in still others, survived only as a buck-shaped cake.

According to Ruth Cole Kainen, in America's Christmas Heritage, the Yule buck is one European creature who made the crossing to America, where he lived on on Hatteras Island, North Carolina, late into the 1700's. Christmas there began with a parade of fife and drums, and shortly before dark the townsfolk dressed in "grotesque" costumes. Then Old Buck emerged from the woods, where he had lived all year. With a steer's head and horns on a pole body covered in quilts and adorned with a bell, Old Buck rushed at the crowds awaiting him.

The Julbok survived in another capacity, pulling the sled for the gift-giver known as Jultomten, a Yule elf...

Despite Jultomten's popularization as a fun-loving gift giver, however, an undercurrent of fear lives on at Sweedish Christmas. Adults in the mid-twentiethe century considered Jultomten a destructive spirit, and set out porridge and milk on Christmas Eve in the hopes of warding off his malevolence. And, although the Yule goblin brings gifts, there is a dark side to the visit as well, and the whole family sleeps together on the floor on Christmas Eve as protection against the goblins who roam the earth during Yuletide.

from Santa Claus: Last of the Wild Men by Phyllis Siefker

12:13 /Asatru | 1 comment | permanent link

Bitchin' bout the Weather ...

is every farmer's favorite pastime, and I guess I'm no different. Although I daresay that we've had some mighty strange weather this last year - and for a few years running, in point of fact.

Here's a link to the Weather Underground's data page for West Lafayette for the past year. Records are pretty irrelevant for this, so I've left them off on the chart, but look at the averages (in blue) and last years data (in red). Temperatures seem to hover around normal, but then look at the rain and snow. No snow to be seen - but the rainfall has made up for it! We're so soggy it's almost beyond belief. Drainage system are overloaded, the ground is completely saturated, and while there's no rain on the immediate horizon, I'd bet almost anything that we're in for more before the turning of the year.

My rain gage (at 5 inches) has overflowed this past week. Cattle are having a hard time navigating the pasture, and the sheep are just hopping from semi-dry spot to semi-dry spot. The horse, the goats and the llama will hardly venture out of the barn, for fear of sinking, I'd wager.

The back half of my neighbor's winter wheat field looks like a rice paddy. The creek's out of it's banks and over the flood gates, and has been since Wednesday. If this keeps up, I think I'm going to have to evolve webbed feet and gills.

Egg production has plummeted, of course, despite some moderate temperatures, and nearly every egg gathered now has to go through the washer, as they're completely filthy. Moss is starting to grow on the barn walls, which may be normal in the Pacific Northwest rain forest, but is very weird around here, despite our rap for high humidity.

So there: weather rap over! Back to wrapping presents.

10:26 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

The Blog Mob

Hmmm...

"Written by fools to be read by imbeciles."

"...like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps."

Somehow, I don't think this editor at the Wall Street Journal likes the idea of blogging very much. We're just not "professional" enough for him. I suppose he believes that we of the unwashed masses should leave the punditry of politics to our betters, and simply parrot what we're told, lest we poison democracy itself.

Methinks these folks need to remember that the Hoi polloi are their readers, their customers and, in the final analysis, their power. We are not simply statistics to be flown over and ignored except on Election Day - we are perfectly capable of forming opinions of our own, even nuanced opinions. And now, we are perfectly capable of letting the world in on our little secrets.

Are some of us fools? No doubt. Do imbeciles read our pontifications? Yep. But I feel compelled to point out that the same could be said of the mainstream media in general, and the Wall Street Journal in particular.

Because nowadays, there are lot's of other fools with cyber pens in hand to call them to task.

Blogs are very important these days. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has one. The invention of the Web log, we are told, is as transformative as Gutenberg's press, and has shoved journalism into a reformation, perhaps a revolution.

(link) [Opinion Journal]

03:10 /Politics | 3 comments | permanent link