“You know mistletoe is important to Druids but do you know why people kiss under the mistletoe? It’s a Norse myth. Baldur the son of Odin was the most beloved by the other gods. So much that they wanted to protect him from all the dangers in the world. His mother, Frigg, took an oath from fire and water, metal, stone and every living thing, that they would never hurt Baldur. At a gathering, they tested him. Stones, arrows and flame were all hurled at him. Nothing worked. But there was one god that wasn’t so enamored of Baldur, the god of mischief, Loki. Loki discovered that Frigg had forgotten to ask mistletoe, a tiny, seemingly harmless plant and completely overlooked. Loki fashioned a dart out of mistletoe and it killed Baldur. Frigg was heartbroken. She decreed that mistletoe would never again be used as a weapon and that she would place a kiss on anyone who passed under it. So now we hang mistletoe underneath our door during the holidays so that we will never overlook it again.”
Reblogging again because SOMEONE ASK ME ABOUT WHERE SANTA CAME FROM AND WHY HE HAS EIGHT REINDEER DO IT.
Santa? Is Odin. With a bit of the Turkish Saint Nicholas plastered over top to make him more acceptable to Christianity.
Let’s wind this back a bit.
So. In Norse tradition, Odin rose with the wild hunt on Midwinter. Children would leave out offerings of hay or root vegetables in their shoes for Slepnir, Odin’s horse. In norse tradition, all gifts create an obligation that must be returned in kind, so if Odin found the offerings pleasing he would leave treats and sweets in return.
So. We have a magical bearded man riding through the sky on a winter feast day and leaving treats for children in footwear if they pleased him. Sound familiar? Yeah.
As for Slepnir, Odin’s mount? He has eight legs. So. Bearded man with powerful magic flying through the air on an eight-legged steed on a winter feast day and leaving treats for children in their footwear if they pleased him.
Yeah.
Enter Christianity. Now, the midwinter season is important to all cultures that live in cold climates. The passing of the worst of the hard times and the beginning of the longer days and the promise of the return of life and light and fertility is a powerful thing. There were Christian festival days around the same time as Midwinter was celebrated in many polytheistic faiths. Christians found that they couldn’t get people to stop celebrating the feast days they’d been celebrating for several thousand years, so opted instead to just absorb those traditions into their OWN midwinter festivals. It was a far easier and more effective way of convincing people to convert.
However, the idea of him flying through the sky, being associated with elves, possessing powerful magic, and the eight-legged steed stuck. (reindeer, incidentally, are an animal with a lot of symbol and power in Norse tales. Ullr, the god of the hunt, had ties to reindeer, and at some point the eight legged horse became eight reindeer.)
Incidentally the image of Santa as a chubby little jolly man didn’t come around until modern advertising began depicting him that way. Before that? A tall, strong man, usually with a staff (echoing Odin’s staff or spear).
So. There you have it. Santa, the jolly bearded old man of beloved childhood Christmas memories? If you ever wondered where he came from in a ‘Christian’ holiday, there’s your answer. He didn’t. He’s the amalgamation of an ancient Norse god and a Middle Eastern saint, filtered through the lens of pop culture.
Jim Butcher actually did this very well in the Dresden Files, where Odin makes several appearances, one wearing the mantle of Father Christmas.
Christianity never really managed to make the old gods vanish.
I love these omg origins of holidays fascinate me
My heart melted even more.
!!
In Western Europe, St. Nicholas and Santa Claus/Father Christmas are more separated. I live in Belgium, where on top of Christmas on December 25, we also celebrate St. Nicholas Day on the 6th. Details vary from region to region (I think the Netherlands and Germany also have a strong St. Nick tradition but the dates and nature of presents may differ), and also from family to family, but in my family, as kids, we were encouraged to leave snacks and a drink for St. Nicholas… and a carrot for his donkey.
THE TRADITION OF FEEDING SLEIPNIR SURVIVES!!!!!
(idk if Santa’s eight reindeers aren’t much of a thing in Europe or if it’s just me who missed that, but at any rate I’d never really heard much about them; the red-nosed reindeer song apparently does exist in my native language but I’ve never ever ever heard it. Santa rides in a flying sleigh, and most of the time you’ll mention that it’s pulled by reindeers, but where I live that’s pretty much it. I think I’ve seen white or black horses instead sometimes, and not always eight. OTOH, Saint Nicholas’ donkey is way more famous (and popular with the kids).)
Rudolph the red nosed reindeer isn’t based on ant earlier myth, he’s literally just a very successful advertising campaign to sell toys and movies.
Also like, santa is a far less important figure in Belgium and the Netherlands. Kids do realize that it’s a thing americans do. Santa doesn’t get them presents for Christmas, their parents do.
But for the love of god, do NOT you say Saint Nicholas isn’t real bc every kid and parent in your vicinity will hate you forever
Time passes. The world changes. Temples fall. People now
speak their names as if they are fairytales.
The gods are dead.
~
Apollo’s chariot lies broken and forgotten in the ruins of a
city no one knows the name of anymore. He watches the sun crawl across the sky
of its own volition, without him to push it forward.
“Do you miss it?” Artemis asks him, appearing by his side. They stand at the top of a sparkling glass
building, almost the same as ever. She walks among the mortals more than he
does, she always has, and She’s dressed like one of them. Tight clothes and half
her head shaved, sparkling gems curling up the delicate shell of her ear. She
looks like one of the teenagers that fill his concert stadiums.
He thinks of the way his chariot threatened to escape his
grasp every morning, the oppressive heat of the sun beating down on him, the
burns and the undercurrent of fear that one day he would lose his grip on the
reins and plunge the world into darkness.
Apollo leans his head on his sister’s shoulder. The sun
rises slower without him, but it rises just the same. “No. Not really.”
~
Hephaestus’s workshop has evolved with the times – from a
volcano base to a modern lab, but always a workshop bursting with creation. The
cyclopes are still his best assistants.
Aphrodite steps over discarded parts and expertly walks
around frantic cyclopes carrying bubbling concoctions. Her dark hair is swept
up in a bun and she wears chunky glasses and a blood red pantsuit that almost
hides the fact she’s the most beautiful woman to walk the earth. “I have a
client, try not to blow up the house. Again.”
“Yes dear,” he says, but doesn’t looks away from his
soldering. She hadn’t expected him too. His prosthetics are off and on the
floor besides him, and he’s seated on a too-tall chair to compensate for the
loss of height.
She reaches out and carefully touches the corner of his eye.
Crow’s feet have started to work their way onto his face. They’re getting old. “It’s
the couple that’s fighting because he wants kids and she doesn’t want to carry
any kids but doesn’t want to say that. It would probably be easier if I just
told them to adopt and threw them out the window.”
“Yes dear,” he repeats, sparks flying. A few land on her,
but she doesn’t burn. Of course.
She moves her hand up and pushes it through his hair and
resists the urge to pull him from his work and abandon her own so they can make
out on his worktable. “I love you.”
Aphrodite turns to leave, but Hephaestus grabs her wrist and
pulls her back. He holds up a single copper lily, the edges of the petals still
glowing with heat it had taken to shape them. He carefully slides the stem into
her hair so it sits at the base of her bun. He grazes her bottom lip with his
thumb as he pulls his hand back to his side. “Yes dear.”
~
Demeter rages.
She makes imprudent deals to control an earth that no longer
falls under her domain, and she enacts her revenge against the mortals in
whatever way she can. They have forgotten her, forgotten the earth, and in
their ignorance they seek to destroy it.
She shakes the bedrock and splits it open, but still they do
not learn, and as the temperature of the earth rises so does her temper.
The sea is not hers to command, her power is of earth and of
earth alone, and even now she gave more than could afford to lose to keep her
grasp on it. But these mortals do not learn.
Demeter goes to the sea and makes an inadvisable bargain. She
goes to the crumbling remains of Olympus and makes an even worse one.
Typhoons and hurricanes whip across the land. If they seek
to destroy her, she will simply destroy them first.
~
Hera sits on a pure white couch in an elegant mansion,
smiling for the journalist seated across from her.
“What do you think is the most influential decision you ever
made?” he asks, “If you could pinpoint the success of your business to one
moment, what would it be?”
She tilts her head as the light of the camera flashes. “Why,
divorcing my husband, of course.”
“Would that be your advice to young women hoping to be as successful
as you?” he asks, “To not get married?”
Hera thinks of thousands of years by Zeus’s side, and how
little it got her. She thinks of Hestia’s men, and Artemis’s women, of Hephaestus’s
love for Aphrodite, of the way Hades softened the sharpest of Persephone’s edges.
She says, “Do not get married to someone who makes you less
than you are. If you are not a better person for being together than apart,
then do not be together. It’s as simple as that.”
Simple, but not easy.
Leaving Zeus was the hardest thing she’s ever done.
~
Persephone isn’t forced to spend half the year on the mortal
earth anymore. She goes when she pleases, which isn’t often.
Sometimes she’ll sit by Artemis’s side while she brings a
new life into the world and holds the warm, wriggly child first. She visits
hospitals and makes the flowers bloom out of season, and spends long hours
sitting under the sun and feeling it’s warmth touch her face.
Hades left his realm rarely before, and even more rarely
now. More people are being born than ever, meaning more people are dying than
ever. Their realm is massive, comprising of all the dead of several millennia.
Hades and Hecate spend their days as always – desperately trying to expand the
realm so that they don’t all have to live on top of each other.
“Have you heard?” she asks one day, seated on his desk and
leaning across it so he can’t work on the latest draft for another level of
their realm. “The gods are dead.”
He gives up on attempting to tug it out from underneath her.
“Are they? That’s odd, none of them are here.”
Persephone doesn’t bother to hide her smile. They haven’t
figured it out yet. Maybe they never will. But when death comes for them, as
death does for all, it will be to Hades and Persephone’s door they are brought.
Hades himself will usher Gaia and Amphitrite into the underworld, when the time
comes.
That time is not today.
“Darling, I really do need to work on this,” he
ineffectually tugs on the map again.
She pushes him back into the chair, climbing on top of him
and pressing their foreheads together. “No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t,” he agrees, and obligingly moves his head so
Persephone can nibble at his neck. He manages a whole thirty seconds before
going, “I mean, I really do, Hecate said if I didn’t have a plan by the time
she leaves for the mortal realm tomorrow, I’ll either have to wait until she
gets back or do it by myself, and I’d really prefer to do neither–”
Persephone kisses him to shut him up, twisting and pushing
them through the realm so they land on their bed. “I’ll help you finish it
later. Focus on me now.”
Hades doesn’t answer, but he does flip them so he’s above
her and reaches below her skirt, so she’ll take that as agreement.
~
Hestia sits around a bonfire, watching a group of teenagers
get drunk and dance around the flames. They’ll never be younger than right now,
never feel as much love for each other as they do right now.
She is besides an old man who warms his hands from the fire
coming from an abandoned trash can.
She lies on a bed as a girl lights two dozen candles around it
as a surprise for when her lover gets home.
She watches a young man make dinner for his boyfriend for
the first time and burn the chicken on both sides. They eat it together anyway.
She sits on the kitchen counter when a sister takes out a
pie from the oven, made special for her little brother’s birthday.
She is there when a father ticks the thermostat up high in
freezing dawn of morning so it will be warm by the time his wife and children awaken.
Most people don’t have hearths anymore. But there is warmth,
and love, and for Hestia that is enough.
~
As their names fade from existence, as his name is called
less and less on the battlefields of mortal men, the more Ares sleeps.
He falls asleep in too tall trees and on park benches. He
sleeps in seedy motel rooms and naps in every one of Athena’s libraries. He
sleeps curled up on a chair in Aphrodite’s office, and on the floors of a lot
of veteran resource centers. As fast as he can tell, that’s the most they help
any veteran.
Still, his favorite place to sleep is the underworld.
He goes knocking on Orpheus’s door, who is always willing to
play for him. “Hades is here,” Eurydice says, “Would you like to me to go get
him?”
He shakes his head, “Persephone is home. I wouldn’t want to
intrude.”
Eurydice and Orpheus share the same look of faint disapproval,
but neither of the say anything, for which he is grateful.
He lies in the soft grass of the garden Persephone made, and
lets Orpheus’s playing lull him to sleep.
Later, he’s woken by strong arms picking him up and holding
him against a familiar chest. He doesn’t even have to open his eyes to know who’s
holding him. “I can go,” he yawns, his actions at odds with his words as he
pulls himself even closer the warmth coming off the king of the underworld.
“No,” Hades says. “Stay.”
Ares lets out a content sigh as Hades presses his lips to
his forehead, and he’s not great about touch, about people laying their hands
on him and getting in his space. But Hades has always felt safe, felt like
home.
ah yes, the solar eclipse, that glorious event every few years when apollo does something so incredibly stupid that artemis has to yell at him in broad daylight in front of half of the world
Some early descriptions of Eros (the Greek analogue to the roman Cupid) make reference not to the arrows of Eros, but to the darts of Eros.
The image of Eros as a dart-player is funny enough, but it gets even funnier when you realise that, at the time, the term didn’t refer to playing darts, but to their military precursor: a sort of small javelin, typically 2-4 feet in length, with a heavy lead-weighted head to allow it to pierce armour and foul shields.
Basically, forget the arrows – picture Cupid howling like a maniac as he takes a running start and hurls a javelin into some poor sucker’s chest.
Perhaps more interestingly though, is that it’s a very different tone as far as the direction of aggression. Most people know the Clash of the Titans version where she’s on the hunt for him once he shows up. But let’s face it, Medusa really gets the shaft from destiny overall. She starts out as a priestess in a temple who gets raped by Poseidon and gets cursed for it as if it was all her fault. The result is that she’s basically doomed to live without human contact for eternity. Then she’s hunted down specifically for her head by a demigod whose got all sorts of great toys and backing to get the job done and depicted as some sort of horrible monster for defending her turf from folks out to kill her.
There are some really interesting theories about regarding just what the whole ‘gorgon’ thing was really about from a historical perspective. It’s really quite a tragic tale about the rise of patriarchy and the purge of goddess-centric worshipers. There are also parallels to the Apollo versus Typhon story which is part of the same era. Harsh.
See, even the demystified stories from ancient times are fascinating!
I wish there were more nuanced portrayals of Medusa than as just a scary, snake lady.
Not to mention all this shit went down while she was pregnant with twins, the Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor, as a result from the rape. Perseus would mount Pegasus, and use him and Medusa’s head to kill a sea monster, thus winning him a wife, Andromeda. Medusa was cursed by the very goddess she served, Athena, who also gave Perseus the mirrored shield he used to slay her. Raped, betrayed by her god, hunted down like a beast in her own home while she was pregnant, her own children stolen from her and used to glorify and aide her killers and betrayers. And she’s supposed to be the monster?
That’s how Greek men saw the myth. Greek women viewed it as Athena protecting Medusa by giving her the power to make any man who looked at her completely harmless. Her head was used as a symbol to mark women’s shelters in ancient Greece.
Friendly reminder to remember that women have their own vivid lives and cultures and that the stories which are preserved today come through a heavy filter of gender, race, and class biases.
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