Wednesday 18 December 2002

Pic of the day: Festive Xmas decorations show up at the most unexpected places, such as the homepage of my favorite real-soon-now-ware multiplayer game, City of Heroes.

Huh? Xmas already?

The snow is white and pure. It lies like a thin carpet on the ground, out in the fringes of the suburbs where I live, and sprinkled on the branches of trees. The air is crisp and cold. I come to the city where I work, and there are Xmas decorations everywhere and red Santa dolls and shoppers thronging the streets.

And I am totally like, huh? It's just November, it's not Xmas for a month yet! Except it is. It is two more days of work (hopefully I'll be able to be there) and on Sunday I'm supposed to take the train and then I'll be there. And there is barely time to buy gifts then, but I'm sure not going to buy them now. I'll have enough luggage to carry, with me staying there for a week. I cannot wrap my feelings around this. It just doesn't feel like it is there. It is just like some piece of news on the radio; it doesn't concern me. It is real, but not real to the heart.

***

Oh, I've been hearing this Xmas song in my head for a while, it goes like "Come all ye Faithful". But I guess that's because my paladin on DAoC is a member of this guild called The Faithful. It may be a bit pretentious, I guess, but so is playing a paladin in the first place. For a guy who has spent so much of his life trying to become a god, it isn't all that much. Anyway, I thought it was quite natural for the voices in my head to sing Come All The Faithful, you know? But today I heard another God-awful song again for breakfast. It was in Norwegian but basically it went like "I believe in Santa Claus". (Actually it is even worse in Norwegian, as the jolly red guy is called "julenissen", a rather pagan name. Admittedly "Nisse" may be derived from Nicolaos the same way that Claus is, but for the longest time it has been used as a generic name for the underhill people, equivalent to the Swedish "tomte".)

Ooooh-kay! Whooo is the X of Xmas? The song was upbeat and encouraged people to do good and be gentle, loving and patient. With no reference to any supernatural force at all, except the aforementioned underhill critter. Very cautiously avoiding anything that could upset the antichristian listener. I agree with Johan Oscar Smith, founder of "Smith's Friends": Satan wants people to do good deeds too, as long as they don't give glory to God (or even worse, mention Jesus' name). The cult Satanists have got it all wrong when they burn down churches (this used to be a trend here in Norway some years ago, during the dawn of the Black Metal genre). Lucifer doesn't want the churches to burn; he wants them as museums. Pretty memorials from a time before we broke free of God's yoke. More about Lucifer another time, perhaps. But he could have been the songwriter of that song. He's said to have a knack with music (or so some people read in Ezekiel 28 ... it is kinda disputed).

It seems like a strange alliance, Lucifer and Santa Claus. But between them they may have managed to turn a religious holy-day into a commercial holiday. That's damned near miraculous already. And it gives me no Xmas cheer, no Xmas cheer at all. Your mileage may vary.