Tag: Christmas

Movie Review: ‘Krampus’

He sees you when you’re sleeping, etc.

Krampus, directed by Michael Dougherty. Written by Tod Casey and Michael Dougherty. Starring Adam Scott, Toni Collette, and David Koechner. Universal Pictures, . Rated PG-13.

The folklore character Krampus, who comes to us from Austria and Bavaria, has enjoyed increased international popularity in the last decade, both because of resurgent interest in his land of origin and because any number of artists have found him useful for creating Christmas horror, usually of an ironic variety that thumbs its nose at what has become a materialistic and commercialized holiday divorced from its religious roots.

A knife thrust through a gingerbread man
The Krampus aesthetic.

Several B movies about Krampus exist, most having received largely negative responses from viewers. Two more positively received middling-high budget films about this monster do exist, however. One is the William Shatner vehicle Christmas Horror Story, and the other is the film before us now, a cult classic out of Hollywood.

Krampus is a movie hard to categorize. Some call it horror and some call it comedy. It’s a bit of both, a movie with a fair amount of goofy humor as well as some genuinely scary parts. I would argue that it fills the same genre niche as that great classic, Poltergeist: a family-centered horror film peppered with equal amounts of laughter and fear, in which children are frequently menaced but, ultimately, no one gets hurt.

Shoppers fighting in a store
Close-combat shopping.

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Crazy Christmas Characters: Snegurochka

In America, you love snow. But in Soviet Russia, snow loves you!

Featured image: “Snegurochka: Snow Maiden” by Irina Skorohodova.

Snegurochka is a character from Russia. She is unique among the companions of Saint Nicholas, and I am grateful for her existence because she adds some needed diversity to the main cast of my upcoming novel Son of Hel. Although originally associated with Christmas, Snegurochka is, since the Soviet regime suppressed Christmas celebrations, now more closely associated with New Year’s. It is New Year’s Eve as I write this, so it seems an appropriate time to discuss this character.

Snegurochka, or Snegurka, is the “Snow Maiden,” who comes from a fairy tale. In some versions, an elderly couple created her from snow because they had no children. In others, she is the daughter of Ded Moroz, or “Grandfather Frost,” a god of wintertime. At the age of fifteen, she met her untimely demise either when her friends challenged her to leap over a fire on St. John’s Day or because she fell in love.

Whichever version you prefer, she melted tragically, like Frosty.

As he is usually depicted, the Russian character of Ded Moroz is a man with a full, white beard and a long robe, and he hands out presents at Christmastime (or now on New Year’s). This figure clearly draws from St. Nicholas, but has become completely decoupled from the original saint, becoming instead a personification of the season, rather like the character of “Father Christmas.” Snegurochka has accompanied him since around the late nineteenth century.

Being sweet-tempered and tasked with assisting the gift-giving, Snegurochka is unique among the characters associated with Santa Claus or a Santa Claus-like figure, in that she is not menacing and does not dole out punishment.

She is a popular character in Russia. She has been the subject of opera, ballet, film, and animation. A Soviet-era cartoon about her, Snow Maiden, from 1952 may or may not be in the public domain; the information I have found is confusing and seems to suggest it is considered public-domain in Russia but not the United States—however that works.

In the world of Son of Hel, I attempt to collapse together as many similar characters as possible, so I assume the Ded Moroz whom Snegurochka accompanies is actually St. Nicholas, though the real Ded Moroz, the winter god, is somewhere in the background, having been responsible for bringing her to life for the sake of elderly couple who carved her out of snow, much as Zeus brought the statue to life for Pygmalion.

Although Snegurochka is usually depicted as sweet and warm, her backstory suggests something different: Since she died once before from falling in love, I suppose that she must be cold and distant, not because she wants to be, but because it is necessary for her survival. Thus, I depict her as aloof from the other inhabitants of the North Pole, avoiding both affections and warm places. She eats only cold foods, stays away from fires, and often walks alone in the freezing arctic night.

The basic premise of the book is that the misfits of Santa’s workshop must band together to save Christmas (and win a war): Krampus is the last child of the old gods and a reluctant servant of St. Nicholas; the “Captain” is a reindeer who wears a lead mask over his radioactive nose and shuns company to avoid inflicting others with the radiation sickness that killed his parents; and Snegurochka keeps others at a distance to preserve her own life.

Snegurochka, as you can see in the image above, is usually depicted in a long, blue coat with braided blond hair. Since the sequel to Disney’s Frozen recently appeared, I will mention that I was recently discussing Christmas legends with an associate who asked me if Snegurochka was the inspiration for the Disney princess Elsa. I had no certain answer, but thought it probable.

Crazy Christmas Characters: St. Lucy

I missed it unfortunately, but yesterday was the feast day of St. Lucy, or St. Lucia. Because her feast day falls within Advent, she has been pulled into the world of Christmas lore.

St. Lucy is a Christian virgin and martyr of Syracuse said to have lived from 283 to 304 and to have died under Diocletian. She refused to burn incense to the emperor and was condemned to a brothel. When soldiers came to take her, they found they could not move her, even when they tried to drag her away with oxen. They then attempted to burn her alive, and she miraculously survived, but died from a sword thrust.

She is a patron saint of eye diseases, and images of her holding eyes on a plate have been part of her iconography for a while, but the legend that her eyes were gouged out during her martyrdom apparently appeared only in the fifteenth century.

According to legend, she delivered food to the Christians hiding in the catacombs. To light her way, she wore a wreath on her head with candles affixed to it, and this is why her feast day is celebrated with children crowned in wreaths and candles, often with one particular girl chosen as the honorary St. Lucy of the year. This is particularly popular in Scandinavia, and according to Britannica, the celebration of St. Lucy marks the beginning of the Christmas season in Sweden.

Traditionally, the girl playing Lucy wears a white robe, a red sash, and a wreath of evergreen Lingonberry branches. Pepparkakor, or gingersnap biscuits, are also associated with her holiday.

I am not at present clear on how old this tradition is; a few glances around indicate that the Advent wreath with the four candles is originally a Lutheran tradition—though most Lucy wreaths I’ve seen have five or seven. I will have to dig deeper before I can say whether the St. Lucy wreath predates the Christmas wreath or vice versa.

St. Lucia procession in Sweden
Photo by Claudia Gründer

Particularly fascinating about St. Lucy is that this distinctive appearance of her processions—a girl in a white robe with a wreath of candles on her head—has (apparently?) become associated with the Christkind, or Christ child, in some places, especially Germanic countries.

The Christkind, or Christ child, was intended by Protestants as a replacement for St. Nicholas—but instead of turning the focus to Jesus as was probably intended, the Christkind ironically became a separate figure, usually played by a girl or woman with curly hair, sometimes with a tall crown of gold but often crowned with a wreath and candles.

And that’s why you don’t mess with Christmas characters: When you try to get rid of them, you just end up creating more.

I’m still uncertain about what originated where and when, but at least according to Chris Marchand, it was the Protestant image of the Christkind that informed the image of St. Lucy. Given the late—and Protestant—origin of the the Advent wreath, this seems plausible, though I previously assumed it was the other way around.

Basically, if I understand aright, the unorthodox depiction of the the baby Jesus as a candle-headed girl got folded into the image of the young woman saint who was already a part of the Advent season. Incidentally, Marchand mentions that St. Lucia has also taken on the role of a gift-giver, sometimes giving presents exclusively to girls.

At the moment, I confess I’m unsure what to do with either St. Lucia or Christkindl in the world if Son of Hel, the Christmas-themed novel of Krampus as his motley crew of St. Nicholas’s companions tasked with saving Christmas, but I feel an obligation to work these characters in somehow.

Crazy Christmas Characters: Krampus

Gruß vom Krampus!

Today, as I write this, it is Krampusnacht, so now seems a good time to discuss Krampus, who will be one of the major protagonists in my next novel.

Krampus is one of several bogeymen who orbit Saint Nicholas in the legendarium of the Germanic and Francophone peoples. For whatever reason, Krampus has gained a lot international popularity lately, eclipsing the similar Belsnickel and Knecht Ruprecht, who were, until recently, probably the most popular such characters outside their regions of origin. This is due in part to the internet, but also to the revival of traditions surrounding Krampus in Austria and Bavaria.

Krampus leads children to hell

If I were to guess, I would suppose that it is his distinctive appearance that makes Krampus popular. The typical “companion” of Saint Nicholas is a bearded and rough-clad character whose dark and shabby appearance contrasts with the saint’s bright and festive one. These figures tend to have similar accoutrements—chains, a wicker basket, and a whip or switch or bag of ashes or some other device to punish naughty kids.

Krampus pulling a woman's hair

Krampus, however, is a slavering, horned demon-like creature with a long tongue. He still has the switch and basket, but he is considerably more striking and terrifying in appearance than most of his counterparts.

Worth noting, however, is that people outside the areas of Austria and Bavaria frequently confuse Krampus with similar characters called perchten, who are associated with Frau Perchta, a hobgoblin-like witch who comes around at Epiphany (and whom I’ll discuss in another post). The perchten are her minions, similar in appearance to Krampus and celebrated in similar fashion with dress-up and physically intense parades. I am informed that a lot of images or descriptions of krampuslaufen—Krampus runs—that one sees on the internet are actually perchtenlaufen.

Krampus leads a string of naughty children

Although these two creatures have migrated to different parts of the calendar (Krampus before the Feast of St. Nicholas and Perchta around Epiphany), the similar features suggest similar origins or at least a lot of trading. This is typical of folklore, with concepts dividing and combining and dividing again.

And if we want to get picky, we could also ask whether Krampus and the Buttnmandl, a monster made of straw and wearing huge cowbells, are really the same, or different. The answer is that there’s not really an answer: Trying to define these things is like a fanboy trying to explain away inconsistencies in his favorite franchise. For this reason, too, someone like me who wants to write a novel on all this folklore has to quit at some point, or lump together as many of these characters as possible, lest the cast be overwhelmed with too many, too similar monsters.

In any case, the website SaltzburgerLand explains:

A Percht is not a Krampus, even if similarities certainly exist. Confusing the two is hardly possible, even though the Krampus is on the go only up to 6th December, with the Percht being around only after Christmas. The name is derived from the mythological figure “Perchta”. Both beautiful and ugly Perchten travel around in the harsh nights between Christmas and the Epiphany with the slogan: “To peace, to rhyme and to health”. They should exorcise the dark and cold winter with loud bells and chase away any evil spirits.

The same website helpfully explains the traditional equipment of someone dressed as Krampus:

Tradition dictates the Krampus’ equipment: a fur suit usually made from goat or sheep skin. Large, heavy rumble bells carried on a wide leather belt around the middle of the body. A rod of thin Birch branches or a cow’s tail. And of course the elaborately carved mask. Each Pass has nowadays their own style and sometimes the masks are modern and zombie-like, or, as with the Rauriser Devils, strictly traditional. In the Rauriser Traditional Pass the masks are carved by the members themselves and painted with red, white and black colours. They must meet certain criteria, such as the red fabric tongue and specific arrangement of the horns from a goat or a ram.

The origins of Krampus, like all these characters, are obscure. But they all serve a similar role: They are bogeymen, creatures that threaten children with punishments. The great folklorist Jacob Grimm also saw all these characters as related to household goblins such as kobolds and brownies.

One of the reasons I want to write a novel of Krampus even though Krampus stories have been done (perhaps done to death) a lot lately is because, so it seems to me, nobody who gives these characters a modern take wants to treat them with any respect. Brom in his admittedly entertaining novel Krampus the Yule Lord depicts Krampus and Santa as the last remnants of an ancient rivalry between Norse gods, and the comic book Krampus features a Hellboy-like Krampus unwillingly serving an entire organization of Santa Claus-like characters.

Krampus Comic Book Cover

For whatever reason, nobody seems to want to write a story in which Santa Claus is actually St. Nicholas, the St. Nicholas, with all that might imply, or depict Krampus as his servant, reluctant or not, rather than his enemy. Nobody except me, that is.

The reason for this, in Brom’s case at least, probably arises from a decidedly modern hostility toward Christianity, so moderns pit Krampus against St. Nicholas as a supposedly freer, naughtier, less stuffy alternative.

The only problem with that is that Krampus is a decidedly Christian character: The reward/punishment dynamic of the saint and his sidekick developed in a Christian context. In fact, one thing Krampus does, often not mentioned in today’s essays on the subject, is demand that children pray. If they say their prayers, they can escape his wrath. Some of the Krampuskarten, those grotesque but whimsical postcards from the nineteenth century, depict Krampus demanding prayers from children.

Krampus may have some pre-Christian origin (the claims across the internet that he’s the son of Norse goddess Hel have no backing that I know of), but that origin is lost, and even if we could see such a hypothetical pre-Christian Krampus, he would have changed so much that we wouldn’t recognize him.

Crazy Christmas Characters: Hans Trapp

Now that I have Rag & Muffin out of the house, I am turning to research for my next book, Son of Hel. For that reason, the blog is, appropriately, turning Christmasy as I present some of the fruits of my research.

My thoughts from the beginning were that I would combine together as many folkloric characters as I could, both to keep the cast from getting unwieldy and because I work on the assumption that if folklore were real, many disparate but similar legends would probably have the same origins. However, when it comes to weird Christmas characters, so many of them are so bizarre that they deserve to stand as individuals.

One such is Hans Trapp, a character from the  French-German border, which is a breeding ground for crazy Christmas legends. I’ve only begun to think of what use I’ll put him to in Son of Hel, but he definitely has to go in there.

The story is that Hans Trapp was an evil sorcerer who practiced witchcraft and served the devil. Excommunicated by the pope, he either went mad or gave his evil full reign: Disguising himself as a scarecrow, he murdered a young boy by skewering him on a stake and took him home to devour him, but died from a lightning bolt before he got his first taste of human flesh. Now, he roams the countryside at Christmastime in search of naughty children to devour.

Like most of the “companions of Saint Nicholas,” as they’re sometimes known, this a variation on the bogeyman, a character to frighten children into being good. A few essayists identify Trapp with Le Pére Fouettard, “Father Whipper,” another French Christmastime bogeyman I’ll discuss in a later post. Although their supposed origin stories are different, Trapp and Pére Fouettard certainly share a penchant for cannibalism.

Interestingly, Hans Trapp appears to be based loosely on a real individual. The real man is Hans von Trotha, who, at least according to Wikipedia, was a nobleman of the fifteenth century who got into a land dispute with an abbot. The act that turned him into a folkloric villain was probably his decision to dam a river above Weissenburg, cutting off the water supply. After the abbot complained, he tore down the dam—and flooded the town.

Regardless of who was in the right in the initial land dispute, he does sound like kind of a jerk. Pope Alexander VI summoned him to Rome; he refused to go, accused the pope of certain crimes, and got an excommunication for it. He died a natural death, after which the excommunication was posthumously lifted.

He is supposed to have stood two meters in height, which might explain why he became depicted, at least sometimes, as a scarecrow. In other depictions, he is similar to other of St. Nicholas’s companions, with ragged clothes and a full beard—that is, basically a dark version of the saint.

Trapp’s exact role in Son of Hel is yet to be determined, but a war between good and evil elves forms part of the background, so I might have Trapp in an alliance with the villains, making him a sort of counterpart to Krampus and the other misfit heroes.

Book Review: ‘Krampus: The Yule Lord’

If you hate Christmas, then I have a book for you.

Krampus: The Yule Lord, written and illustrated by Brom. HarperCollins, 2011. 368 pages. ISBN: 0062095668.

Krampus: The Yule Lord, a Santa Claus novel for people who hate Santa Claus, is undeniably entertaining, but someone would have to be a serious Scrooge to embrace it unreservedly.

This is, so I understand, the second novel by Brom, an illustrator and game designer who made his debut as a novelist with The Child Thief, a subversion of Peter Pan. He followed that up by taking on the jolly saint of Christmas, reimagining him as a brawny, sword-wielding Norse god locked in a mortal duel with a devil-like Krampus in a continuation of the ancient rivalry between Loki and everyone else in the Norse pantheon.

Since Brom’s first talent is drawing, the book is lavishly illustrated. Both the cover and the illustrations throughout are by the author.

A nude, dancing fairy from Krampus: The Yule Lord
I can hear feminists screaming, “Where are her organs?!?”

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‘Son of Hel’ Sneak Peek

I have a lot of work to do to produce Son of Hel, my next project. Although the story is going to be an action-focused tale of Krampus, the Christmas demon, I want to do it justice in spite of the inherent silliness. My goal is to create a fully realized culture for the North Pole where Santa Claus lives, and to integrate as much existing folklore as I am able.

To that end, I am currently sitting here with stacks of books on folklore and making notes about various kinds of fairies from different cultures in order to integrate them into the society of elves at the North Pole. I’ve also been discovering the various companions of St. Nicholas, figuring out which ones I can combine into a single figure and which ones I must make separate characters.

Although they are of rather recent origin, I am also determined that Santa’s eight-plus-one reindeer will figure in the story. The following is a draft of how they appear thus far. I originally intended this scene to be a raucous party, though the result (at least at present) is surprisingly subdued. That may change in later drafts.

In a few hours it would be the fifth of December, the eve of what those at the North Pole had come to call the First Run. Mistakenly but understandably believing Nicholas to be dead, the universal Church had long ago chosen December sixth as his saint’s day, so that was the first day he delivered toys to children. Compared to Christmas Eve, St. Nicholas Day was a small, brief run with few deliveries, requiring no more than a few hours. But it helped Nicholas and the elves ensure that the sleigh and its accoutrements were in working order and ready for the Big Run, when he delivered toys to children all over the world. The First Run had a high margin of error; it was a good time for troubleshooting.

But the fifth of December, the day before, was not St. Nicholas’s day. It was a dark day, a day of fear, and it belonged to someone else, someone decidedly less jolly—and considerably less generous.

As evening came on, in anticipation of the First Run that would begin in twelve hours, Alpha Squadron congregated in the stables. This squadron consisted of the eight reindeer who had achieved the highest marks on the annual flight test, and for almost a century, the same eight reindeer had held this honor.

In scientific terms, they were Arctic reindeer, also known as Greenland caribou, or Rangifer tarandus eogroenlandicus, and those in the stables of Saint Nicholas were the last of their kind, for their subspecies had been otherwise extinct for almost four decades. It was thanks to the magic of the elves that they had powers of speech and flight as well as unusually long life. The Black Precipice of the uttermost North was a haven for them, just as it had become a haven for the last of the fay folk whom an encroaching modernity had driven from their woods and meadows.

Contrary to popular depictions, they were not tiny. They were huge, muscular brutes with shaggy coats, thick shoulders, and wide, blunt muzzles. Most were bareheaded, for they had shed their antlers the month before once their rut had ended. The only exception was Vixen, the one cow who had scored high enough for Alpha Squadron. Though considerably smaller than the others, Vixen’s tall, sweeping antlers lent her certain air of sober majesty. She would keep her antlers until spring.

In a dim corner of the stable, Comet, formerly the squadron’s captain, brooded atop a mound of hay. Although this was supposed to be a time of revelry, he was silent, and his hard expression had its effect on the rest of the squadron: The others spoke in low voices, giving Comet occasional, uneasy glances. Vixen, somewhat apart from the rest, gazed at him steadily for a minute before she shook her head and sighed.

Continue reading “‘Son of Hel’ Sneak Peek”

Working on ‘Son of Hel’

You’ll have to excuse my long absence. At work, we’re gearing up for the end of summer and the coming school, so I’ve been taking my work home with me at night.

I should probably be working right now, but instead I’m continuing my preparations of the world bible for Son of Hel, my next novel, which will feature Krampus, a reindeer with a radioactive nose, and a war between elves.

This will be, as far as I know, the first “___ Saves Christmas” story that attempts an honest harmonization of extant Santa Clause legends without also attempting to distance the legendary figure from the historical saint.

The cast of the story keeps growing as I discover more Christmas legendry from around the world. I’m a lumper rather than a splitter when it comes to syncretizing folklore, so I am combining all the various gift-giving bearded figures—Ded Moroz, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas—into the figure of the historical St. Nicholas of Myra, who is, after all, their original inspiration.

Snegurochka

Similarly, I intended to collapse most of Nicholas’s disreputable companions into the figure of Krampus. Some of them, however, don’t want to collapse. In Russia, Ded Moroz (“Grandfather Frost”), a depersonalized St. Nicholas figure, has a companion named Snegurochka, an unusually pleasant companion who is a young maiden originally made out of snow (or created by some winter deities, take your pick). I’ve decided to add her into the story as a sort of counterpoint to the rough and vicious Krampus.

She also gives me an excuse to explain away the “Mrs. Claus” popular in America: Since St. Nicholas is a monk and a bishop, he can’t have a wife, but some who have caught glimpses of Snegurochka riding in his sleigh may understandably have thought he did.

The Butcher

There is a character from French folklore, Père Fouettard, I originally intended to blend with Krampus—but his story is so singular that I think he must be a separate character in his own right: He is a butcher who slaughtered three young children, cut them up, salted them, and hid them in barrels. St. Nicholas discovered the dastardly deed, resurrected the children, and punished the butcher by … making him follow him around.

Weird punishment, I know.

I rather like the idea of a murderous, ax-wielding butcher tagging after Krampus, Snegurochka, and the nameless radioactive reindeer on their mission to kill bad elves and rescue Santa Claus. None of the other characters in this motley troupe are out-and-out murderers, but this guy is. He probably even shocks Krampus with his bloodthirstiness.

Black Pete

I’m also not sure at the moment about what to do with Black Pete, the companion of St. Nicholas from Scandinavia. I’m not at all concerned about the recent ruckus over his supposedly being racist (from what I’ve gathered, he’s “black” because he’s Spanish, having originated in the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, and is therefore not “black” at all in the current sense of the word). It’s just that I’m honestly not sure what role he’s going to play. I like him, though, because I can set him up as a genuine friend of Nicholas. Krampus and the butcher dude are too creepy and weird, and I expect that Nicholas is somewhat embarrassed by them. Snegurochka he probably treats like a daughter. But Pete can be an equal who works alongside him, advises him, and seriously helps him.

I’m intrigued by the Spanish occupation and may use that, but I’m also contemplating giving Black Pete an earlier origin in Al-Andalus and making him a Muslim. Still haven’t decided.

Oberon

I’m still working out the role of Oberon. The backstory on the elves is inspired by the Matter of France; according to the Legends of Charlemagne—drawing on, presumably, Orlando Furioso—the king of the fairies had converted to Christianity. If we conflate this unnamed king character with Shakespeare’s Oberon and also with the elves of Santa Claus, then we can reach the conclusion that Oberon, King of the Fairies, is a Christian elf in charge of Santa’s workshop. It’s likely Nicholas who converted Oberon in the first place; that would explain the elf-king’s Christianity in the legendary source.

Nisse

But there are also the nisse of Scandinavian mythology, diminutive creatures who resemble garden gnomes with their wooly beards and pointy hats. These nisse are similar to brownies in that they protect homes and do housework and are rewarded with butter-laced porridge. They over time became associated with Christmas and are apparently the inspiration for the tiny Christmas elves associated with Santa Claus in the United States.

These creatures would give me a good excuse to incorporate some Scandinavian culture into the elvish society at the North Pole, something I am eager to do, being inspired by the use of a Laplander language as “Elvish” in the movie The Christmas Chronicles, which starred Kurt Russell as probably the most convincing screen Santa I’ve ever seen.

I could claim that the nisse, as fairy creatures, are rightly under Oberon’s rule, and that most of them therefore converted to Christianity and joined Nicholas’s band—so they may make up the greater population of fay folk at the North Pole. This would explain the predominance of small, bearded figures among Santa’s elves.

The Mounts

St. Nicholas is associated with various steeds. In Flanders, he rides a horse that can glide over rooftops. He is also associated with a creature called the Yule Goat, a prank-prone Scandinavian creature that demands gifts. I am still determining what to do with these critters.

Regardless of what I decide for the goat and the horse, I will necessarily give St. Nicholas his reindeer, though they will be full-sized and not tiny, and they will be true reindeer—not white-tailed deer posing as reindeer, as they often are in American depictions. The association between St. Nicholas and reindeer goes back a ways, but it was of course the famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” that permanently associated the saint with eight reindeer and also gave them names.

Having a certain weakness for talking animal characters, I intend to incorporate these eight reindeer and give them personalities related in some way to their names. There will also be an unnamed ninth reindeer with a radioactive nose who is obliged to wear a lead mask, and who is totally an original character and in no way inspired by any other ninth reindeer who is presently under copyright.

The Black Precipice

Although not really directly related to the bewilderingly complex myths surrounding St. Nicholas, I am fascinated by old-time speculations about what was at the North Pole. One theory, found sometimes in speculative fiction from previous eras, is that the north and south poles have giant mountains made of lodestone, which kind of makes sense when you need to explain how compasses work and don’t know about the more complex physics involved.

Also supposedly at the poles are the Symmes Holes, named for John Cleves Symmes Jr., who passionately believed that the Earth was hollow and that holes at the north and south poles led into the interior, and whose vigorous promulgation of that belief made it popular for about a century.

There were in the past some legitimate reasons to think the Earth was hollow, reasons subsequently swept away by further scientific advances. Specifically, Edmund Halley, for whom Halley’s Comet is named, proposed four concentric spheres to the Earth, and he didn’t do this because he was a crackpot, but because he needed a model to explain some aberrations he had discovered in the Earth’s magnetic field—that is, he made a legitimate, albeit erroneous, scientific hypothesis.

Nonetheless, I’m unaware of any good reasons to think the poles have huge holes in them. Symmes apparently proposed this idea spontaneously, albeit passionately.

for reasons unclear, this fantastical and apparently baseless theory remains popular among internet conspiracy theorists today:

I have a great love for this kind of thing, so in my envisioning of Santa Claus’s military-industrial complex at the North Pole, a compound he built over centuries with the help of his elves, I feel a need to incorporate both the Black Precipice and the Symmes Hole. The mountain of lodestone, you see, is jutting out of the middle of the hole, and it is upon this mountain that Nicholas has built his elvish city.

This is inadvertently advantageous to the elves,because, although their baptism makes them immune to church bells and other Christian accouterments,  they still cannot bear the touch of cold iron—yet iron cannot be brought near the Black Precipice.

Makes sense, right?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Copyright

I’m working today on Son of Hel, my holly-jolly Christmas novel that will attempt to harmonize the disparate accretions surrounding Saint Nicholas. Unsurprisingly, these legends can be a bit of a maze to navigate, partly because many of them, at least here in America, are the product of corporate marketing—and that means copyright issues.

As he likely was for many children, Rudolph the Red-Nosed was my favorite reindeer when I was a kid, so I wanted him to feature prominently in Son of Hel—until it occurred to me that he was very likely under copyright.

Creative Law Center has a fine article on exactly that subject. Rudolph was created by Robert L. May, who invented the character for a children’s book he wrote for Montgomery Ward. The company later granted him the copyright, which would have run out by now, but has been renewed and does not run out again until the 2030s, as permissions are now managed by the company Character Arts.

Even though the story is copyrighted, curiously, a reproduction of May’s original manuscript is available online. The original story of Rudolph is written in a doggerel imitation of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” the poem that originates most of our modern notions about Santa. Rudolph’s story in the book is more-or-less the same as that in the still-more-famous song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which was written by May’s brother and picked up by Gene Autry.

The story of Montgomery Ward’s magnanimous granting of the copyright to the character’s creator, and his use of it to provide for his family for generations, is very Christmas-y, so I can hardly begrudge it, but it does put me in a bind. I won’t give up as easily as that; in the near future, I’ll figure out the best way to contact Character Arts. If I can’t get permission, or if the cost is prohibitive, I’ll either have to leave Rudolph out or refer to him so obliquely that I escape copyright infringement.

Public notice: Christmas is twelve days, not one.

This is your final warning: The festivities will continue or the beatings will resume.