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[furtheradvofsanta]

A spooky tale for Christmas, in the spirit of William Shakespeare and MR James

[furtheradvofsanta]

Just who are the seven swans a-swimming? The answer might surprise you. In this year’s letter from Santa, old Saint Nick must join forces with Sir Helias, Knight of the Swan, to climb Firetongs Mountain and save a certain Fairy from a fiery doom. Plus: the secret history of the North Pole!

[furtheradvofsanta]

Santa Letter 2020

Every year, Santa Claus writes a letter to my nephew, and somehow every year I manage to find a copy. If you’ve been wondering what Santa and crew have been up to in quarantine, well, here you go. Bonus: Jack Frost and Frosty the Snowman go hunting for a yeti.

Santa’s Workshop

Beyond the Riphean Mountains

Beyond the North Wind

True North Pole

December 21, 2020

My dearest [name],

What a strange year this has been. I hope you and your family are doing well, or as well as possible at least. I don’t know how much you remember your five Christmases before this one, but they weren’t much like this sixth one, and I hope the seventh and beyond won’t be much like this one either! At least this year I am definitely writing to you from home and not the Moon, where the mail takes so long to travel from (and where I guess they print in blue ink!), but I’ve been at home so long now, I honestly wouldn’t mind a quick little hop to the Moon, or anywhere, if I were allowed.

But before I tell you about what things have been like here at the North Pole as we have all been stuck at home, let me tell you about what happened at the beginning of the year, which I think will amuse you. You see, our good friend Jack Frost came to visit us after we had finished our rounds for Christmas. Along with him came his brother, whose name I have not mentioned before, because his name is in Russian, and is something of a big name for little eyes: МОРОЗКО. Some of those letters may not even look like letters to you, but I promise you, in Russian, they are. It means something like “Little Frost,” and he got the name from his grandfather, Grandfather Frost, so I suppose I will call him “Frostie,” which some have been known to call him.

When Jack and Frostie arrived at the workshop after the Christmas rush, it was obvious that Frostie was upset. Angry, even. This is fairly unusual for him, as he is usually the cooler head that prevails over Jack’s flights of fancy. Another thing you need to know about Frostie is that, well, he doesn’t have a body. Because of an accident that happened many years ago, he’s more like a ghost who lives in a hat. But whenever that hat is placed on something--a mannequin or doll, for instance--that thing comes alive with Frostie’s spirit. Because of his family’s power over the winter frost, the most common thing he uses for a body is a snowman. In fact, he’s pretty famous for his adventures that way.

One of his best-known adventures happened many years ago in the small town of Armonk, New York, where he played with the children there and raised Christmas spirits considerably. You might have heard about it. The people of that town celebrate this adventure every year with a parade in which Frostie is the guest of honor. Despite generally being a pretty modest young man, Frostie does love this parade and he attends every year. In most ways, 2019 was no different. But then something chanced to catch his eye.

As the parade was processing down Main Street toward the village square, Frostie happened to look over at a local storefront that was decorated for Christmas. What he saw was a snowy mountain scene populated by dolls fashioned to look like strange figures: mostly human-shaped but very large, with long white hair covering most of their bodies and only bits of blue skin peeking out at their faces, hands, and very large feet. You might have heard of the creatures depicted in this scene. In the snowy Himalayas, they call them the Migoi or the Mirka, but most people there and elsewhere call them the yeti. In English, the yeti is often called the Abominable Snowman, and an old friend of mine used to call them bumbles because he couldn’t say “abominable” very well.

America has its own fair share of large, hairy, human-like ape creatures that stalk through their woods. The most famous of these of course is the sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot, who lives in the Northwest states like Washington and Oregon, down into Northern California, but there’s also the Fouke Monster in Arkansas, the Skunk Ape in Florida, the Hillbilly Beast in Kentucky, and several others. The yeti is related to this, but lives way over in Asia, high in the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world.

The yeti looks like a large ape that walks on two legs, almost eight feet tall, with long arms, a powerfully strong body, and a head with a flat nose, all covered in long red or black hair. While they often appear white, this is usually because their naturally dark fur is covered with snow and ice. They are clever hunters and can turn their feet around backwards so that their footprints look like they’re going the opposite direction, just to fool anyone trying to follow them. Their main hunting weapon is a magic rock that they carry under their left arm which always hits and stuns its target--which is usually a yak or a goat, unless a person is really unlucky. They normally live alone, but they talk to each other by making a whistling sound. Plus they smell really bad.

After the parade was over, Frostie decided to see if he could find any more Christmas yetis, so he let his hat take to the wind, and he flew all over the place. The more Frostie looked around, the more decorations he saw of these Abominable Snowmen. He saw ornaments, stuffed animals, dolls, tree toppers, and inflatables in people’s front yards. They were everywhere. And Frostie didn’t like it.

Do you know what the word “abominable” means? It’s not a very nice word. It means something so bad, so mean, so disgusting, that everyone who sees it immediately hates it. Frostie, who was often a snowman himself, didn’t want that to be the word everyone thought of when they thought of snowmen at Christmas. As he himself is a jolly, happy soul (usually), those are the kinds of words he would want to be used to describe snowmen.

(His brother Jack, of course, suggested that the real reason that Frostie was so upset is that he had become used to being the most famous snowman of all, and he didn’t like his spotlight being stolen. This, I think, was Jack teasing his brother, but who knows? There could be some truth to it.)

And so it was that when Jack and Frostie came to visit us after Christmas, Frostie let us know of his plan: he was going to go to the Himalayas, catch a yeti, and tell them to go back up into their mountain caves and leave Christmas to less abominable people! He wasn’t going to go alone, of course. Jack considers himself a big-time adventurer and thought catching one of the scariest monsters in the world would be a real feather in his cap. (Though knowing Jack as I do, I knew he would tell stories of bravely catching an abominable snowman even if he never saw one.) What’s more, the two brothers would be joined by their cousin, the Snow Maiden, whose duties for Grandfather Frost (the grandfather of Jack, Frostie, and the Snow Maiden who lives in a snowy estate in the forests of Russia) she had completed after the New Year, which is when Russian children get presents.

Frostie thought it would be a good family outing for the three cousins to travel together, since the two brothers are normally roaming the world and the Snow Maiden spends most of her time with Grandfather Frost. I think the Snow Maiden was more interested in the travels with her family than any chance of seeing (or smelling) a yeti. And, as I said, Jack was more interested in being able to boast about hunting a great monster than in saving the good name of snowmen everywhere.

But Frostie was still glad to have them along. Each one of them has a good amount of snow and ice magic on their own, but together the three of them should have been unstoppable, even in the face of giant hairy ape-men. As they were preparing for their trip, Jack even started singing a song that he made up (or so he says) about their expedition. I don’t remember all the words, but I do remember him singing this part over and over at the top of his lungs, until the words echoed through the reindeer stalls and frightened all the calves:

“Well, it’s cheer up, my lads!

Keep your hearts ever steady!

For the bonny brave Frost cousins

Go a-hunting for the yeti!”

And before we knew it, they were off. As quick as a wink, Jack and the Snow Maiden had whisked themselves up into invisible snowy winds and carried Frostie’s hat off with them. Fortunately, the same Christmas magic that lets me know when children are in danger or when they’re up to coal-worthy antics would warn me if anything went wrong for them on their trip that required a quick reindeer rescue. Frostie had told me not to worry, as he had once saved a city in Maryland from monsters that were a lot like yetis except much, much bigger. In that case, a local doctor had simply built a very, very large snowman body for Frostie to inhabit, which made scaring off the frost giants much easier. He said that if things got too scary, Jack could easily make him a similar body. I guess it was better than no plan at all, but I hoped they wouldn’t have to count on a giant snowman saving them.

As it turns out, they didn’t have to build a giant snowman. But that’s not to say there wasn’t any danger. In fact, only a few days after the Frost cousins had left for the mountains of Tibet, I had a dream in which I could see what they were up to. After failing to find a snowbeast for some time, the three cousins decided to find a place to rest. What they found was an old abandoned mill where the local people used to grind barley into flour. Since it was obvious no one had been there in a long time, the three built a fire and settled in to sleep.

In the darkest, quietest time of the night, they were all suddenly woken up by the sound of the mill door slamming shut! When they opened their eyes, they saw the giant, shaggy form of an angry yeti standing over them! “This is my hideout!” he growled in an angry voice. “What are you doing here? I’m going to eat you up!”

The three cousins were scared and didn’t know what to do. They had great power among them, but this yeti had caught them off-guard. There was no snow inside the mill for Frostie to use as a body, so the plan that had worked on the frost giants in Maryland wouldn’t work here. Jack decided to turn to his most powerful weapon: tall tales.

“It’s good that you’re here, Mister Yeti,” said Jack. “We’ve been looking all over for you. My brother and sister and I are all powerful frost giants from the land of Giants’ Home and we have taken on these puny human forms to come and see how this world’s snow and ice monsters are doing.” He stood up and walked around the yeti as if he were checking out a suit of clothes that he was considering buying. “You seem to be doing a very good job, very frightening. The stink is good, it reminds me of home. Your sweaty armpit rock is very intimidating as well. I’ll let the king of the giants know that he doesn’t have to worry about the ape-men of the Himalayas.”

Unfortunately, the yeti wasn’t buying Jack’s story any more than you might. He grabbed Jack by the back of his collar and lifted him up off the ground to look him straight in the eye. Jack did his best not to grimace when the sour milk smell of the yeti’s steamy breath puffed into his nostrils. “Show me,” said the yeti. “Show me that you are a giant. If you are so strong, you could crush me.” Jack couldn’t answer. “Why do you look so scared?”

So Frostie’s plan to make a big snowman hadn’t worked, and the yeti wasn’t convinced by Jack’s fibs. Fortunately there was still a third Frost cousin. The Snow Maiden cried out, just as the yeti was about to bop Jack one right on the head, “Wait! Mister Yeti, I know we have come into your hiding place and now you are going to eat us up. That is only fair. But I have one request. Where we come from, it is a custom before dying to cover our legs with oil before dying. That way we can run swiftly to Heaven. Will you allow us to do this?”

The yeti thought it over and decided he didn’t really care if his dinner tasted like oil or not, especially since he planned to gobble them up so fast that he wouldn’t even be able to taste anything. And so he agreed to let the cousins brush their legs with oil before he ate them up. But what he didn’t know was that the brush the Snow Maiden held up wasn’t a brush for rubbing oil on things: it was Jack’s magic paintbrush that he uses to paint frost crystals on windows and sparkling white icicles on tree branches.

The Snow Maiden ran the brush up and down her leg and said, “This is so wonderful. My legs feel like I could run anywhere, as fast as the wind. I could catch up to a yak without trying. I could leap from mountaintop to mountaintop.”

The yeti, who would have liked to be able to catch a yak without trying, grabbed the brush from the Snow Maiden’s hands. “Let me try that!” he growled. Soon he was rubbing the brush up and down his hideous hairy legs, just as he had seen the Snow Maiden do, all the way down to his furry, backwards feet. With each swipe of the brush, however, the yeti’s legs became more and more covered in ice thanks to the magic of the paintbrush. Before he even noticed what was happening, his legs were so frozen that he couldn’t move. Jack couldn’t believe the Snow Maiden, normally so polite, had pulled off a better trick than even he could think of, and with his own brush no less.

With the yeti frozen to the ground, the Frost cousins took their chance to escape. Jack, with one last flick of his brush, froze the yeti’s mouth closed so that he wouldn’t be able to whistle a warning to the others out there hiding among the mountain caves. The three Frosts disappeared into a flurry of snow, and that was the end of my dream. I did not dream about them again for a long time, so I figured that meant they were safe.

Meanwhile, it turns out that it was everywhere else that wasn’t safe! Suddenly, everywhere all over the world people were getting sick, and the only way to stay healthy was to stay inside or wear a mask if you had to go out. That was true everywhere, even here at the North Pole. You may have heard on TV that I can’t catch this sickness, which is true--I wouldn’t be able to deliver presents this year otherwise--but that’s not true for everyone who lives up here at the North Pole. And so we had to make sure everyone was safe.

My main apprentice, Pete, was very helpful in making sure that his brothers all washed their hands several times a day while singing the song “Saint Nicholas, Little Rascal” (a very popular song in the Netherlands) twice to make sure they were all the way clean. The animals couldn’t get sick, so Rupert didn’t have much to do besides his normal job, though he did make sure the werewolf in our stables always kept a mask over his snout. The elves in the workshop made special breathing devices that filtered out any sickness from the air. I told them they didn’t have to work and that I would make all the toys this year, but they said that toymakers are essential workers, and I couldn’t disagree. We can’t disappoint the children. This year has been bad enough.

The Krampus assured me that the beasts huddled up in our outbuilding of furry friends were enough like animals that they wouldn’t get sick any more than the reindeer would. That was good, because I couldn’t imagine trying to convince that big pile of monsters that they should stay six feet away from each other.

Once we had made sure that everyone at the workshop was being careful and staying home, it was up to Mrs. Claus to make sure that everyone out in the village in the forest was being safe. Mrs. Claus and her two closest helpers, Holly and Ivy, who are both tree spirits like Mrs. Claus, went out into the thick forest of fir trees that surround the North Pole workshop. First they told all the other tree spirits that it would be best to just stay in their trees this year unless absolutely necessary.

Then they turned to the Mushroom People who make their homes underneath the fir trees, with their little red caps with white spots. They had come to live in our forest after being driven out of their homes by the Penny Bun Mushrooms in the War of the Mushrooms. They found it most comfortable to live under the shade of silver fir trees, and since we have more of those than anywhere else in the world, they live with us. When Mrs. Claus told them about how everyone was getting sick, they said they weren’t worried because their people were blessed with good luck, but that they would still stay inside anyway to help everyone else.

Then Mrs. Claus, Holly, and Ivy checked with the Moss People, the Mossmen and Mosswomen, who live with us to hide away from the wild hunters who try to catch them every year. The Moss People were all fine, tucked away inside their hollow log homes. Next, Mrs. Claus and her helpers checked with the timid Pinecone People, who can normally be found climbing over the rooftops during the Twelve Days of Christmas, and made them promise to stay home and not climb on any rooftops at all.

Holly and Ivy then ranged out deeper into the fir forest in an attempt to find Belsnickel, the woodsman of the North Pole, who keeps to himself at the best of times. They looked and looked and couldn’t find him, so we feel pretty confident that he’s keeping away from other people, which is pretty normal for him anyway. Don’t worry about him being lonely, though, as I’m sure he has no shortage of snowshoe hares, Arctic foxes, puffins, and snow buntings to keep him company.

I myself went to talk to the Valkyries, the warrior women who watch over the northern sky and whose armor twinkles in the distant light of the sun, creating what most people call the Northern Lights. I talked to their leader, whose name is Mist, as she hovered in the night sky above the Earth. Normally, the job of Valkyries is to select the bravest warriors from any battle who might be worthy to join the Hall of Heroes who spend their days training to fight a giant wolf who they know will one day try to eat the world. (Don’t worry, that wolf is chained up with the strongest chains ever built. They were made by the relatives of our workshop elves, so I know they’re of good quality and should last a long time.) Mist told me that because so many people were staying home this year, there were no battles for them to watch over. That meant they could stay home in the skies above the North Pole.

I went next to talk to the Great North Polar Bear, Callisto, and her son, Arcas. As they are bears, I knew they wouldn’t need to worry about a human sickness. I still wanted to check on them and make sure they were okay, because I didn’t want them to be lonely. I also asked them if they would do me the favor of keeping an eye on the entrance to the Star Land. You remember that Callisto and Arcas live up among the stars above the Pole to be a sign to the people so they can always find which way is north. Because they live in the stars, they are neighbors to the Star People of Star Land. I was not particularly worried that the Star Man or the Little Star would wander out of the Star Land and into the human world and get sick, but I knew that some of the little ones, the Star Boys and little angels who romp and play all over that starry land, might not be old enough to understand that they can’t play with or sing for little human girls and boys this year. Callisto promised that she would look out for any stray cherubs dancing down the light beams towards the Earth. I thanked her by promising her we would save her and Arcas an extra big portion of their favorite soda when they visited next.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Claus took one of the horses from the stables and rode out to the Riphean Mountains, which surround the North Pole and help keep unwanted visitors out. She rode to the court of King Lunicursor, the king of the griffins who live in the mountains, protecting their hoards of gold. Griffins, of course, are half eagle and half lion, so they can’t catch a human virus. We weren’t worried about the griffins, but rather about the one-eyed giants who also live in the Riphean Mountains and who are always trying to steal the griffins’ gold. Despite only having one eye and being larger and meaner than a normal human, we were worried that the Arimaspians, as they are called, would not care very much about their health or anyone else’s, and they might run down into human villages and spread sickness everywhere. They are definitely rude enough that they would never wear a mask or stay six feet away from someone, or even wash their hands or cover their mouths when they cough. Very rude.

Lunicursor, you will remember, is quite friendly with Mrs. Claus after the two of them flew to the Moon last year to stop the Mouse King with the legendary sword Crackatook. He was, of course, very happy to see Mrs. Claus, and he agreed to keep a close eye on the Arimaspians this year and try to keep them too busy to make war with their neighbors south of the mountains. Mrs. Claus and Lunicursor also agreed that the griffins’ job of flying across the world and finding homes for unwanted toys was more important than ever this year. This year has been lonely enough for some children. We want to make sure they get all the toys they can.

Beyond the peaks where the griffins guard their gold and the valleys were the Arimaspians pasture their horses lie the banks of the Eridanus River, the only river that leads up through the Riphean Mountains. Along its banks grow long rows of poplar trees that never stop weeping golden, sticky amber. The trees cry because they used to be human, the sisters of a young man who foolishly thought he could control the sun as if he were driving a sleigh. He was wrong, and he steered it too close to the Earth and burned a big part of it up, creating what we know now as the Sahara Desert. In the end, he lost control altogether, and his sisters were so sad after he fell from the sun and back to Earth that they turned into trees that have been crying ever since. 

Swimming in the waters of the Eridanus are huge flocks of swans. Most of them used to be human; in fact, they were the people who lived at the North Pole before we did, when it was still spring all the time, before the cold came. When the people of the North Pole became old, they would dive into the waters of the Eridanus, and its magic turned them into swans. Also among them are many Swan Maidens, who can change between human form and swan form, but who are not originally from the North Pole. They are watched over by their brother, the Swan Knight, who rides a boat pulled by his sisters in their swan forms. I’ll have to tell you more about them another time.

Anyway, Mrs. Claus rode down from the mountains, sneaking through the valleys of the Arimaspians, and to the banks of the river. There she talked to the Swan Maidens and the Swan Knight and made them promise to stay along the banks of the river, or if they had to visit the human world, that they would stay in their swan forms. The Swan Maidens all promised to obey Mrs. Claus, and I hope they were being honest. Many of the Swan Maidens used to be princesses and are not used to doing what other people say, even when it’s for their own good.

Beyond the banks of the Eridanus lies a snowy land that has been cursed to eternal winter where only horrible creatures like the Awgwas live, so there isn’t much good we could do there. The Awgwas are even ruder than the Arimaspians, and besides, they can turn invisible, so it’s not likely we’d find them if we wanted to. Once you get beyond that, you’ll find the Islands of Amber and the Island of Tin and Furthest Thule and other places that are well outside the influence of the North Pole. Hopefully those people will make good decisions for themselves.

And so you can see, from the Pole to the Workshop to the stables to the Krampus shelters to the village to the fir forest to the Northern Lights to the Star Land to the Riphean Mountains to the Riphean valleys to the banks of the Eridanus, we have done our best to keep everyone safe and inside this year. It has been a hard and lonely year, but we have done our best. We tried to focus on our work and making toys and getting ready for Christmas, but sometimes it can be hard to pay attention to work, and that’s okay too.

The good news is this: after many months of staying home and making sure all the creatures of the North Pole were doing the same, I finally had another dream about the Frost cousins. The three of them were standing on an icy peak near Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, hoping from that high point they could spy a yeti. Of course, the wind and snow made it very hard to see anything, let alone a sneaky beast whose fur was crusted white with frost against blankets of snow. And while their attention was focused on what was down the mountain, they weren’t thinking about what was coming behind them!

Yes, it was a yeti! This one was even taller than the one who had tried to gobble them up at the mill. Fortunately they heard his large, backwards feet cracking through the snow behind them. When they whipped their heads around to see what had made the noise, they saw a yeti very different from the one they had encountered before. This one was not crusted over with snow, but rather his long, black fur appeared to be neatly combed. The look on his face was peaceful and welcoming, rather than snarling and hungry. And perhaps most strangely of all, he was wearing clothes! Even though they were ragged from age and use, the Frost cousins could tell that the yeti was wearing monk’s robes. With his magic rock tucked under his left arm, this unusual creature was dragging a large portion of meat behind him with his right arm.

Rather than threatening to eat the Frost cousins up, he asked if they would like to get out of the cold and join him for a meal. The way he asked was so polite, even sassy Jack didn’t bother pointing out that the Frost cousins never got cold. Instead, the polite Snow Maiden agreed that they would follow him. Frostie was nervous about following a yeti to his home, but he knew this was perhaps his best shot at telling an abominable snowman to leave Christmas to the jolly, happy snowmen.

This yeti, it turned out, lived in a small house near the peak of Everest. For many years he had lived there with a monk--a human monk--who was his friend, and who had taught the yeti how to be a monk himself. It turns out that many, many years ago, the monk had been keeping watch over the world one night, silently praying for good things for the people and animals of the world below him. In the winter moonlight, a yeti--this yeti, the one telling the story--tried to sneak up on him to gobble him up, as the yeti at the mill had tried to do to the Frost cousins.

Instead, the monk turned around and showed the yeti his peaceful, smiling face. The monk’s attitude was so loving and calm that the yeti forgot that he had meant to make a meal of him. With gentle words and loving gestures, the monk invited the yeti into his humble home, the very cabin where the yeti and the three cousins now sat. The yeti was a welcome guest here at the home of the monk. He had never felt so happy and accepted in his life, and soon he wondered why he had ever tried to hurt anyone.

The monk treated the yeti as if he were his brother--because, the monk said, all those who walk the Earth are his siblings--and as if he had lived in his home for years. The monk’s words were like seeds that he planted in the yeti’s heart, and those kind and gentle words blossomed into peace and love within the yeti. Soon the yeti would help the monk by getting food and firewood for the two of them, and the monk taught him his way of life. Although the monk had grown old and died many years ago, the yeti lived on, continuing to live in the style of peace and kindness the monk had taught him.

And that is how the Frost cousins had found him. The four joined together in happiness and warmth inside the monk’s cabin, enjoying the warm fire and the meal the yeti prepared for them. It was very good, in my opinion, that the cousins found someone so kind and helpful, because soon after they arrived in the yeti’s small house, the order went out that everyone needed to stay home or else get sick. That was, of course, back in the spring.

So Jack, Frostie, and the Snow Maiden have been living with the yeti monk for most of a year, eating yak for dinner and learning the ways of peace and kindness. My dream didn’t show me everything that has been going on with them for nine months, but I do know that now that he’s met this yeti, Frostie has changed his tune about yetis. He thinks that calling them abominable is very rude, and that while some of them are mean and cruel, others of them are more like adorable snowmen. And so he’s decided that it’s okay if some people decorate for Christmas while using yetis as long as they don’t forget to use regular snowmen, too. I think he’ll probably get his wish.

The extra good news is that a doctor just called me this week to tell me that they were making a medicine to help people fight the sickness that caused so much trouble this year. While they are still working on making enough for everyone to have some, they know how important Christmas is to so many people, so they wanted to make sure we got some at the North Pole so that we can make our rounds. As soon as it gets here, I’m going to fly the sleigh down to the Himalayas to find Jack, Frostie, and the Snow Maiden and take them back to Grandfather Frost in Russia so they can get ready to help him deliver gifts on New Year’s!

I will have to take my fastest reindeer, because we at the North Pole of course have our own work to do, and Christmas is coming soon! I will definitely be coming to see you, because I know you have been good this year, staying at home and wearing a mask when you go out! I wish there were more people who would follow your example, but there are a lot of names on the naughty list this year, I’m afraid, all because they are so angry about masks! Anyway, there’s plenty of coal to go around for people like that.

Have a merry Christmas, and here’s to a better year in 2021! Give my love to your mommy and daddy and all of your family. I will be there to visit soon! 

Your friend,

Santa Claus

[furtheradvofsanta]

A new one for Christmas in July. Trolls and a cat who might not be a cat. Also: why does Santa Claus own a bear

[furtheradvofsanta]

Santa Claus Letter 2019

Every year for Christmas I write a story for my nephew in the form of a letter from Santa. I recognize this is after Christmas, but we’re exchanging presents late this year, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This time I was inspired by how much I hated The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Enjoy!

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Santa’s Workshop

Beyond the Riphean Mountains

Beyond the North Wind

True North Pole

December 20, 2019

My dearest [name],

I am sending you this letter on the occasion of your fifth Christmas, but I worry it may arrive to you late. You see, I’m not sending it from home, despite the return address I have attached at the top. I worry the mail here is not quite as efficient as it is at home, so this letter might arrive well after Christmas, for which I apologize. It’s something of a long story, which I think you will soon come to understand.

Anyway, you won’t believe the year we’ve had here at the workshop. You wouldn’t expect that after our troublesome visit from the gremlins last year that we would have another problem that threatened to keep Christmas from happening on time for a second year in a row, but sometimes things just happen that way. I hope we don’t make a habit of it. This time, at least, nothing surprised us at the workshop that almost blew us all up. Our home was safe this time, but we had to travel far away to make sure everyone else was safe, too.

I believe I told you last year that I take every chance that I can to visit my friend the Man in the Moon, but I don’t think I told you anything about him. I’m sure you’ve seen him; he’s just up there in the sky hanging out most of the time. But I’ll bet you didn’t know he has a name and a wife and a dog, and I’d guess you don’t know how he got up there in the first place. Well, I’ll tell you, and you won’t have to wonder anymore.

His name is Cain, a name that unfortunately bears a rather bad history, and this Cain was a bit of a troublemaker himself when he was still on Earth. Oh yes, he was once a regular Earth person, but that’s been many years ago now. One night--a Christmas Eve, in fact--Cain was out with his dog gathering sticks for the fire when he passed a neighbor’s garden that was full of cabbages. His head should have told him that stealing was wrong, but he couldn’t hear it over the sound of his empty belly telling him that cabbage soup would make a fine Christmas dinner.

He shifted all the sticks he was gathering into a bundle on his back and began loading up his arms with stolen cabbages. He was so excited about having soup for dinner that he didn’t notice that a handsome man in a fine suit was now standing in the garden watching him.

“Would you rob me on Christmas?” the man asked Cain.

“Christmas on Earth or Monday in heaven makes no difference to a man in need of supper,” Cain replied.

The man thought about this for a moment and then asked Cain if he would rather burn in the sun or freeze on the moon. Cain laughed at this, because it seemed an impossible question, but he supposed he would rather freeze on the moon.

“Then may it ever be a Moon-day in heaven for you,” the man said, and he wished Cain to the moon, bundle of sticks and stolen cabbages and all. He’s been there ever since, because Death doesn’t know to look for him there. He’s not the first Man in the Moon--before him there was a man sent to the Moon by Moses as punishment for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and then there was the shepherd Endymion who was beloved by the Moon--but he’s the only one now.

At least he’s not completely alone up there. He has his dog Phoebe to keep him company as he shines down on Earth and eats cabbages. There’s also a large rabbit constantly pounding rice into rice cakes, and a number of other strange things I notice every time I go to visit. They say the astronauts who have landed on the Moon have never seen these things, but explorers who have gone to the North Pole have never found my workshop either, so perhaps they just don’t know how to look properly.

You might be surprised to learn that the Man in the Moon is married. It’s true! He has a wife, but he only sees her once a year, at--you can probably guess--Christmas. The rest of the time she lives in a cave near the border of France and Germany, where she is greatly beloved and known affectionately by the people as Auntie Harry. Every Christmas, the great goose-footed fairy Auntie Harry leaves her cave and takes her donkey Marion to visit the good children of her region and leave them toys, candy, and treats (especially if they have left a snack of hay or turnips for Marion). When she has finished her task, she and Marion fly up to the Moon, where she and her husband Cain renew their wedding vows every year.

They say that if you know when to look, you can catch the Man in the Moon turning around once a year, on Christmas Eve, and that is true! He is turning around to see his wife, Auntie Harry, flying up to see him. He misses her so much during the year.

At any rate, it was Auntie Harry who tipped us off to all the trouble this year, and I am thankful for it! I don’t know what we would have done if she hadn’t been looking longingly up at the Moon from the mouth of her cave in France and noticed something was wrong. Something that looked like a long, bumpy, squirming tentacle, she said, appeared as if it was stretching its way up from the Earth to the Moon. We took a look with our most powerful telescopes and, sure enough, there was something like a tall, wiggling tower growing up out of what appeared to be eastern Germany.

I decided I needed to take a closer look, so I had Rupert, our farmhand, prepare the sleigh with my fastest reindeer so I could go see what this strange and alarming mass was. I knew, however, that I would have to be careful, as this part of Germany was under the protection of the small blonde angel whom they call the Christ Child (not to be confused with the actual baby Jesus). While the Christ Child is a loving gift-bringer and protector of children to much of Europe, she does not care for me very much, and she doesn’t appreciate it when she feels that I’m intruding on her territory, which she is very protective of. So I knew I would need to stay high in the sky to avoid being seen by her, lest she send against me her frightening companion, the walking scarecrow, Hans Trapp. Fortunately (in a way), the mysterious tower had grown far above the ground and up into the sky, so I didn’t have to get too close to the actual city.

You will never guess what I found, not if you had a million guesses. Was it a giant finger? No. Was it an enormous carrot, stretching out for the Moon Rabbit to nibble on? Oh, if only. Was it one billion marshmallows, hoping to escape into space? No. You will never guess. This miles-high tower that was now, I would have to guess, nearly halfway to the Moon was in fact a giant pile of squeaking, squirming, black-eyed, long-tailed little mice, all stacked on top of each other as if trying to turn themselves into a stairway to heaven.

What could be the cause of this? What could be the reason for it? I had no way of knowing, so I pulled the reins of the reindeer and told them to fly up so that perhaps I could see what was at the top. I have never seen so many mice in one place, and I could hardly guess where they had come from. If you have not seen any mice this year, it is probably because they left their home in [state] to join this tower of mice above Germany. How did they all get there? I can only imagine the number of mice sneaking across the ocean in boats and planes, following some irresistible order that only mice could hear. I shudder to think of it, frankly.

When I arrived at the top, I saw something that should not have surprised me. Which is a thing that should surprise you, because the thing I am about to describe is in fact quite surprising, so the fact that I shouldn’t have been surprised tells you the amount of surprising things I see on any given day.

What I saw was a mouse much larger than all the others, who stood on his hind legs and wore a long, purple military coat with a sabre strapped to his side, and a broad, fur-lined cloak over the top. At the top of his body rose seven heads, hissing and squeaking orders at the mice below him, and each gray head had a shining golden crown on top. This was, perhaps needless to say, the Mouse King.

You might have heard of the Mouse King, as his misdeeds are fairly well known, especially the uproar he caused at the Stahlbaum household so many years ago, but you may not know how such a scoundrel came to be. His mother was, of course, the Mouse Queen, and he inherited more than just the Kingdom of Mice from her. Her name was Madame Mouserinks, and in addition to being a queen, she was also a powerful sorceress, and a troublemaker of some renown, to boot.

You see, many years ago in a kingdom far away, a queen (a human queen) was making her husband the king’s favorite dinner of sausages, when Mouserinks tricked the queen into letting her eat all of the lard the queen needed to make the sausages. This made the sausages too dry, which made the king very angry, and so he swore revenge on the Mouse Queen. He summoned the court inventor, a rather ingenious clockmaker named Drosselmeier, to make the cleverest possible mouse traps to capture Mouserinks and her seven sons.

The traps managed to capture the seven Mouse Princes, but the Mouse Queen escaped unscathed, and she swore her own revenge against the king and queen for the loss of her sons. As it happens, the king and queen had just had a child of their own, a beautiful princess named Pirlipat. Knowing that Mouserinks would like come after her child due to the capture of her own, the queen assigned seven nurses to sit in Pirlipat’s room and hold seven cats--the famous tomcat Herr Schnurr, as he was known, and his family--in their laps, constantly petting them to make sure they were ever awake and alert to look out for Mouserinks and her sons.

But, as happens to people when given a boring job, or as happens to cats whenever they feel like, all seven nurses and all seven cats fell into a deep sleep. And so it was that they missed the moment that Madame Mouserinks used her magic to transform the beautiful princess into a very strange creature indeed. Where once Pirlipat had had the face of an angel, now she had a huge head attached to her tiny body, with large staring eyes, a large toothy grin, and a shock of white hair.

The king was outraged and set the task of curing his daughter on the poor court inventor, Drosselmeier, threatening to cut off his head if he could not solve this problem in a mere thirty days. Even a clever man like Drosselmeier was worried he wouldn’t be able to solve such a riddle in such a short time. And so he went to visit his friend the court astronomers to see if there was any help to be gained by observing the stars.

From this visit, Drosselmeier was able to determine that the princess could only be cured by eating the meat of the great nut Crackatook, the hardest, most delicious nut in the world. How would one go about cracking the hardest nut in the world, you might ask, and that would be a fine question. It turns out the only way was for a young man who had never yet shaved nor worn boots to crack open the shell with his teeth and hand the princess the nut with his eyes closed before taking seven steps backwards without stumbling.

This, as you might imagine, was a difficult mission even for Drosselmeier’s genius. Well, to make an already long story somewhat shorter, Drosselmeier traveled the four corners of the Earth--plus a previously undiscovered fifth corner that he called “zorth”--only to discover both the nut and the young man were to be found in his hometown of Nuremberg in Germany.

He found the great nut Crackatook in the shop of his brother Christoph, the greatest dollmaker in all of Nuremberg (which is no small feat, as Nuremberg has long been famous for its toymakers. Some are even almost as good as I am. I would say the Drosselmeier brothers are the closest anyone has ever come to the quality of my workshop, so I am glad they are my friends and not my rivals!). Also in that shop, he found his nephew, the seventeen-year-old Nathaniel Drosselmeier, who had never shaved and never worn boots. What’s more, the young Drosselmeier was so good at cracking nuts that the impressed young ladies of Nuremberg had taken to calling him Nathaniel Nussknacker, a name that means “nut-cracker.”

With quite a bit of to-do that we can skip over for now, Nathaniel Nussknacker was presented with the chance to crack the great nut Crackatook and rescue Princess Pirlipat and earn a great reward for his uncle and marriage of the princess for himself. He managed to crack the uncrackable nut in his teeth, handed the meat to the princess with his eyes closed, and began his seven steps backwards. As he did so, the princess ate the nut and was returned to her normal, beautiful self: lily white skin, eyes of azure blue, and golden curls in her hair! The king rejoiced, trumpets blared, drums rang ou! But at his seventh step, young Nathaniel Nussknacker stepped on and crushed Madame Mouserinks, who had just come crawling out of a hole in the floor! The boy stumbled, and in an instant, he had transformed just as the princess had: a huge ugly head with great white teeth, huge round eyes, and hair and beard of cottony white. If you have ever seen a nutcracker, you can picture how the young Nussknacker was changed.

No need to worry, though, as young Nathaniel did eventually find the true love that returned him to normal through defeating Madame Mouserinks’s seven sons who had been reborn as the seven-headed Mouse King and saving the Stahlbaum household. When young Marie Stahlbaum promised to love him despite his looks, she broke the curse on him, and the two traveled together to the Kingdom of the Dolls, where they were married and live as king and queen to this day.

And so you can see why I was so concerned to see that the Mouse King had returned and was planning to make trouble for the Man in the Moon. I suspected that the Mouse King had heard that the moon was made of green cheese (perhaps you have heard this, too) and thought that he and all the mice on Earth could climb to the moon and eat cheese to their hearts’ content without worry of cats or mousetraps or shrieking people swatting them with brooms.

I was also concerned because the presence of the Mouse King meant that the base of this column of mice was certainly in Nuremberg. Nuremberg is perhaps the city where the Christ Child is best known and at her greatest strength. There was no way I could go there, either to inspect the base of the mice column or--more importantly--to go talk to my friend Drosselmeier and his nephew Nathaniel Nussknacker to see if they could help me defeat the Mouse King, as they had done before.

Likewise, most of my toughest companions would likewise be recognized and unwelcome in Nuremberg: the Krampus, Belsnickel, and the Klaubauf would all be detected immediately. Rupert and Father Whipper would likely be more welcome, as the two of them sometimes help the Christ Child, but both worried about possibly coming into conflict with the terrifying Hans Trapp: Rupert is too kind-hearted to fight, and Father Whipper is too cowardly. And while Pete is my most trusted apprentice, this job was too dangerous for him and his brothers, no matter how much they might beg me to go to the moon.

As there was no way I could go on my own--in any of my many disguises--there was only one choice left: my wife, Mrs. Claus, a fearless woman who is definitely sturdy enough to handle the cold of the moon. The only question was how she would get there. My reindeer, horses, and donkeys were just as likely to be recognized as I was, and she needed something that could fly her to the moon, and fast. There was only one real choice: our fierce and loyal ally, Lunicursor, king of the griffins of the Riphean Mountains.

Once he had agreed to help us, Mrs. Claus and the griffin king headed out for Nuremberg. I myself had a number of quick stops to make myself before I could head to the moon. First, I wanted to make sure that Christmas would be taken care of if I somehow found myself trapped on the moon. Stranger things had happened before, and I have found myself captured by less powerful foes than the Mouse King, and time was running short before the big night.

As such, I made the quick trip from the North Pole down to the small nation of Iceland and out to the vast lava fields were Iceland’s many trolls live. There I found the thirteen troll brothers who love to make trouble for the children of Iceland at Christmas time by gobbling up their Christmas treats or slamming doors when they try to sleep, but they also delight the children by filling up their shoes with toys and candy, not just one night, but thirteen nights, one for each brother. They are called the Yule Lads, and they live in the lava fields of Iceland with their mother, a hideous ogress who likes to gobble up naughty children, and her cat, an enormous beast who looks for kids who did not receive new clothes for Christmas. (Next time you get socks for Christmas instead of a toy, be grateful, not sad! It’s better not to have the Yule Cat after you, I promise!)

By the time I got to the lava fields, the first few brothers had already set out for town, where they would bother families by drinking all their milk and scraping all the good leftover bits out of the pan with stubby little fingers. Luckily, the fourth brother--who is known as Spoon Licker because of his tendency to lick all the spoons in a house, hoping that there’s delicious sauce or cake batter left on there--was still to be found. I was able to get him to stop licking a spoon long enough to promise that he and his brothers would make sure presents got delivered to all the children of the world if I didn’t make it back in time. The Yule Lads could be hard to predict, but they weren’t nearly as naughty as they used to be before I taught them that helping children was more fulfilling than teasing them, and with thirteen of them plus help from Pete and Rupert and the elves, I thought surely they could manage to do the job I normally do in one night by myself.

I also had one other favor to ask them that I will tell you about momentarily.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Claus and Lunicursor had made their way as quick as lightning to Nuremberg, where they managed to slip unnoticed to the home of the clockmaker Drosselmeier. They immediately recognized him by his eyepatch, his shabby frock coat, and his shocking wig made of spun glass. He welcomed them warmly and promised to help as much as he could, as he was shocked and concerned to learn about the Mouse King’s return.

Soon Drosselmeier led Mrs. Claus and Lunicursor to a wardrobe with folding doors that was full of traveling cloaks lined with fox fur. Hiding above a large cape fastened to the ceiling of the wardrobe by a piece of lace was a ladder made of cedar wood. Climbing this ladder was the secret entrance to the Kingdom of the Dolls. You may have heard of similar secret doors in other wardrobes; some wardrobes are just that way.

Mrs. Claus and Lunicursor emerged with Drosselmeier in the Field of Sugarcandy, where everything was made of candied orange peel, burnt almonds, and sugared raisins. Soon they passed through the Forest of Christmas and over the River of Orange Juice, past the Village of Sweet Cake, along the River of Rose Essence full of golden dolphins, through the Wood of Preserved Fruits, and finally, to the capital, the City of Candied Fruits.

The capital always carries the scent of roses and has a slight pink glow to it, which comes from a lake filled with silvery pink waves on which swim silver swans with golden collars and jumping fish that shimmer like diamonds. It was on the other side of Rose Lake, past the noisy and bustling capital city, that the three came at last to Marzipan Castle. They found the king and queen--Nathaniel Nussknacker and his wife Marie--inside waiting for them.

Mrs. Claus quickly informed the young king--handsome in his coat marked with a giant golden spider, a sign of his membership in the knightly Order of the Golden Spider, which he had been awarded for saving Princess Pirlipat--that the trouble-making Mouse King had returned and that we at the North Pole required the help of the only man who had defeated him before.

Unfortunately, Nathaniel Nussknacker told Mrs. Claus that he would not be able to help us this time, as he had received word that the infamous giant Sweettooth had awakened and was returning to the capital with the goal of eating up Marzipan Castle. In the past, he had done great damage to the castle, eating the top of one tower and beginning toward the castle’s great dome before the people of the capital promised him the city’s Almond and Honey District in exchange for leaving the castle alone.

Likewise, when Mrs. Claus asked if the king had any word on the whereabouts of the descendants of the cat Herr Schnurr, who had frightened Madame Mouserinks in the past, he told her that he had unfortunately lost touch with that famed cat since taking up the throne in the doll kingdom.

Mrs. Claus was disappointed that King Nathaniel would not be able to join her in battle against the Mouse King, but she understood that he needed to protect his home against the giant. As she was preparing to get on Lunicursor’s back and fly back out of the Kingdom of the Dolls, however, Nathaniel Nussknacker stopped her and offered her the one bit of help he could: the use of the great sword Crackatook, which he carried strapped to his side at all times. The sword was named after the hard nut, as the shell of that great nut had been coated in gold and placed at the sabre’s pommel, where the name Crackatook could be seen carved into the shell in Chinese characters. The magic of the nut passed on to the sword, ensuring that its blade would never break or grow dull. It was also the only sword that had ever defeated the Mouse King before, as it was the same cavalry sabre that had previously belonged to Queen Marie’s brother, Fritz, who had lent it to the Nutcracker for his finally duel against the Mouse King.

Mrs. Claus thanked the king and his uncle for their great help and promised to return the sword in good condition (which is always important when someone lends you something that has great meaning to them). She strapped the sword Crackatook to her side, and she and King Lunicursor sped over Rose Lake, out of the Kingdom of the Dolls, out of the wardrobe, out of Nuremberg, and up to the moon!

All of this was accomplished while I myself was still meeting with Spoon-Licker in the lava fields, so it was of some importance that I make my way to the moon as quickly as possible so that I could aid Mrs. Claus and help protect the Man in the Moon from the Mouse King’s ravenous armies of mice. However, even my fastest reindeer--more rapid than eagles though they may be--are not as fast as King Lunicursor when he races to the moon, and so I knew I would need to take a shortcut. And so I planned to make my way to the moon by way of the stars.

I flew my sleigh at all speeds back up to the North Pole, where I called out to my dear friend, Callisto, the North Polar Bear. She lives most of her life among the stars above the North Pole, where she and her son Arcas help remind people which way is north. After I called out her name, she and her cub--both bigger than houses--lumbered down from their place in the sky. I explained the situation to her, which was not a surprise to her, as she had seen the pile of mice reaching up into the sky herself. She understood the urgency of our situation immediately, and of course offered to carry me and my sleigh up into the Star Land, especially once I promised to reward her and Arcas with large vats of their favorite soda once I had returned.

The Star Land is the home of the Star Man, who is the Christmas gift-bringer in western parts of Poland. He lives up in the mystical Star Land together with the Little Star, who is the star that the Three Kings saw at the first Christmas, and who brings gifts herself to children in southern Poland. Together with them are large numbers of Star Boys, who spend the Twelve Days of Christmas wandering around singing carols and welcoming the Three Kings, and a host of small angels, who also help deliver gifts. Normally, the gate between the Star Land and the Earth only opens on Christmas Eve after a child has seen the first star in the sky, but access between the worlds is easy when you live among the stars like Callisto and Arcas.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to speak with my friend the Star Man, but I spoke with him enough to explain why I was passing through his land so that I wouldn’t appear rude. I promised him I would return soon for a longer visit, during which I would bring some pierogi, herring, and poppy seed noodles for us to share.

With that settled, I quickly re-entered my sleigh and set off for the moon. You might know that there are no stars between the Earth and the Moon, and that is true, but the Star Land is a magical kind of in-between place that people with calculators and telescopes mostly don’t have the ability to see anymore. Fortunately, if you do know the way, the trip from the Star Land to the Moon is quite quick.

When I arrived at the Moon’s surface, the scene was quite a mess! The moon was simply covered with mice, so that it looked like it had a wiggly brown carpet on it. There were some empty patches, however, that were not covered in vermin, and it was in those patches that I could see my friends: the Man in the Moon, Cain, fighting off mice with the thorn branches he usually carries on his back, and his little dog Phoebe barking and snapping at them; the moon rabbits abandoning their rice cakes to smash at mice with their hammers; and of course, Mrs. Claus and Lunicursor fighting valiantly against the mouse hordes with beak, claw, and the unbreakable sword Crackatook!

Though they were doing their best, they were greatly outnumbered, so I knew something needed to be done soon. And so I called out “On, Dasher! On, Dancer!” and, well, you know the rest. And at top speed I circled around the Moon, light side and dark side, until I finally spied the hideous, seven-headed, seven-crowned Mouse King, spurring on his army to swarm the Moon.

I lowered the sleigh to hover near to him and called out to catch his attention.

“Mouse King!” I shouted. “Call off your armies! You can’t eat the Moon, we need it! It doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to everyone! Besides, the Moon hasn’t been made of cheese for hundreds of years!”

“Bah!” called the Mouse King with seven voices at once. “The Moon is mine by right of conquest! If you want it, you should fight harder for it! I know you’re hiding the cheese somewhere!”

I hadn’t really expected that reasoning would work with him, so I knew I would have to use my backup plan.

“Mouse King!” I shouted again. “Nice purple cloak! Is that new?”

I could tell now that the Mouse King was annoyed with me. “No, you fool! This cloak has been in the royal family of the Mouse Kingdom for generations! New clothes are for peasants!”

“That’s what I thought you might say,” I replied, reaching back to open my magic sack. “I have someone who might want to meet you, then.”

Remember I told you I asked Spoon-Licker for one more favor? Besides asking them to cover for me in case I didn’t make it back for Christmas, I also asked if I could borrow their cat. You know, the enormous, shaggy cat that hunts down those who didn’t get new clothes for Christmas?

Well, once I opened the mouth of my sack, the Yule Cat, who had not particularly cared for being cooped up in a magical bag, leaped out as if he had been in a bathtub where the water was too hot. He made straight for the King of the Mice, and the King’s once fearless army soon found themselves scattering like their feet were on fire. The mice scrambled in hordes and jumped back to the Earth, many splashing in the ocean, some crashing onto the land, some going who knows where. It may be generations before all the mice find their way back home.

I’m not sure what happened to the Mouse King in all the chaos. All I could find was a pile of seven crowns and a tattered purple cloak. The Yule Cat can’t speak, but I’m not even sure he would tell. All I know is that he seemed much more contented when he went back into the bag.

Anyway, the Moon is safe again, for now. I will need to return the Yule Cat to Iceland, and Mrs. Claus will need to return the sword Crackatook to the Kingdom of the Dolls, but even with all that, I hope to still have Christmas ready in time and without many mistakes.

I hope this letter finds you well, even if not on time. I hope you have or will have had a merry Christmas! Maybe a happy New Year as well! Hopefully we both have an easy time of it in the coming year. Until then, I remain:

Your friend,

Santa Claus

P.S. I am sending along to you a book with more of the story of Marie and the Nutcracker so you can learn more about how the two of them met. It’s somewhat different from what I told you in this letter—which is not surprising, as there are many different versions of this famous story; sometimes they even call Marie Clara instead, or leave out the story of the hard nut Crackatook altogether—but I promise I told the story to you just as it was told to me by Godfather Drosselmeier. I also sent along small toys of myself and the Christ Child that I hope you will like.

P.P.S. If you have the book The Alphabet of Christmas, you can see pictures of some of the different people from this letter, like the Christ Child (under C), Father Whipper (F), Star Man (G), Krampus (K), Rupert (R), Auntie Harry (T), the Yule Lads (Y), and Pete (Z).

[furtheradvofsanta]

A new story for Christmas 2019!

Did you know that Christmas time is werewolf time? It is! I wrote this whole thing so you would know it.

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Christmas in Julycanthropy

This story is just part of a longer piece I’m working on, but I didn’t want to miss either Christmas in July or great tag that is Julycanthropy, so I thought I would share this standalone bit. Christmas and werewolves used to be inextricably linked to each other in the popular consciousness, but that hasn’t been the case in some time. To help remedy that a hair, here’s a quick bit based on a real folktale from Norway.

In Norway they tell the story of a man named Lasse, who lived in the woods with his wife Hedda in a small cottage. Early one morning he rose to go cut down a tree for firewood, but either in haste or perhaps the mental fog that comes from getting out of bed before the sun rises, he forgot to say his prayers and make the sign of the cross before leaving his home. These days, in big cities where street lights are more common than trees, that isn’t such a big deal. But long ago, in that time, in that forest, leaving home with one’s soul unprotected was a dangerous proposition. For in that forest lived a varga mor--a witch with the ability to turn men into wolves and make them do her bidding. We can’t know for sure what happened to Lasse that day, but we do know he did not return home to his wife that evening.

Not that evening, not that week, and indeed, not for many years. Hedda mourned the loss of her beloved husband for many years, struggling to make it on her own in that dark and dangerous forest, something which, as we have seen, is dangerous enough for one not on their own. Everything changed, however, one special night, and I suspect by now it will not surprise you to learn that the night in question was Christmas Eve. On that morning, Hedda heard a faint but persistent knock at her door. She did her best to suppress hopes that this might be her beloved husband, but on this night of nights, it was hard not to imagine that perhaps the Julenisser had thought kindly of her.

But rather than her husband or a generous gnome, she found instead at her doorstep an old beggar woman, haggard and bent, dressed in tattered furs and with ragged bags the only cover protecting her feet from the snow. Hedda did not hesitate to welcome the woman in. Though she had been alone for many years, she always set out a second plate, hoping, so it was the smallest of matters to present her visitor with the largest meal she had likely had in some time. Further, though Hedda hardly had enough herself, she gave generously of her own things to help dress the woman more warmly and provide her with a pair of proper shoes. 

“The long Christmas Eve is dark and full of horrors,” the beggar woman said as she stood on the threshold, preparing to return to the snowy night against Hedda’s protests and entreaties. “But your heart and hearth are warm.” She smiled faintly to herself. “Your husband is not dead, he merely wanders. You will likely see him again, and if you know him, you will have him.”

Hedda struggled to get more information out of the woman whose unexpected proclamation had left her stunned, but by the time she managed to wipe away the warm tears that had so quickly welled in her eyes, the old woman was nowhere to be seen. Her mind swam with the possibilities of what the woman’s words could mean so overwhelmingly that she hardly noticed the passing of time until the night was falling and she remembered she must put the piece of meat she had prepared for her Christmas dinner in the pantry before the darkness came and she found herself vulnerable to the same forces that had taken her dear Lasse.

The cut of meat was her husband’s favorite, saved each year for Christmas day, a special treat not afforded the rest of the year. Her mind and gaze were thus affixed to the meat as she left the warmth of her cottage to walk toward her pantry, and so she did not at first notice what awaited her on the pantry steps.

It was a wolf, huge of frame but gaunt, with its ribs visible through its bristling gray fur. The wolf had placed its enormous paws on the pantry steps and was raising himself up toward Hedda, exhorting her with the sorrowful looks of a starving dog. It was a look, she realized, she had seen before.

“I would give you a bit of meat, wolf, but this cut is for my husband’s Christmas dinner,” she said, with a knowing look in her eye. “If only you were my Lasse, if you could prove to me that you were he, I would give you your fill.”

At that very instant, the fur coat of the forest beast slid off, like skin from a boiled tomato. There before the faithful wife stood Lasse, exhausted and starving, but wearing the same clothes he had put on that fateful morning so many years ago. And soon from across the forest, the bells of the hamlet rang out for Christmas Day, welcomed in by the woodsman and the woman who didn’t give up on him.

Sometimes love is enough.

[furtheradvofsanta]

Santa Claus Letter 2018

So for years, starting in the 1920s, JRR Tolkien would write letters to his children as Father Christmas, including fanciful drawings and tales of FC and his friend, the North Polar bear, exploding the Northern Light gunpowder or fighting goblins.

Upon the birth of my own nephew a few years ago, I decided I would steal this idea. Even though he is only a few years old, nevertheless I composed a letter for him from Santa Claus. Theoretically, I will continue to do this, making the letters longer and more intricate as he gets older until he decides they’re stupid and that they should stop.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the skill for drawing or fancy lettering that Tolkien did, so I just had to type it up. Maybe future letters can include drawings.

This one is way late and the stores are all full of Valentine’s stuff by now, but I still haven’t seen the neph for Christmas yet, so this got put off a little in favor of other holiday stuff. I hope you will forgive. This year I decided to do a bit of a riff on one of the most famous parts of Tolkien’s Father Christmas letters, I guess because it amused me.

Anyway, I thought I would share it with you here under the cut (even though it does give away some of my Santa Claus secrets!). Feel free to reblog this, or if you want, to use it as a template and alter it for use with a child you know and love, but please do not republish this without my permission. Thankssss.

You can read 2015′s letter here, 2016’s letter here, and 2017′s letter here.

Santa’s Workshop Beyond the Riphean Mountains Beyond the North Wind True North Pole December 22, 2018

My dearest [name],

Four Christmases! It almost sounds like a movie. By now all of the usual Christmas routine must be old hat for you. You know all the steps: hang your stocking, put up a tree, deck the halls, leave out cookies and milk (or oranges!), open presents, roller skate to church at midnight, all of it! (My apprentice Pete, who is an expert in all things Christmas, is reading over my shoulder and he says I am mistaken about that last one, with the rollerskating. He says that is what they do in Venezuela, which is a country in South America, and not something they do in [state]. My mistake! I have so many children to take care of that sometimes it is hard to remember what they like to do at Christmas. Rollerskating sounds fun, though.)

I hope you have had a good year and are excited about Christmas. I will do my best to fill your stocking and your Christmas tree with all the things you want this year, because you have, as always, been very good. If I make a mistake, however, and you get something you don't want, like a jar full of dirty socks or a doll that makes stinky burps in your face, that is because it has been a very strange year this year here at the North Pole.

We don't get many uninvited guests here at the True North Pole. For one thing, it's very hard to find. Many people use the wrong map or compass and end up at places that they call the Magnetic North Pole or the Geographic North Pole. Those places don't even really have a pole! Ridiculous. If you really want to find the True North Pole, with my workshop and the real red and white striped pole, you have to know where to look. All children know in their hearts where the True North Pole is; most adults have forgotten.

To really find your way here, you must pass through the Riphean Mountains, which are also hard to find on most maps. Some people come to the Riphean Mountains because they have heard they are full of gold. This is true; the mountains themselves are full of gold that could be mined, but the caves within are also full of the vast hoards of gold that belong to our friends the griffins. Some of that gold is in the form of coins that come from us at the workshop. Did you know that for much of the year the antlers of our magic reindeer are covered in gold? It's true; it's been that way since the time of their oldest ancestor thousands of years ago. But they shed the gold casing before Christmas and that's why you don't usually see them that way. We take the gold that they shed and turn it into coins, some of which we give to Lunicursor, the king of the griffins, partly as a show of friendship, and partly to repay him for the service he does for us in bringing us broken toys he finds while flying around so that we can repair them and find new homes for them.

Anyway, gold hunters who make their way to the Riphean Mountains will find that it is very dangerous, not only because of the many griffins who make their home there, but also due to the one-eyed monsters who are constantly at war with the griffins for the gold. The sight of either a giant, greedy one-eyed beast or a host of winged, beaked, taloned lions is usually enough to scare off even the most intrepid of treasure hunters, so as I said, we don't receive many unexpected visitors.

That's not to say we never get them, however. Did you know there is a Christmas dragon? Well, there is, but he's probably not what you would expect. He doesn't look much like the grand and scary dragons in storybooks. Instead this dragon, who is called the Badalisc, looks more like a very large and very long furry worm, with striped fur, two little horns like goat horns, glowing red eyes, and a very large chomping mouth. Normally he makes trouble for the people in a valley in northern Italy, but some years ago, he managed to make his way to the workshop. All woods in the world are connected if you know where to walk, so he must have found the right spot in his valley to emerge into the silver fir forest around the workshop. At any rate, he made us a great deal of trouble, chomping away at all our Christmas treats, but fortunately, as I said, my apprentice Pete knows all about Christmas, and so he knew how we could trap him.

The Badalisc, it turns out, can be lured out of hiding by beautiful women and entranced by music. The first duty was performed by Mrs. Claus and some of our braver elf women, who stood at various places around the forest until the Badalisc was found. Then Pete's younger brother Music Pete played a tune on a pipe and drum that hypnotized the great beast. Once the dragon was frozen place, the Krampus and some of the other friendly monsters who live up here were able to wrestle him to the ground and tie him up.

One of the things the Badalisc does at Christmas back in his Italian valley is compose a poem that says mean things about everyone in the village and hurts their feelings. He tried to do that to us, but as it happens, we have our own master poet here named Rhyme Pete (all of Pete's brothers are also named Pete) who himself wrote a poem about how the dragon was hurting other people's feelings and that he needed to be more considerate. The Badalisc felt ashamed after that, but to cheer him up and to show there were no hard feelings, Pete's brother Chef Pete made the Badalisc a big bowl of his favorite food, salami and polenta (which is kind of like fancy grits, and very common in Italy). Afterwards, we had our friend the woodsman Belsnickel take the Badalisc back home.

That was a number of years ago, and things have mostly been fairly peaceful since. Not this year, though. This year we got far more than one unwanted guest. But before I tell you about that, however, I have to tell you about a very special tree.

Picture the biggest tree you've ever seen. Could you see the top of it? Did it stretch far into the sky? Did its branches reach far out over the ground, casting shadows, inviting you to climb? Well, picture a tree much, much bigger. A tree big enough that whole worlds could hang on it like Christmas ornaments. This is the World Tree, and in its branches rest the Nine Worlds. This is not the same as the nine planets, like Jupiter and Mars (Mrs. Claus is reading over my shoulder now and she says that there are only eight planets. My mistake! I don't visit other planets very frequently, though I have been to Mars a few times and I visit my friend the Man in the Moon as often as I can. Maybe if there turn out to be children on Neptune or Saturn, I'll send Pete out there to deliver gifts. I think he'd like that), but rather other realms where different magical creatures live. The Nine Worlds include the Giants' Home, the Light Elves' Home, the Dark Elves' Home (where our workshop elves come from), the World of Mist, the World of Fire, and, of course, Earth, where we live.

The branch of the World Tree that holds up the Earth runs right through the center of the planet like the top and bottom of a globe, and the tip of it pokes out at the very top, the true top, of the world. This is what we have carved and painted into the shape and color of the famous North Pole. The other thing you need to know about the World Tree is that at the base of it is a whole army of little gremlins who spend most of the year trying to cut the World Tree down, hoping to destroy all Nine Worlds.

Normally what happens is that on the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, these gremlins make their way up to Greece and make trouble for all of the twelve days of Christmas. They will climb into people's homes through the chimney and start breaking furniture, or gobbling up Christmas dinner, or spitting in food, and just generally scaring the people inside. Sometimes they will jump on a person's back and make them dance until they get really tired. They are, as you can see, very bothersome pests to have around.

Well, this year, instead of going to Greece, some of these gremlins decided to climb up the World Tree to see what they could find. Coming to the very tip of the branch that holds the Earth, they came out at the North Pole, and very soon we had a problem. They had made their way into the workshop and were breaking toys and decorations and eating all the delicious cookies and candies we were making for good children. Even the Krampus and the other friendly beasts weren't of much use against them. Although our furry friends are quite large, strong, and fearsome, all their strength was no good against these swarms of scurrying imps that they couldn't catch. We were very worried, because if they had made their way down into the elves' toy factory, they could have done damage to the powerful forges we have down there, which are fueled by very potent energy from within the Earth. If the forges had been damaged, they might have exploded, destroying the whole workshop! We would have had to rebuild and we might not have had Christmas until July or August, which I think we can agree is far too late to have Christmas. (You might have heard of Christmas in July, but usually that's in addition to regular Christmas, not instead of it.)

Fortunately, the gremlins never made their way to the forges, because we have Pete, expert in all things Christmas. He knew that the gremlins could be distracted by their love of counting, so the elves offered them all the counting toys they could find or quickly cobble together. Unfortunately, usually the goal of this is to distract the gremlins until the sun comes up and they turn to stone, and at this time of year the sun doesn't come up at all at the North Pole! We needed another solution. People in Greece often drive off the gremlins by putting a special Christmas log in their fireplace and burning it. The gremlins can't stand the smell, so they run away. I don't know much about the special plants of Christmas, but fortunately I don't have to, because that is the specialty of my wonderful and brilliant wife, Mrs. Claus. She knew exactly the kind of wood we would need, and soon every fireplace in the workshop was smoking away with these logs that the gremlins hate, which sent them scrambling.

In Greece, the way they finally make these gremlins go away after the twelve days of Christmas is that the local priest will bless the water in the rivers, ponds, springs, and so on all around. The gremlins cannot stand the blessed water, and so they will flee back to the World Tree. There aren't any rivers or lakes at the North Pole, but there is very very much snow, which as you know is just made of frozen water. I was able to take my old bishop's staff from my time as Saint Nicholas and bless all the snow from here to the Riphean Mountains. This sent all the gremlins scurrying like they had burned their hands on the stove back down the World Tree. Hopefully by the time they get back down to the trunk, the tree will have fully healed itself and they'll have to begin their chopping all over again.

And so, as I said before, if you get something very strange for Christmas, like a doll with three arms and no head, this is likely the handiwork of gremlins, who we just drove out yesterday. We only have a few days to get everything right, so I hope you get everything you want. However, if what you want for Christmas is to have a wonderful family who loves and cares for you very much, I can promise you that you will have that this and every Christmas without fail.

See you soon!

Your dear friend, Santa Claus

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The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 25 part 2: Z is for Zwarte, but just call him Piet

Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter, is both the most beloved and most controversial of all of Saint Nicholas’s companions. He appears with Sinterklaas in the days leading up to the saint’s day, sailing to the Netherlands from Spain via steamboat. Indeed, since World War II, there have been multiple Pieten, spreading cheer and throwing cookies to the crowds.

In his original form, Piet would have been a dark companion along the lines of the Krampus, stuffing naughty kids into a bag and taking them off to Spain (to the heavily Protestant Netherlands, Catholic Spain would have seemed a special kind of Hell). By the 19th century, however, he was codified as Saint Nicholas’s young Moorish servant, who is now much more comic relief than grim enforcer.

Already you might begin to see the source of some controversy, but it is only amplified by the fact that Piet is traditionally portrayed by white people in blackface and curly wigs. There is a lot more to this complicated issue, but it is one I have written about at length before. 

In short, I think the character is redeemable, but needs quite a bit of rehabilitation, not least of which is calling him just Piet (i.e. Pete) and not Zwarte Piet (i.e. Black Pete). This one seems obvious to me. In fact, I would not have included the word at all in this alphabet if I had had any other candidates for the letter Z. (I would have included him under P.)

It seems unlikely that a character so popular will just fade completely, so it’s best to just fix him. Additionally, if you looked closely at this alphabet, you might have noticed there aren’t a lot of black characters on it. There’s one other: Balthazar, the Wise Man, who also has a history of being portrayed in blackface. So please do better by your extant black Christmas characters.

Or, of course, just make Santa black.

Click here for the complete alphabet. Merry Christmas! I hope you have enjoyed this project.

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The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 25 part 1: Y is for Yule Lads, who’re swiping your treats

The jólasveinarnir or Yule Lads are the thirteen gift-bringers of Iceland. Their mother is Grýla, a child-eating ogress from the lava fields of Dimmuborgir; their father is Leppalúði, Grýla’s third husband, whom married after she killed and ate the first two. Grýla spends the year listening for naughty children; at Christmas, she emerges and turns them into stew.

The Yule Lads are her thirteen sons, who emerge from the lava fields one at a time in the days leading up to Christmas until they are all present on the day itself, before leaving, again one by one, gone by Epiphany. They are Mxyzptlk-level pranksters and annoyances. Their names hint at what they do:

Stekkjastaur, or Sheep-Cote Clod, comes on December 12, leaves on Christmas. He drinks all the milk from your sheep’s teats until there is none left. His legs don’t bend at the knee, so just give him a good shove if you see him.

Giljagaur, or Gully Gawk, comes on December 13, leaves December 26. He hides in a gully until the milk maid isn’t looking, then sneaks in and skims all the cream from the milk.

Stúfur, or Stubby, comes on December 14, leaves on December 27. He uses his weird little fingers to scrape all the tasty burned bits out of the bottom of your pans.

Þvörusleikir, or Spoon-Licker, comes on December 15, leaves on December 28. He licks all your wooden spoons. This is all he eats, so he is rail thin.

Pottaskefill, or Pot-Scraper, comes on December 16, leaves on December 29. He scrapes out the goodies from the mixing bowls.

Askasleikir, or Bowl-Licker, comes on December 17, leaves on December 30. He licks the scraps out of a special lidded bowl called the askur.

Hurðaskellir, or Door-Slammer, comes on December 18, leaves on December 31. He slams your doors right as you’re about to drift off to sleep.

Skyrgámur, or Skyr-Gobbler, comes on December 19, leaves on January 1. He eats up all your skyr, which is a pretty delicious Icelandic yogurt.

Bjúgnakrækir, or Sausage-Swiper, comes on December 20, leaves on January 2. He swipes sausages left to smoke in the rafters.

Gluggagægir, or Window-Peeper, comes on December 21, leaves on January 3. He peers through your windows until you’re not paying attention and then sneaks in and steals your toys.

Gáttaþefur, or Doorway-Sniffer, comes on December 22, leaves on January 4. He sniffs out all your laufabrauð, which is a special fried bread shaped like a leaf.

Ketkrókur, or Meat-Hook, comes on December 23, leaves on January 5. Sticks his hook down your chimney to swipe the roast lamb you’re making for St Thorlák’s Day.

Kertasníkir, or Candle-Stealer, comes on December 24, leaves on January 6. He steals and eats your candles.

Although they were mere pranksters at first, these days they bring gifts to children who leave their shoes out on the window sill. Bad children get a potato. They also visit the National Museum in Reykjavik each year and typically change into Santa-like suits for Christmas.

The Yule Lads have appeared recently in comics such as Sleigher: The Heavy Metal Santa Claus and Klaus and the Witch of Winter.

Y is also for:

The Yule Cat, Grýla’s pet who scours the land looking to devour children who did not get new clothes for Christmas

The Yule Goat, first a foe, then a friend, now mostly a decoration and victim of arson

Previous letters here. 

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The other story I sent out with cards this year. It’s much shorter and sillier, which is maybe what you’re looking for.

You can also hear me reading this story (as well as lots of other short, weird Christmas stories written and read by others) on the Weird Christmas podcast.

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If you’re looking for something in the Christmas spirit this Christmas Eve, here is one of the stories I sent out with Christmas cards this year.

It accidentally kinda sorta features the same villain as the Sabrina Christmas special, which is a wild sentence to type. It also features Norse mythology, a child-eating cat, a volcano of a girl, and an ending I’m pretty proud of. I hope you find something to enjoy in it.

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The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 24: X is for Xmas, the Lord of Misrule

The last of the big five gift-bringers, Father Christmas can be found across the world, but primarily in Western Europe, known under names such as Père Noël, Babbo Natale, Daidí na Nollag, Pai Natal, Papá Noel, and others. In more northerly parts of Europe, he or a similar figure might be known as the Christmas Man: Weihnachtsmann, Julemanden, Kerstman, or others. In Eastern Europe, he or a similar figure might be Old Man Christmas: Djed Božićnjak, Jõuluvana, Kalėdų Senelis, Moş Crăciun, and others.

Father Christmas was not originally a gift-bringer, nor was he originally known as Father Christmas. When he first appeared in late medieval and Renaissance pageants and plays, he was known variously as Old Christmas, Sir Christmas, King Christmas, Captain Christmas, Lord Christmas, or even just Christmas.

Instead of bringing gifts, his job was to help people make it through the darkness of winter by celebrating the symbols of continued life: holly, ivy, and mistletoe. He was always at the head of the feast, bringing good cheer and a flagon of wassail to every gathering.

Christmas was hated by the Puritan England of the 1600s and was indeed outlawed and Father Christmas himself put on trial. When Christmas returned to England, it was a somewhat more subdued celebration until the 19th century when it came back on gangbusters thanks to one Mr Dickens. By this time, Father Christmas had fairly successfully combined elements with Saint Nicholas in America to become a figure of whom you have perhaps heard. This new figure influenced the formerly raucous party boy to become the gift-bringing friend of children that he is today.

Previous letters here.

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The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 23: Wenceslas brings food and mid-winter’s fuel

Saint Wenceslas, known in his native Czech as Svatý Václav, was the duke of Bohemia from 921 until his death in 935. His actions during his life were considered so magnanimous and just that he was posthumously named a king by the Holy Roman Emperor as an example of a rex justus, or righteous king.

He obtained the rule of Bohemia while still a young man, and soon found himself faced with a rebellious duke named Radslav. Rather than risk the lives of his foot soldiers, Wenceslas challenged Radslav to single combat for command of the kingdom. Radslav launched one spear and then another at Wenceslas, but neither found his mark, for Wenceslas had the protection of heaven, and angels had deflected Radslav’s weapons. When the rebellious duke saw this, he surrendered.

His connection to Christmas comes from the most famous example of his great generosity. One year on St Stephen’s day (December 26), he saw a poor man struggling to gather firewood in the midst of a storm. Summoning a page, he gathered up food, wine, and firewood and set out to find and save the man. The young page began to falter in the cold, but Wenceslas told him to step where the duke’s feet had impressed on the snow. Doing so, the page found himself miraculously warmed by following in Wenceslas’s footsteps. The mighty saint showed that those who would bless the poor would themselves find blessing.

While Wenceslas does not come to deliver gifts the way most of the other figures in this alphabet do, he still watches over his home of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and will rise in Prague when his homeland is in its hour of greatest need, raising his army from the mountain Blanik, where they lie sleeping in wait.

Previous letters here.

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The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 22: V is for Vixen, than eagles more rapid

Santa Claus’s reindeer are almost as old as the American conception of Santa Claus itself. They first appear pulling his sleigh in the 1821 poem Old Santeclaus with Much Delight, which hit about a decade after Washington Irving’s History of New York introduced an Americanized vision Santa Claus (but still not as we imagine him).

Two years later in 1823, the names of the reindeer would be codified by A Visit from Saint Nicholas as Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. In the original version of the poem, the last two reindeer were the Dutch-named Dunder and Blixem before being translated to German as Donner and Blitzen. It’s a long story. (”Donder” was a weird intermediary step.)

The only serious challenger to this list of reindeer names came in L. Frank Baum’s Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, where he enumerates them as Racer and Pacer, Fearless and Peerless, Ready and Steady, Feckless and Speckless. “The most famous reindeer of all” debuted in a children’s book/Montgomery Ward advertisement in 1939 before getting turned into a hit song much better known than the book in 1949 and a stop-motion Christmas special in 1964. There have been other attempts to add different gimmick reindeer, but none have stuck like that one.

There is a meme going around (that has indeed been popping up for years) that Santa’s reindeer must all be female because male reindeer shed their antlers by Christmastime. The answer to that is: maybe.

Some regions present alternative transport for Santa’s sleigh in places that might not be amenable to reindeer. These include alligators pulling a pirogue in Louisiana, dolphins pulling an outrigger canoe in Hawaii, or albino kangaroos in Australia.

Previous letters here.

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The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 21: U is for Uriel, who saved John the Baptist

Uriel is an archangel whose name is Hebrew for “God is my light.” Although only two angels are named in protocanonical scriptures, Hebrew or Greek, those being Michael and Gabriel, there are seven archangels in the rabbinic tradition following the Hebrew exile in Babylon. Uriel appears in apocryphal Hebrew works (which some Christian traditions consider intertestamental) such as 2 Esdras and pseudepigraphal works like The Testament of Solomon and the book of Enoch, and Christian apocrypha such as The Apocalypse of Peter and the Life of Adam and Eve.

His relationship to Christmas comes in his role in apocryphal versions of the Flight to Egypt. The Flight to Egypt is a canonical story from the Gospel of Matthew in which Mary and Joseph flee with the baby Jesus to Egypt to escape the Massacre of the Innocents, which was the decree by King Herod that all children in the region under the age of two must be killed, which was issued in an attempt to kill the Christ child. (There is a place for a discussion about the negative and antisemitic consequences of this story across the centuries, but this is not it.)

At any rate, anyone thinking about this story would realize that there is a plot hole: if all the babies were to be killed, what of Jesus’s slightly older cousin, John the not-yet Baptist? Well, as is often the case, the Biblical Expanded Universe stepped into to save canon where it failed. In the Protevangelion of James, John is saved when his mother Elizabeth flee to the mountains and one mountain helpfully opens up and swallows them both, where they were protected by an angel.

In the most popular tradition, the angel who protects John is Uriel, who rather than hiding with him in a hungry mountain, simply carries him to meet his cousin in Egypt. This became a common motif in art known as the Rest on the Flight to Egypt, showing babies Jesus and John playing with Mary and Uriel watching over them. Perhaps the most famous painting of this motif is Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks.

The depiction of Uriel here is based heavily on his portrayal in Chris Schweizer’s papercraft Nativity, a project to which I made some contributions.

Previous letters here.

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The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 20: T’s Tante Arie, with big, goose-like foot

Tante Arie is the gift-bringer from Franche-Comté, a region on the border of France and Germany. Her name basically means “Aunt Harry,” as Arie is a nickname for Henrietta. She is generally regarded as the spirit of Henriette, countess of Montbéliard, a generous patroness and fierce protector of the region from the 15th century, sent back from Heaven as a fairy that she might continue her largess forever.

Tante Arie is recognizable by the fact that she appears old but has a youthful face, and, perhaps more notably, by her wide, goose-like feet, somewhat reminiscent of Perchta’s “swan foot.” Each Christmas, Tante Arie comes down from her home in the Cave of the Combe Noire in Blamont to travel the Franche-Comté with her donkey Marion. On Christmas Eve, she will lean over sleeping children and whisper in their ear that they should be good. Those who listen to her advice and leave out treats for Marion, will receive gifts, candy, and fruit. Naughty children receive switches soaked in vinegar or dunce caps.

There are many stories of Tante Arie traveling the countryside in disguise, looking for homes offering hospitality, hard work and friendship. She rewards those who meet her standard. She also offers protection to those who make offerings of milk and bread at the mouth of her cave. She brings snow, hail, and lightning to Montbéliard when she shakes out the edges of her skirt.

Previous letters here.