#it was the 50s in a rural area so yeah not exactly treated

[deadliestpieceontheboard]

cw: burns/injuries discussion

Ok so remember how the hot iron incident happened before Neil was 10? And Neil being small even as an adult, we can infer that that burn covered a good portion of his child-sized shoulder. Yeah.... that's dead skin. Neil said it peeled off on the iron, so it was bad enough for it to heal solely as scar tissue.

Do you know what happens with kids with big chunks of scar tissue unless they have surgery/medical monitoring? That part doesn't grow right. That skin doesn't stretch, and depending on how it's located it can be a problem in a major articulation like that.

All this to say that I firmly believe Neil's right shoulder is significantly lower than the other and he can't really pull that arm as much towards his back because it pulls on the scar.

[themousefromfantasyland]

The Creatures of Yuletide: The Yule Goat

In case you were left wondering, Christmas is mostly pagan. A lot of modern-day traditions have roots in ancient pagan times, mostly from the Germanic and Scandinavian winter solstice celebrations. Santa is secretly Odin, the Yule Father. The Christmas Ghosts of Charles Dickens are inspired by the legends of ghosts that came to our world during the Winter Solstice. Today let’s talk about a tradition that I believe to be the most shameless and more ridiculously obvious inheritance from the pagan celebrations. Meet the goat brother of Santa Claus, the Yule Goat.

Spoiler: People used to dress as goats and went trick or treating during Christmas time. And in some places they still do. I’m not making this up 🤣

The Yule Goat is one most ancient symbols of the season. He is a figure that appears in holiday traditions across Scandinavia and Northern Europe. There, and in Sweden, Norway, and Finland, the Yule Goat is as much a part of Christmas tradition as Santa, Rudolph, or Frosty the Snowman.

The Yule Goats are wooden or straw figures that neighbors would hide in each other’s houses, meant to be passed on to another household when found. Now, it is most seen as a Christmas ornament, often made of straw with braided horns and a red ribbon around its neck. Yule Goat’s straw figures are usually placed under the Christmas tree.

In Swedish lore, the Yule Goat was said to be a spiritual being that dwelled in the house during Christmas, overlooking the preparations and celebrations. He would also be accompanying the Jultomte or Tomte, domestic spirits of the holiday season that became analogue to the American Santa. These gnomelike, goat-riding Christmas elves called tomten (Sweden), nissen (Norway), and tonttu (Finland), would deliver gifts to children on Christmas Eve. With time, they would end up stealing the spotlight from the goat.

I need to share this very weird and funny tradition regarding the goat. Since 1966 a Swedish town called Gävle [say: yeah-vleh] places a giant Yule Goat statue in the town square, and every year someone tries to burn it down. It seems that people now wait, and even bet, if the goat will make it to Christmas. In the past 50 years, the Gävle Yule Goat has been destroyed 35 times. Please look up, it’s very bizarre.

So, continuing, the History of the Yule Goat goes far. Since the 11th century there had been numerous traditions of goat figures and of men in full-size goat costumes during the Christmas celebrations. During the 17th century, in Sweden, it was costume that during Christmas or the Epiphany (The Three King’s Day), young men in costumes would walk between houses singing songs, enacting plays, and performing pranks. The Yule Goat would often appear in these pranks, usually as a scary figure demanding gifts. During the 19th century, men would often dress as goats to give gifts to their families.

So, where does the Yule Goat come from? The answer is mostly obvious by now.

The most popular theory, and my favorite, is that the Yule Goat is a worship of Thor, or rather, of Thor’s goats. In Norse mythology, Thor’s carriage was pulled by two goats, Tanngrisnir, “Gap-tooth”, and Tanngnjóstr, “Tooth-grinder”. Many times, Thor would slaughter both to eat, knowing they returned to life in the following morning.

In Sweden, part of the midwinter celebrations was the Yule Sacrifice. A man would dress in goatskins, carrying a goat-head effigy portraying one of Thor’s goats. He was symbolically killed but returned to life exactly as the sun does at Yule day.

From this came the Norwegian tradition of “Julebukking” or more correctly, “to go julebukk” (Gå julebukk). One man or many men from the community would dress a goat mask and fur cape to represent the ghosts of winter night. After that, they would go “trick or treating” from door-to-door receiving gifts from the towns folk to thank them for protection and keeping the winter ghosts at bay (in my last post I talked about this, it was believe that ghosts could come back to our world during the Winter Solstice and Winter times).

Christian missionaries modified the tradition and divorced its meaning from Paganism. Early Christian fathers proclaimed the Yule Goat as a demon. That’s why in the 17th century he was threatening figure. In Swedish records from this time, the Yule Goat is described as a dark and scary demonic figure that roamed the countryside on the night of December 25, demanding food and frightening devout Christians.

However eventually, the Yule goat became a benevolent being again, and children started to walk from house-to-house “trick or treating”, singing carols at the doorsteps of friends and neighbors. They wore costumes, particularly masks to hide their identity, and often gave gifts as well as receiving them.

It' actually uncanny how Christmas and Halloween were alike in the past.

Resuming everything, the church tried to demonize the Yule Goat, but it didn’t work out and after the 19th century the goat became a gift-giver like Saint Nicholas in the Scandinavian world, until he started been replaced by the Nisse or Tomte later.

I believe that the tradition of Julebukking is still alive. Even thought is dying in Europe, immigrants from rural communities from Scandinavian descend still keep it alive, in areas like Petersburg and Ketchikan in Alaska.

Just to finish, all I want to say is that if this post ever found someone of Swedish or Norwegian background, or just someone who knows the traditions of the Yule Goat and Julebukking better than me, feel free to correct me if I got something wrong. I'm fascinated by these Scandinavian Christmas traditions, and I wanted a first-hand account of them to help me understand them better.

[gingilocks101]

A Letter to my Father

Dear F,

You probably think this is about me wanting you to like J; it is not. Our argument at the barbecue was never about that. What it is about is you starting a fight trying to call him a prick for no reason and then thinking I’m overreacting or being unreasonable for asking you to not be a dick for no reason. You had spent the last week essentially bullying him like you do to the rest of us, complaining about him for the smallest things, acting like a degree means you can’t be absent minded or make human mistakes, and then trying to get S to take him home because you didn’t want him there anymore. Newflash, twat face: you fucking invited him! Suck it up!

I don’t give a fuck either way about whether or not you like my fiance because I don’t need your approval. You’ve never approved of anything unless it directly benefited you. What I care about is that you treat him like dirt for no reason. He’s never done anything but be polite to you, and you’re here acting like a prick and thinking you can. And I’m the immature one for not just accepting it? Fuck off, fuck off, fucking die. You are 55: I shouldn’t be told to just let you get away with being a grade A fuckwad because you can’t even be polite.

And you’re supported by other adults aged 50+, like Mum, Auntie A, Auntie S, Uncle P (who isn’t 50+ but is close enough) because apparently being a dick is “just how he is”. Your whole life you’ve been allowed to do what you want, and now you’re “upset” because I won’t talk to you anymore? I don’t need you and your emotional abuse, your misogyny, your bullshit life. You have been on this planet for 5 and a half decades, and everyone tells me that I need to be the mature one and just accept blame, apologise and grovel. Why? So you can just do this all again, over and over and over until you finally die? I refuse.

Besides all of which: your reasons for disliking J are bullshit! He “thinks of nobody else but himself,” says man who has two ponds that only he wants. They are two ditches in our garden into which you just throw money we don’t have; one of them in the ground with no fencing or anything to prevent falling into it. You have a six year old running around your garden, and it’s only last week that you actually did something because you were going to have drunk people in the garden at your party on Saturday. And even then, all you did was put solar lights around the edge; still no fence, nothing to actually stop an accident. 

You tried to move the family to Crawley so you didn’t have to sit in traffic on the way home from work. That was your immediate response, before considering leaving ten minutes later to avoid it, before anything else. Did it matter that your youngest two were doing GCSEs and A Levels? Did it fuck. All that mattered was that you were stuck in traffic on the way home and you didn’t like it. You hadn’t even been in the new job that long; maybe two months? Traffic sucks, yeah, but two months is nothing. Mum hits traffic on the way to work every single day, and she’s been working there for about 16 years. And before that she worked in schools and colleges since leaving the factory, when she was probably also in traffic. It is life in our cities, towns and other urban areas. That is the modern age.

Which, I know, you hate. Hence why you tried to tried to make us all move to rural Cumbria so you could set up a fish farm. You expected Mum to quit her job and work in a cafe on a fish farm despite the fact that she hates cooking and baking in all forms; just because you don’t want to live in London anymore. You have no experience in fish farming, no experience in even running a business, and angling as a business is collapsing as younger people just aren’t interested. But you are Super F. This risky venture will obviously succeed, purely because you’re in charge. You know everything about everything, so you cannot fail. And all those who have been in the business 30 years who are closing down shops because they can’t carry on? Well, they don’t know what they’re talking about, do they? God, you sound like Nan, trying to tell me the doctors don’t know jackshit about antibiotics or the human body.

“He only thinks of himself,” said the man who turns the simple act of helping me to move in and out of university every September and June into the F. B. shitshow. A man whose daughter was returning to university, 200 miles from home, and you decided to move me in by driving me and dumping my stuff because you “didn’t want to sit in traffic” on the way home. You stood in my new kitchen with all those housemates I hadn’t yet met, and made my mother cry, because she didn’t believe you all summer. 

Not that you give a fraction of a fuck about my degree beyond how expensive it is for you, how much it’s costing you. You routinely belittle my likes, interests and passions: you don’t bother attempting to connect with me unless it’s one of your own interests like old punk/rock music; newer music or songs you don’t like result in you bitching or moaning over it so I can’t hear it, or until I get fed up and change it or turn it off. The same happens with TV shows, and then you say “oh, I didn’t say you couldn’t watch it!” You are slowly reducing the things we can watch to fishing shows and Fake Britain: you dislike American comedies, you hate panel shows, none of us like soaps, you try to force D to stop watching kids’ TV (I remind you that he is six)...

When we went to visit universities you complained about the lecturer, and said that people with English Literature degrees “just think they’re better than everyone else because they’ve read lots of books”. All the lecturer had done was talk about the course he taught when I asked him for an overview. I will have a degree in English Literature by the end, and yeah, I will think I’m better than you. But not because I’ve read classics that you can’t stick, like Tess of the D’Urbevilles, or Wuthering Heights. I’m better than you because I’m genuinely likeable; I can be polite even if I dislike people (sorry L, I do try!); and I treat people fairly, as best that I can. The last time you cared about my university experience was the summer of 2012, when I was considering Oxbridge. And even that was to use me as a trophy daughter: you paraded me around your birthday party telling all your friends and brothers and sisters that I was thinking about Oxford, because it made you sound good. You couldn’t give less of a fuck about me, really.

You make me feel as though I can’t be freely religious at home: I ended up telling P and K and other people from uni that I feel unable to go to church when I’m at home. You mock me on Sunday mornings if I do go, asking if I’m “going to see [my] imaginary friend with low self esteem” or calling religion “mythology and fairy tales” and those who believe “idiots”. You do this to the point I feel uncomfortable to go anywhere on Sundays by myself, which is exactly your goal. You hate religion and the fact I have one with such vitriol that I cannot understand why you hate me calling you an atheist. Only atheists are that violent towards people with faith. On top of that, you constantly bring up how much you hated Seville Cathedral and how the Church is “a business”, or the “world’s greatest scam”. When I went with the school in 2012, Seville Cathedral was one of my favourite things. You ruined that. Mum promised we wouldn’t take you to the cathedral, but you insisted! And I’m convinced that was just to have the excuse to abuse me further.  You make such a big deal out of religious events: you refused to take me and T to the church for little E’s christening, tried to make digs in my ear during D-G’s christening, and you refused to even go to D’s dedication. You sat in the pub and willingly missed your own grandson’s dedication, and then spent the after party loudly criticising S for having him dedicated, as it’s apparently “indoctrination”. Your violent campaign has served to make me only feel able to express or explore my faith in Chester; hence most of the important people are those that I met at church, or in chapel and chaplaincy: P, G, K, V, Fr. P & A... 

And after all of that, you believe and desire me to be completely dependent on you. I have constant reminders about how you pay for everything and that it’s your house (despite Mum paying half but that doesn’t fit your narrative). My bedroom is “not your room; it’s the room in which you are permitted to sleep”; you’ve been saying this for years. And whilst yes, it is technically true, it also subtly chips away at my privacy. If it is your room really, it suggests I have no privacy and no right to my bedroom. It suggests everything is flimsy. You won't pay for me until I "love you again"? What is this bullshit? At the moment, J is providing his own food at our house because you complain if he eats. I’ll say again: you are denying a guest food, and yet I’m expected to be the grown up and apologise for asking you to be polite. Do you hear yourself when you speak? Or is your head too far stuck up your arse? Besides, you don’t really pay for me anyway! While you’re wasting money on fish, literally throwing all of the family money into a ditch, I’m expected to get a job alongside my studies. It doesn’t matter what I say about doing two degrees, about being a full time student, about how you’ll still demand me home in the holidays, or about how the stress will literally kill me. You won’t listen to any of it: it will always be because I’m “lazy and expensive”. And yet! And yet: despite refusing to support me when I have no money, you still desire me to support you in retirement. No?? You can’t refuse to support me and then demand I support you; it doesn’t work like that. It’s an investment, F. You put in what you want to receive; I am not obligated to support you in your old age if you will not support me now. It works two ways.

You accuse me of wasting money on my degree, and then spent £200 without asking on concert tickets when the family couldn’t afford it. Your current reasoning for why we’re in so much debt is not for anything logical like you wasting money on your ponds, but because I am eating. That’s right: your current excuse for why we have no money is because I eat too much. It makes no sense because, by your own admission, “it’s not like you eat much anyway”. So what the actual fuck? It makes no sense at all. You dislike that I asked J’s dad Te for help with Spain after you refused. You expected me to have it done in advance so you could throw me off a plane and leave again, like Chester. I can’t do that, so I went to someone who can help me in the way I need it, but you are bitter. I don’t have to jump your hoops and do everything your way. Like how you’re refusing to walk me down the aisle at my wedding, and keep saying that other people will also refuse if you tell them to, such as my cousin C. That’s just another transparent attempt to make me beg for your attention, to turn something into being about you. “Oh, why isn’t F walking her?!” Well, I refuse to let you make everything about yourself. That’s why I’m asking S. Suck on that.

There are more things I can scream about: this is 21 years of emotional abuse, 21 years of scars, 21 years of trying to get approval that will never come. I’m over it. I will never apologise, and quite frankly I’m beyond insulted that you haven’t even thought to do so.

I’ll see you in Hell, and I won’t stop to say hi.

Yours sincerely,

Hannah