Since I am stuck in a holiday mood, I want to continue reflections on Trickster and Christmas – particularly Santa. That jolly old elf has many names: Sinterklass, Santa Claus, Pere Noel, FatherChristmas, Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas, etc, (see http://www.christmas.com/pe/1381 ) but, of course, the saintly old guy also has a shadow called Black Pete or Ole Saint Nick, suggestive of anything but the whiteness of winter’s purity or snow, and percolating some very nasty things to the surface of our celebrations. I think Santa Claus is probably one of the great cultural containers for all sorts of notions of deceit – at least of the conspiracy of adults against the innocence of children. From the moment of truth when one no longer believes in Santa Claus, but maintains the fantasy or deliberately challenges it for sake of others, the improbability of Santa Claus looms larger and larger, and the games to assuage doubt get more and more complex. We keep a herd of Santa helpers who dress in red to resonate the eager desires of children or to make/sell memory photographs for their parents' gnostalogical constructs; we keep hundreds of rituals designed to prolong the belief of children and to demarcate a growing clarity of line between "reality" and "fantasy": Santa’s milk paritally drunk and cookies nibbled, Santa letter actually mailed at the post office, NORAD tracking of Santa’s sleigh, Christmas eve noises for unsleeping children, or even footprints in the chimney ashes to make a “real” sign. We dance in a plethora of commercial and feel-good images that circulate around the Santa Claus cluster with jolliness, joy, unselfishness, and a once-a-year-that-could-be-every-day goodness, charity, and peace.
It is of course this notion of belief and non-belief, the demarcation between real and fantasy, the visions of de-lightful dreams and darksome realities, and the clear and present danger of wonder passing into despair that are the drivers behind the Trickster notions of Christmas. Some of this is surely a result of the long metaphysical war between light and darkness, good and evil, life and death that has existed for our species in most of the religious notation that we have created (or discovered), and surely it is appropriate that the concentration of this mediation happen at the winter solstice – when our non-linguistic animal get to speak once during the year.
At Winter's night, we know the dark has come, and we hope the light will come back, and as long as the proper sacrifices, prayers, or rites are performed (usually involving fire, light or blood), the winter does pass, and the sun does return to its other course. The seasons change and time flows on; and life huddles once more to life. So we chant down the ages,” Star light star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight” because we know full well there are wishes we cannot have, and some of those unfulfilled wishes lie at the very heart of our existence – death, time’s arrow, change, hunger, chance, appetite, chaos, want, desire – the implacable and perineal nature of our selfhood.
Now if that were all there were to this season, it would be too dark altogether – more like the thin times of All Saint’s eve (an ambivalent time that has it own Trickster associations). So, since I have hit the Bah Humbug note, let’s turn to the light side – that is, the very reason for the season. The Sun does return, the Light returns once more. The Christmas Star, the coming of light, the epiphany, the three magi, the three wise men, and the jolly laughter of Santa Claus inform our future and bring hope to humankind. Despite the nostalgia of the "ghost of Christmas Past", the luxury and excesses of the "ghost of Christmas Present" (an mind bending oxymoron there), and the undetermined, but hopeful or the unspecified, but frightening possibilities of the "ghost of Christmas future", a note really does rings out here to the human heart (Charles Dickens’ one constant), and crisp carols, sparkling bells, and twinkling lights call us to be a better self than we have been, to listen to the lighter side of our natures, and some times we do that – probably with a Cheshire Trickster grin, but what the hell, grin, grimace, smile, it’s the toothy sign of a primate face excited, fearful, angry, hopeful, and a little playful. It’s the bite that really isn’t a bite, at winking eye and finger upside the nose, it is Trickster Noel……………..
...............what's under your fake beard
