Just a Clause In History

Santa has been around since the dawn of man when Og would sneak from cave to cave stealing food (he hadn’t quite grasped the concept yet). The first actual record of the jolly bastard comes from Lapland, where in the early days Sphincter Floss used to deliver bundles of reindeer sinew to each home for cleaning up after taking a dump. Early explorers met up with the Laps and thought Sphincter Floss was a great idea, but didn’t want a holiday named after an asshole.

The name Splinter Claus was considered for a short while, and may in fact given rise to Freddy Krueger farther on down the historical road. The church was big at the time and they had saints for everything, so the Europeans decided no one would notice one more and slipped Saint Nick past the well greased palms of the Pope and his henchmen. The trouble was that name was too much like “Old Nick” another moniker for the devil. That led to the anagram for Satan.

Grasped as a commercial Icon early on, Santa handily displaced Jesus right about the time the Three Wiseacres brought the Frankincense, Myrrh, and gold. Of course nowadays all that frankincense crap is out the window and we are talking high priced electronics and the merchants wind up with the gold. In fact they count on it. Since Good Friday was already taken they called it Black Friday (you think it would be the other way around), Good Friday is still ok in their book because they have managed to associate a rabbit who apparently has an egg distribution business with the upcoming holiday. No one is quite sure what the hell the Myrrh crap is but you will play hell trying to find any.

Of course there was already Chanukah at the time of the first Christmas, but the Jews failed to capitalize on the potential ‘til later (eight nights of gifts is pretty sweet as long as they aren’t just some piece of crap dreydal or underwear), it took good ol’ Christian ingenuity to really turn the holiday to a salesfest.

Anyway, call him Father Christmas, Pere Noel, or Red-assed Baboon, he is the center of all evil and you won’t find an inflatable image of Santa out on Pat Robertson’s Lawn, no way this side of hell.