Hamish McShanks

Ham Shanks Secret Diary w/e 26^th November 2006

I want you to brace yourselves, I have devastating news …… are you suitably braced? How would you feel if I told you that all our Christmas celebrations are a complete sham! (Queue sinister music and possibly a drum roll) ….. A small piece of tumbleweed blows gently over Hams’ shoe as most readers yawn and complete a leisurely examination of the underside of their fingernails. You don’t seem particularly phased by this bombshell? ‘Yes Ham that’s because we know that Christmas has been hijacked by big business and it’s all now a shameful attempt by the retail trade to empty our wallets, tell us something new’ I hear you mumble. Ok then, I will.

How far would your jaw drop if I told you why the bedrock of our current Christmas celebrations was a total sham? The reason it’s all a cruel charade is because it was the Christians that actually ripped them off from someone else! Ha ha, now yer interested. Yes it’s all true; forget all the righteous Holy Joes bumping their gums because the ‘real’ meaning of Christmas has been lost in the mire of a materialistic world. Tell them to dry their fecking eyes cos Christmas is a rebranded Pagan festival!

Dum dum dum dum duuuuuum (that was more sinister music by the way – keep up)

YES it’s the shocking truth; Christmas is a rebrand of northern European celebrations that predate Christianity by hundreds of years. All the things I mentioned yesterday, the yuletide log, hanging of boughs of holly and mistletoe. The slaughtering of a pig for Christmas ham were all unashamedly ripped off from the ancient Germans and Scandinavians (amongst others).

Basically the missionaries of the time where having a bit of a job convincing the locals that the one true God was big JC’s dad. They struggled to convey that the worshipping of multiple deities was really ‘bad form’ and likely to result in eternal damnation in the fiery pits of hell. The locals however disagreed with this view. Disagreed to the point of filleting said missionaries with big knives and hanging their nadgers on pointy sticks. Unsurprisingly the brave apostles who were spreading the good word reasoned that perhaps a different tactic was required. After all the guarantee of eternal salvation at the right hand of the big man doesn’t seem quite as enticing when your going to have to spend it minus you love spuds as they have just been turned into impromptu Christmas decorations.

You can’t blame them really, cold steel waved round the nether regions is apt to make a man focus sharply on his current life and be slightly less dogmatic about the next ‘who this God you talk of? How he better than mighty Freyr!’ roars a large hairy Norseman as he rest a six foot broadsword on your cod piece ‘Fff.f.f Freyr .. oh no he’s my god too, Christ knows who that other one is, ahaa hah, some Johnny come lightly foreigner I expect’

So to get round a tricky situation they let the locals be and simply ‘rebranded’ the pagan festivals as Christian ones. It’s a genius idea. Mind you when you read about some of the Gods the Norse worshiped you can see why the bible seemed a bit stale to them.

Let’s compare the story of Norse god ‘Freyr’ to that of the bibles prodigal son.

Freyr "bestows peace and pleasure on mortals". He rules over the rain, the shining of the sun and the produce of the fields. That’s a pretty good CV already. Jesus on the other hand was sent to provide salvation and reconciliation with God by atoning for the sins of humanity. He’s already sounding a bit preachy. But let’s not be too quick to judge, lets give them both a fair hearing.

So Freyr is a Vanir, they are the gods of fertility, the sea and prosperity. He is the son of a sea god and the brother of a love goddess. So all the blokes want to be his best mate cos his sister is a total babe, and from his point of view, his sister is bound to have lots of fit pals cos she’s a love goddess and they don’t want to be seen surrounded by mingers.

Not only does he have a foxy sister but his ‘transport’ is a dwarf-made boar called Gullinbursti. I’m not quite sure how the dwarves ‘made’ a hairy pig but it was certainly a top of the range porker. Apparently it glowed in the dark and was able to ‘run through air and water better than any horse’ That’s right he drove a fluorescent flying pig! (look it up if you don’t believe me)

No self respecting sea god could be seen without a ship and Freyr had the daddy of them all. Another dwarf built wonder called Skídbladnir which was big enough to hold the whole of the host of Asgard (basically the realm of the gods) yet small enough to be folded like a cloth and carried in your pocket! (I swear I am not making this up) As if that wasn’t a nifty enough trick, whenever he raised the sails he was guaranteed a fair following wind and this vessel could travel over land and sea!

Add a magic sword (which surprisingly didn’t have a name) and Freyr is pretty well tooled up. He’s ticking a lot of boxes and there is obvious appeal for both genders. The product pretty much speaks for itself.

Jesus on the other hand was a chippy. He walked everywhere and wore sandals.

Okay he could knock you up a book case or a set of shelves and he was a diva with a loaf of bread and a tin of sardines but it’s not quite in the same league for me. Water into wine is a pretty cool trick I’ll grant you but I’m more of a beer man. Another worrying fact was JC’s wife, he didn’t have one. Freyr on the other hand married a giantess called Gerdur, she was all woman, her arms apparently illuminated air and sea (what for purpose I cant be sure) Jesus however only had male friends, so no girls then, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

So I guess it was hardly surprising that Christianity plagiarized some of these exciting pagan traditions and called them their own. It’s a bit like VHS and betamax, everyone knew which one was the superior format but in the end VHS had the better marketing …..

Doei