Throwback Thursday: World Christmas cultures

Throwback Thursday is when we dig through the That's archives for a work of extraordinary genius, or timely relevance, written at some point in our past. We then republish it - on a Thursday.

Since this year's Christmas falls on a Thursday, and that Thursday is today, it seems prudent to publish a Christmas-themed article.

Originally published in the December 2013 edition of That's PRD, the following article takes a quirky look at the various Santa-ish characters from around the world. 

This family has big plans for Christmas. First we’re going to euthanize Santa. Then we’re going to hang out on a beach in Vietnam.

It’s probably time. I’ve never been to Vietnam before. As for Santa, our 8-year-old Lani has started asking awkward questions, like “Daddy, are you a liar?”

Ok, perhaps not that pointed, but the inevitable question about the North Pole’s most famous resident came up over dinner last week. Since there was a 6-year-old also at the table, I made the very clever parent move of telling Lani that we would “talk about this later.” I then winked at her and slashed my throat.

Only with a finger, mind you. I don’t find these parenting situations that troubling. But it is probably time we labeled as ‘fiction’ this tale about an exotic place where lots of not very tall people work feverishly to make presents for the world’s children.

For one thing, everyone now knows that place is called ‘China.’ For another, there are some fantastic other Santa-ish Christmas tales from around the world. As citizens of expat-land’s melting pot, maybe we should try a few.

There’s the Russian one. Just to confusing things, Russia’s ‘Santa’ is delivers presents not on Russian Christmas (January 7) but on New Year’s Eve. He goes by the name of Ded Moroz.

Now, I don’t want to claim our Christmas is any jollier, or point at Russia’s famous national vibe of melancholy, or misère de vivre, but by God their main spreader of joy sounds perilously like ‘ded morose.’

Ded Moroz sounds to me like a heavy metal band name. Or perhaps a stun grenade. Or a used condom. But the Internet said it meant ‘Grandfather Frost.’ When you become a grandfather in Russia, straight away they just start calling you Ded. I can see walking sticks being shaken angrily everywhere. As for Moroz, there was confusion.

For clarification I turned to my friend from the gym, Roman. He’s not Russian but he is from Estonia (motto: If it’s not exactly Russia, it’ll do till we get some). As this large bald man and I sat naked in the sauna talking about Santa, I finally found understanding, Moroz is actually the term for when the temperature drops below about minus 10 Celsius. So really, Father Christmas in Russia is more like Grandfather F**cking Freezing.

Russia also has none of this North Pole business. Ded Moroz lives in Veliky Ustyug, a town of 32,000 people a few hundred kilometers northeast of Moscow. You can probably see him there in the summer doing whatever Russians do, trimming his roses, running an export-import business, that sort of thing.

The Russians in fact have two people said to dish out presents. The other is Baboushcka, which is Russian for ‘grandmother.’

I’d heard the Dutch Christmas had a crazy twist. So I grabbed the first Dutch person I could find, a man called Fred at a friend’s wedding, and asked him. It started with a shock.

“Well Santa Claus turns up with his whores,” he said, as I spat my beer all over him.

I like this Santa better than ours already. I pictured him in a sleigh, jacked right up at the front, with a set of speakers booming out something a bit more gangsta than ‘Jingle Bells.’

“No, his horse,” said Fred, more clearly.

Still the story was astounding. The Dutch Sinterklass used to be a Greek bishop in Turkey sometime in the first millennium AD. He retired to take up the position of Dutch Santa, residing in…Spain. No one is sure why he lives there, but my money’s on the weather. Where would you rather live: the North Pole, Veliky Ustyug or Spain? Especially if you’re the wrong side of 1,000.

Usually Sinterklass goes around with a much-loved colored man named Pieter, who is more commonly known as Black Pete. He is usually depicted in all sorts of garb, like curly hair and made up red lips, and performs functions like delivering candy. By the look of him it wouldn’t surprise if his roles also included tap dancing and singing “My Mammy” (politically incorrect it ain’t). In fact there are usually a handful of Black Petes, who since the mid 19^th century have been called Sinters – umm, ‘servants.’

Early on Dutch Santa and the Petes would turn up, and if children had been good he’d reward them with presents. If they’d been bad, they would be punished by getting no presents. They would also get a good kicking and a beating from Santa. If they were especially bad, a Pete would bundle them into a sack and they’d be dragged back to Spain to a mysterious – but presumably wretched – fate.

Since the 1950s, however, this tale has been softened up. Now if children are naughty Santa only pretends to give them a good kicking and beating.

The Dutch story – which is replicated in Belgium – is so bizarre it has caught the attention of more and more people in recent years. These include people from the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. They couldn’t help noticing the story might be a wee bit racist, especially since people playing the Petes in Christmas parades wear blackface make-up.

Hopefully the Petes will soon be retired, replaced by a more universally loved breed of Christmas helper. For as the old saying goes, you’re alright as long as you’ve got ya elf…

// This article first appeared in the December 2013 edition of That's PRD. For more Throwback Thursdays click here.