X-mas in North Europe/Scandinavia, roots, Yule/Pagan etc

[Black Hornet]

History of Christmas in Iceland

Long before Christianity was introduced, people in Northern Europe celebrated winter solstice which ushers in gradually lengthening days. In Iceland, winter solstice celebrations were grand events. Landowners would invite many people to their house and people would feast and drink extravagantly. After the adoption of Christianity in the year 1000 in Iceland, this celebration was integrated with the Christian Christmas Celebration. Thus, Icelandic Christmas are historically two celebrations: Celebrating the birth of Christ and celebrating the beginning of the lengthening daylight hours.


One major difference between Christmas in Iceland and in the U.S. is that Icelanders celebrate on Christmas Eve. The family gets together in the evening and that is when presents are exchanged. During the following two days everyone goes to Christmas parties and meets with grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends.

Christmas is taken very seriously in Iceland. The whole house is cleaned, everyone gets something new to wear, people buy the best food, decorate the house inside and out and bake hundreds of cookies. It is truly a feast of the senses.

http://unasked.com/question/view/id/12857


Odin was sometimes recorded, at the native Germanic holiday of Yule, as leading a great hunting party through the sky. Two books from Iceland, the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, describe Odin as riding an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir that could leap great distances, giving rise to comparisons to Santa Claus' reindeer.

Odin's appearance was often similar to that of Saint Nicholas, being depicted as an old, mysterious man with a beard.

According to Phyllis Siefker, children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw or sugar, near the chimney for Odin's flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Odin would then reward those children for their kindness by replacing Sleipnir's food with gifts or candy. This practice survived in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands after the adoption of Christianity and became associated with Saint Nicholas as a result of the process of Christianization and can be still seen in the modern practice of the hanging of stockings at the chimney in some homes. Children still place their straw filled shoes or stockings by the chimney every winter night, and are rewards with candy and gifts. This practice in turn came to the United States through the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam

http://www.mysticvoodoo.com/santa-claus.htm


[Edit -- fixed BBCode. Apologies, Klinfolk, for having let such an OT post slip by. As others have responded to it by bringing it back on topic, it can stay. -=- Kesvirit]

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Af hverju þú setur þetta í umræðum Klingon?

Why is this in a Klingon forum?

[Black Hornet]

Because it has to do with Pagan/Viking traditions & Klingon culture is based on that to some degree.

[qoSagh]

Having researched this stuff to some degree I would say that Klingons are not based on Vikings. They are warriors, they wear leather, and the fans and reviewers started calling them space vikings, but there has never to my knowledge been any word from TPTB about this. Even if there had, Star Trek being anti religious in nature would have stayed as far away as they could from this topic. This is why we have never seen much in terms of Klingon holiday celebrations.

Now as for the stockings, that tradition is more closely related to Saint Nicolas when he was a bishop secretly giving money to the poor by putting it in shoes or stockings. The idea of the Eight tiny Reindeer did not come about until Clement Moore wrote his book about the subject.

[Black Hornet]

Trek is not anti religious in nature. Spock's religion for example was not given an anti religious presentation. It was well known Rodenberry wasn't real big on Christianity, but it is but one of many religions.
Stockings in Iceland preceded Christianity.


Those who do not die in battle may not enter Sto-Vo-Kor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon
while those sent to Gre'Thor are condemned to eternal torture


The souls of heroic soldiers killed in battle were brought to Valhalla by warrior maidens called Valkyries
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/vikings/valhalla.htm


I wonder if the Thor in Gre'Thor is coincidental.




Writer Ronald D. Moore, who has defined much of Klingon culture, has commented at length on Klingon philosophy. When preparing the script for "Sins of the Father", he wrote a memo defining his take on the Klingons. He compared them "the Samurai of feudal Japan, the Vikings, and the Hell's Angels." (AOL chat, 1998)

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Klingon_philosophy



[Edit -- fixed broken link. -=- Kesvirit]

[tesseraktik]

Well, back in High School when I was studying Icelandic film and literature for Swedish class (that is, the Swedish equivalent of English class in anglophonic countries), I couldn't help but to think that Klingons would rather enjoy reading Icelandic sagas.* I mean, page after page of lineage descriptions, a weird ritual for everything from settling honor disputes to tying your shoes, keeping up a fight while being worn by a spear like a shish kebab...

Anyhow, is Gre'thor really a place of eternal torture?  I've usually just thought of it as more of a prison; it's hardly fun or glorious to be there, but you're not necessarily submitted to physical punishment.  That would make it a closer equivalent to the Hel of Norse mythology; it's certainly not as nice as Valhalla, so it was worth committing honorable suicide before one had time to die of old age, but it's not so much that you're being punished as it is that you're not being honored.  The truly g'day't are sent to a special location within Hel, which is call Náströnd (the shore of corpses).

taj 'ugh. - Heavy knife.
'ugh tajvam. 'ut. - This knife is heavy.  It is essential.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l5N1XTTEps


*...and a few weeks later, in English class (that is, the Swedish equivalent of, uhm, EASL, I suppose, in anglophonic countries), when we were learning about how Swedes were perceived by non-Swedes, I couldn't help but to think "Man, this is just like listening to Power Klingon!"
...so I suppose it's not too difficult to draw parallels between things.

[Kehlan]

Those who do not die in battle may not enter Sto-Vo-Kor...

while those sent to Gre'Thor are condemned to eternal torture

Not true.  Firstly, Wikipedia is not canon, it is written by anyone who feels like adding to an article, so cannot necessarily be trusted as a source.  Secondly, we know for a fact it is possible for a Klingon to get someone into Grethor by fighting a battle in their name. 

I do not think it has ever been made canon what happens to Klingons who are honourable but not lucky enough to get themselves killed in battle.  somehow I don't see them ending up in Grethor. 

We have no evidence of what happens in Grethor. the only time we have ever seen the place is in the episode "Barge of the Dead" which was Belanna's dream and hence her ideas of what Grethor is like rather than what it is really like.

I also remember reading that one of the legends of Kahless tells the story of going into Grethor to get someone out. 


coming back the subject of Christmas, I wonder if Klingons would have some sort of midwinter festival?

[qoSagh]

A midwinter festival is a possibility, however that supposes an actual winter on the home world. As for Christmas, it is more about the events of the birth of Christ than it is of the time of year. I have read accounts that say it should be commemorated in April instead of December. Now without debating that, it does show that it is the event and not the season that is important. Where as a celebration of the Solstice, is dependent of both, the astronomical event and the fact that it is a dark and cold time.

I have done much theorizing on Klingon holidays and feel that most would be event based. The birth of a great leader, the remembrance of a great battle, ect. Of course these would likely fall on anniversaries, so I suppose one of them could be in mid winter.

[Black Hornet]

The Christ thing came much later, it is more about the season in it's true origins.

[Kehlan]

Christmas was deliberately and cynically placed in the middle of winter to replace the pagan festival, the idea being to get the pagans to celebrate the christian festival instead of their own.  the church authorities of the time were well aware that if they did not give the pagans something to celebrate then they would simply carry on with their own pagan festivities.  My point is, that the midwinter festival is a very old concept, far older than christianity and evolves around the dying of the year and rebirth of the new year as after longest night the days get longer and the sun returns.  In any agricultural community this is always going to be a very important moment and a reason to celebrate.

Ive always assumed the birth of christ was in springtime, if only because we are told there were lambs in the fields.  Now, I dont know when lambs are born in Israel, but in the UK, its usually around Easter time.

Whether Qo'noS has winter, I dont know.  I did look up that information some time ago and found two sites, one said that "Because of the small amount of axial tilt to the planet and because of the high carbon dioxide layer and the greenhouse effect that it creates, there is very little in the way of changes of season on Klinzai". http://www.sector001.com/species/klingons.shtml

another site said the exact opposite, that Qo'nos has a large axial tilt and hence wildly extreme seasons. http://www.holotrek.net/index.php?title=Qo'noS

to the best of my knowledge, neither site is canon and nothing has ever been said about climate or seasons on Qo'noS. However, some degree of axial tilt is likely and hence some variation in weather. It is also likely that those Klingons who farm for a living, would have some sort of midwinter festival... not necessarily anything like ours.  Its also worth mentioning that  the Klingon empire is exactly that.. an empire, made up of hundreds of planets.  Even if Qo'noS does not celebrate a given festival, Klingons living on other worlds might.

[qoSagh]

There was a pretty funny special on last year with Comedian Lewis Black talking about holidays. In that one the idea that Christmas was placed specifically to take the place of Saturnalia was refuted. A Roman Catholic priest was on the show talking about how the date was calculated using an old Hebrew prophecy. I tend to think more favorably of this theory for two reasons, first if the goal were to take over the Solstice, it would have been very easy to simply say Christmas is on the 21st and not the 25th and second, growing up there was no mention of Saturnalia, this theory came into vogue when the neo-pagan resurgence occurred in the late 60's to early 70's and really hit it's stride in the 80's. There is no authoritative source, just some modern writers saying what they think happened.

Granted that is what we are doing here, we are at least all fully aware that we are debating arcane bits of fiction. We are not trying to sell our ideas as revealed truth rescued from the mists of time. Either way, my point was simply that Klingons would be more likely to care about a birthday like Christmas then they would about the Solstice. With Paraborg doing their best to make Kahless into a Christ like figure, perhaps there is a celebration of his birth. I actually used this theory when I was writing a Klingon funeral service for the qaptaQ, the idea that it is not held in the presence of the body right after death but on the deceased's next birthday as a celebration of a life well lived.

[Black Hornet]

Have to disagree, not fiction as written records have survived.

Odin was sometimes recorded, at the native Germanic holiday of Yule, as leading a great hunting party through the sky. Two books from Iceland, the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, describe Odin as riding an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir that could leap great distances, giving rise to comparisons to Santa Claus' reindeer.

Odin's appearance was often similar to that of Saint Nicholas, being depicted as an old, mysterious man with a beard.

According to Phyllis Siefker, children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw or sugar, near the chimney for Odin's flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Odin would then reward those children for their kindness by replacing Sleipnir's food with gifts or candy. This practice survived in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands after the adoption of Christianity and became associated with Saint Nicholas as a result of the process of Christianization and can be still seen in the modern practice of the hanging of stockings at the chimney in some homes

http://www.mysticvoodoo.com/santa-claus.htm

[Kehlan]

In that we were disussing the possibility of Klingons celebrating Christmas, or at least the midwinter festival, YES IT IS FICTION!

The stories of Odin could also be called fiction, or more properly myth and legend... or do you think there really was an 8 legged horse who could leap huge distances?