The Christmas holiday is a time of joyous celebration, wanton spending, and overall merriment, but most people don’t understand the strange underpinnings of this special time of year. I’ve recently done some research into the matter and have come to the conclusion that Christmas is a scary holiday.

 

Now it’s time to pass that feeling of unease onto you! Here are six little-known points that should make you feel as uncomfortable as I do during this holiday season… enjoy.

 

#1. The basic concept of Christmas is completely insane.

 

The core theme is the act of an immortal, magical fat man breaking into your house… and you’re completely OK with it. In fact, you want him near your children.

 

 

To prove my point, let’s swap out Santa with another magical fat man; former President, William Howard Taft.

 

 

#2. The elves in Santa’s workshop are a form of slave labor.

 

 

 

They’re a captive work-force with no means with which to unionize or voice their complaints. If that isn’t slave labor, I don’t know what is.  Oh, and being fed to the Santa-beast isn’t fun either.

 

#3. Christmas is a Frankenstein type creation of early Christianity.

 

It blends several old-world traditions in an effort to appease all of the religions that Christianity was absorbing at the time. Some of these pre-Christian traditions involved human and animal sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, protection from the gods, etc. Several of these “ornaments” were placed on, you guessed it, little pine trees.

 

Today’s Christmas tree.

 

 

The Christmas tree of yesteryear.

 

 

#4. Santa rolls with a posse.

 

Santa has several companions that typically accompany him, depending on what lore you read. They range from the kind, although slightly racist, Zwarte Piet to the enigmatic Belsnickel. I am sure that Santa has assembled this team of specialists to achieve his real goal; robbing banks and stealing priceless works of art.

 

 

#5. The Krampus.

 

For those of you that don’t know, the Krampus is a demon-creature that follows Santa around and punishes wicked children. These children are stuffed into the Krampus’ sack where he does God-knows-what with them. It is assumed that he takes them back to his lair to eat their sweet, sweet bone marrow.

 

 

They say you can judge a man by the company that he keeps. I’ll be avoiding any magical fat men this year if it means that I won’t possibly end up as beef jerky for some awful demon thing.

 

#6. There’s a good chance that Santa is, in fact, Odin.

 

That came from this…

 

 

That’s right, Santa is based largely off of the Norse god of war, battle, victory and death. As old Norse tradition goes, Odin would lead the great Yule hunting party atop his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, and children would place their boots, filled with sugar and hay, near the chimney for Sleipnir to eat as he soared overhead. Odin, thankful to the children, would then put gifts or candy back in the empty boots. Do you see a parallel yet?

As a side note, Odin is Thor’s dad. That means that the god of thunder has to call this guy, “daddy.” I’ll spare you the details about how awesome Odin is, but let’s just say that if he carried a wallet there would be a “He-Man Badass Club” lifetime membership card in it; the wallet would also have, “Bad Mother F*cker” written on it.

THE END.

P.S. Have a merry Christmas!

 

P.P.S. Don’t piss off Santa-Odin or the Krampus will f-ing kill you.