it's really amazing how people won't get their head around it - total denial, but it's really because we're so hopelessly colonized by christianity.

"santa isn't a german god. no. it's saint nicolaus."

right.

listen - you don't need to get into this argument about whether it's saturnalia or yule, because they're actually the same thing. the romans are thought to have separated from the celts around the la tene period, and moved south from switzerland into italy. that's right - the romans had a german ancestry, and were ultimately created in the same way they were destroyed. like a snake swallowing itself whole? i dunno. but, i know that it's very well understood that the indo-european religions were all essentially the same, so when we see romans and germans doing essentially the same ritual at essentially the same astrological event, deep into antiquity, the conclusion one ought to draw is that the traditions had a common origin.

and, this tradition is not historically related to christianity, to judaism or islam - but it is related to the eastern religions, one example being hinduism. and, to understand santa claus, this is the tradition we need to look most directly at - not christianity, but hinduism.

for, everybody knows that shiva enjoys a nice glass of milk, when presented.

think about what your kids are doing for a second when they leave out milk and cookies for santa. what they are doing is offering a gift to the german god odin at the solstice, in hopes of receiving something in return. and, it wasn't that long ago that this was done by adults, who took the whole thing very seriously - as hundreds of millions of hindus in india do, still, today.

a christian holiday? hardly. that's as pagan as pagan gets.

so, how did we get from a sombre gemanic ritual, which certainly included blood sacrifices, to an infantilized, benign action involving flying reindeer and cookies?

the christian colonization of northern europe.