It wouldn’t really be Xmas without religious crazies banging their old drum, and this year hasn’t been any exception. As Twitter wisdom will have it, “When somebody tells you you can’t have Christmas without Christ, tell them they can’t have Thursday without Thor” (several sources, original deprecated beyond recognition).

That spurred me to translate this comic I made last year for Danish website fortællingen.dk, when they were running a Xmas countdown: I was running out of time, and as usual in those situations, I turned to Wikipedia (insert picture of puppy-eyed Jimmy Wales here).

I was looking for some information about old Norse winter solstice celebration and its ties to modern Xmas but I had never expected the web of connections that was laid out. You have the comic on the left — or let’s call it a rebus if you like. Anything but “infographic”! — Let’s take it from the top down:

The traditional Norse name for the winter solstice celebration is jól or `ylir, or “yule” in English. Incidentally, variations of those words reappear in some of the many names attributed to Odin, chief god of the Æsir, the old Norse gods. Specifically, the names Jòlnir (Yule creature or Yule man) and Jölfuðr (Yule father).

To an English speaker, the latter’s association to Father Christmas may seem most interesting but to thicken the plot let me add that in my native Danish, Santa Claus is called Julemand. Literally, Yule man, Jòlnir. That’s a funny coincidence, as are all the names referring to Odin’s long beard. Add to that that Odin (as noted in the comic) was also called Óski, god of wishes, and you basically have children sitting in his lap at the department store.

One myth I couldn’t for the death of me work into the comic was the one about the Wild Hunt (also known as the Oskoreia, I’m guessing there’s a linguistic relation to the Óski mentioned above), which in the old Norse tradition was said to be led by Odin. It is the story of a hunting party riding across the winter night sky, and is also the inspiration for the American folk song “Ghost Riders in the Sky”.

Now, Odin would be riding his eight-legged horse Sleipnir through the night, and magical creature or not, the horse would propably need a rest every now and then. So just in case the Wild Hunt would settle for a break nearby, Scandinavian children would leave some munchies for Sleipnir — in their boots, hung by the fireplace. Of course, the All-father Odin would leave a present in the boots, as a sign of his appreciation. Sound familiar? If not, re-read the above replacing “eight-legged horse” with “reindeer”.

But you think I’m sidestepping the modern religious aspect of Xmas? Okay, hang on. I’ll drone on a bit more about Odin but everything will be clear in a second. Odin, you see, was not just a god of many names but also of many aspects. He was the god of battle and victory, of wisdom and magic, and of poetry. The last three are closely connected to his discovery of the runes; like the Egyptian god Thoth, he brought the written word to the world.

To do that, he sacrificed himself, to himself, by hanging nine days and nights on the World Tree (Yggdrasil, see translation in the comic above), and returned from the dead with his new-found gift to the people of Midgard. That ought to ring a bell, too. No? Dying on a big wooden thingy, kind of tree- or cross-shaped? Returning from the dead? He even had his side pierced with a spear, come on…! Okay, now you’re following. Good.

You’ll note the words Sol Invictus at the base of the comic, which refers to the further similarities between the Passion from the New Testament and Mithraic tradition; more about that here! That whole self-sacrifice thing is terribly fascinating but I’ll leave it to your own further studies, with the Sacred Texts version of Kersey Graves’ The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors if you’re so inclined. The rest of the comic is really my own interpretation of the death/rebirth theme, namely that it is a symbol of the menstrual cycle (represented also by the phases of the moon), and in that way directly pertaining to the mystery of life.

The triple symbolism of the Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, and the cross appears to me to refer to the womb; compare the crucified figure of Jesus to a schematic picture of an uterus, the point where he is traditionally shown to be bleeding would point out the ovaries (hands), endometrium (side), and the cervix or vagina (feet).

Still with me? Naw, that’s okay, the last part is just my private crank theory, don’t let it ruin the fine puzzle of mythology that went before for you. I hope you enjoyed the solstice carol, and remember: You can have neither Wednesday or Xmas without Odin!

Illustrations used in the comic:
Odin the Wanderer (1886) by Georg von Rosen
Santa Claus illustration (1881) by Thomas Nast
Odin on the World Tree (really Zombie Jesus on the cross but it was carved right after the Christian conversion of Denmark, so I’m assuming there would have been some confusion at the time!) the Jelling stones
Cristo Crucificado (1755) by Bartolomé Esteban Perez Murillo