Sleipnir


 Friday, December 16th, 2011

   Santa Claus is an interesting dude by any standard.  He has 31 hours to work with thanks to the rotation of the earth, and in that time, he is able to visit 91.8 million homes (822.6 visits per second) across a distance of 75.5 million miles carrying roughly 321,300 tons of presents (one gift for each good child).  AND he gets pulled by only EIGHT reindeer (with Rudolph thrown in occasionally).  If this were an average sleigh with regular-grade flying reindeer, they would absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION JOULES OF ENERGY. Per second. Each. The average flying reindeer would be vaporized in 4.26 thousandths of a second, creating a deafening sonic boom in its wake.  Santa, on the other hand, would be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A svelt 250 pound non-magical grade Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

    That sounds awesome right?  Not even CLOSE!  Thanks to a startling revelation by Mr. Alex Torres* I've managed to muddle some details about something even more awesome. It appears Santa has become somewhat watered down.  Back in the Germanic, gothic days of the 1800's, they celebrated the Yule (from which we get Yuletide and the Yule log**).  If there were a Winter Warrior's Holiday, Yule would be it.

    You see, in the Germanic areas, Santa Claus was influenced and based on the figure of Odin. Just to keep you up to speed, Odin is the Gandalf-looking, magic hat wearing super awesome Norse God. For one, he took his eye and placed it at Mímir's spring in order to gain the Wisdom of the Ages.  That's so awesome I don't even know what it means.  Odin-Claus also shape-shifted into animals and wielded Gungnir (the swaying one)a powerful spear with which he will one day use to defeat the wolf Fenrir.  Or something.

    Bringing Odin-Claus back around to the holidays, he rode an eight-legged warrior horse name Sleipnir (meaning the slipper).  Odin Claus generally rides Sleipnir to the underworld. In the Germanic era, Odin rode Sleipnir during Yule. Children put a shoe near the chimney with veggies and sugar cubes for Sleipnir***, who then filled the shoe with candy in thanks whilst Thor's pop dropped presents.  In those days, I bet kids got awesome stuff like suits of chain mail or enchanted maces or something. In any case, shoes are still left out in Germany, while here in the U.S. we hang stockings.  Again, for comparison, Odin-Claus = Shoe for magic horse that rides to the underworld, Santa = Old Socks/stockings left to dry by the fireplace.

     So, in closing, given the choice between putting out man-shaped cookies so a jolly guy in a red suit from my soda popcan trundle in, munch a bite or two from my baked goods, and drop some packages under a tree OR putting veggies out for Odin-Claus, a Gandalf-esque warrior magician wielding a magic spear and riding an eight legged superhorse to the greatest battles ever told, I think I'll back the fella' that leaves a couple extra cookies in my jar.

Probably safer anyhow.

Anyway, my magic bag has donuts in it! Enough for every single employee!****  Enjoy!

*please disregard historical inaccuracies
**Yup. A big, dense log. Burned at Yule.
***Do not attempt
****no shoe vegetables are required for this gift.

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