Friday, December 20, 2013

A Series of Outright Lies About Christmas

rudolph, christmas tree, ornament, red-nosed reindeer, cartoon
Image by Ren Norman
by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust 

There's a lot of misinformation in the world today. Some argue that's simply the nature of the internet and the democratization of information itself. A lot of websites exist to fight the good fight in an attempt to right these factual wrongs and a well-informed public is thankful for them. 

But we're not one of those websites. So with the fundamental ethos of the internet in mind, we bring you A Series of Outright Lies About Christmas.

1) Rudolph's glowing nose is the side-effect of the 52 megaton hydrogen bomb that awakened both him and his sworn enemy, Godzilla.  Since that day, the two have been locked in mortal combat, a struggle so fierce and terrifying that not even Japanese film dares to depict it.

2) Many of our most cherished Christmas traditions come from the now-lost proto-gnostic Gospel of Kringle. The book includes detailed instructions on how to hang tiny decorative lanterns outside one’s hovel and also prophecies the coming of a great snowy man with a corn cob pipe and a top hat despite none of those things existing in the region of Syria where the author lived.

3) The Salvation Army is nearly ready to undertake the armed revolution it has been plotting for 150 years, funded entirely by individual donations to their bell-ringers around the world.

4) The ancient druids believed that the north pole was actually a sacred site where sits the portal to another realm, a world ruled by a white-bearded deity dressed in red, borne upon a flying chariot pulled by nine immortal stags.  This angry god seeks vengeance all, but is unable to enter any home warded by a Fraser fir bedecked with tinsel.

5) Dick Cheney, long before becoming the most evil man in American history, made a run at trying to offer the world an alternative to Santa. Despite making inroads with niche markets who appreciated Cheney's commitment to Machiavellian plotting over the jovial spirit of St. Nick, Cheney was forced to abandon his dream to become Vice-President and the right hand of the Devil.

ebenezer scrooge, a christmas carol, charles dickens, illustration, john leech
Image by John Leech
6) Mrs. Claus has tiny, tiny hands.

7) In 1982, Ebenezer Scrooge of Poughkeepsie, New York filed a lawsuit against the estate of Charles Dickens for defamation of character. He eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and currently resides in a seaside villa on the Pacific coast where he has reported no problems with ghosts whatsoever.

8) Despite the perfect synergy and obvious pun potential, X-Men do not celebrate Xmas.

9) In response to Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, Santa ceased the distribution of coal to naughty children. Instead, naughty children received a sternly worded letter in their stockings outraging Christian political groups who argued that giving coal to children was central to their expression of faith.

10) Santa does not keep an entire population of little people in subjugation, forcing them to craft toys in squalid conditions and brutally making examples of those that step out of line.
 

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

Sebastian Faust is an avowed heretic, armchair theologian, and a self-styled canary in the coal mine of pop culture. He takes life by the reins, bulls by the horns, and tigers by the tail, all while living in Nashville. You can't follow Sebastian on Twitter because he doesn't understand technology. 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  
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