The Blindboy Podcast - Boiling Hot Christmas

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

A hot take about the Pagan Origins of Christmas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peruse the eunuch's pool cue you yuletide michaels. Welcome to the blind buy podcast. Lovely feedback for last week's episode where I spoke about sudden mystery arse pain. A lot of people contact me about sudden mystery arse pain to say how relieved they were

to finally hear someone speak about it. A lot of people out there thinking that they were. To finally hear someone speak about it. A lot of people out there. Thinking that they were alone. With sudden mystery arse pain. And I'm glad to have brought. Comfort. To so many of your lives.

This is the last podcast before Christmas. This is my last podcast before Christmas day. It is the 22nd of December. Yesterday was the 21st of December. Yesterday was the 21st of December. It was the winter solstice. Which, you don't notice it, but it's always good news. The old winter solstice. It's always nice to hear.

Yeah, it's welcome news when nature says the days are going to start getting gradually longer. Because, fuck me darkness at half four is the absolute anti-crack not only darkness at half four but like

the sun just behaving like a snaky bastard in general like the December sun even on a clear day and you look at the sun in December and it's just leaning against the sky it's like a shit lamp over in the

corner, that's not what I want out of the sun, I want the sun dangling from the ceiling of the world no lampshade like a big giant student flat hanging right above my head but not in December the sun is just like, I'm just going to lean over here

against the sideboard and give you a big weird lanky shadow at noon so fair play to the winter solstice you glorious cunt but speaking of

Christmas and the few days of leisure that we'll have because no one's going to be going to the pub because it's closing at 5. Due to Omnicron. Or Omicron.

That's the proper name. Omicron. I'm going to call it Omnicron. Because it sounds more like a villain. But yes. I want to recommend some fantastic television. For you to watch. For you to binge on.

Over the Christmas period so if you've been following me on social media or listening to this podcast over the years I never shut up about a TV series called Gamara right because season 5

is just out now, it came out on the 18th of December and I'm watching it at the moment but Gamara is it's an Italian crime series that I'm always urging everybody to watch I suppose it's the hipster in me because the thing is

I consider Gamara to be up there with like the Sopranos or The Wire it's as good as them I don't have a problem mentioning Gamara in the same breath that I'd mention those TV shows but when I like chat to people

who are into like decent box set TV or whatever you want to call it now the box sets aren't really they don't exist there's no such thing as DVDs but when I speak to people who list out like really good bingeable tv series i rarely hear people mentioning gamara and i'm like fuck it you

gotta watch gamara and it's basically it's an italian crime series but it's not about the mafia so when you think of italy and criminals you always think of the mafia but up in naples in northern italy there's a separate crime syndicate called the camara and they're a bit more like street gangs a bit more like u.s street gangs they're not like the mafia and the tv series series Gamara is about them and it's kind of based on real events so Gamara the TV series is based on a book that a journalist called Roberto Savastano

wrote about the Gamara wars in Naples in the 2000s and the reason Gamara is so good is like first off the obvious things the writing is top notch

the acting is top notch the characters are incredible the use the direction is brilliant the visual storytelling the use of music the only setback with it is that it's in Italian

so there's subtitles but you forget about that very quickly because it's just too good. You forget that there's subtitles very quickly. And also, a lot of the storytelling is visual and soundtrack based. The way the soundtrack is used with the story is just excellent tension. And the one thing that sets Gamara apart from other crime dramas that I've seen is if you think of any crime drama eventually the police get involved

so whatever you can think of Sopranos, The Wire, whatever it's goodies and baddies you've got the criminals and then the police become characters and the show becomes about the police trying to catch the criminals. And that's kind of a standard.

Storytelling arc. With any crime drama. Gamara is. The police are there. But they don't feature at all. It's really weird. Also within Gamara. There's not really such thing as.

Goodies or baddies. It's just everyone is varying degrees of badness. And what that does then is it creates this sense of chaos that makes it not feel real. Like Gamara is set in this gigantic housing estate in Naples called Scampia with these massive tower blocks that look like pyramids. And Scampia is a real place. It was built in the 1960s after an earthquake in Naples and thousands of people became displaced.

So the government just built this Scampia place really quickly and shoved a bunch of people out there. Very isolated. They didn't really finish building it even. this Scampia place really quickly and shoved a bunch of people out there very isolated they didn't really finish building it even and the people there were really forgotten and left quite disenfranchised so it became very lawless and the Gamara gangs took over but because Gamara doesn't have the conventional goody versus baddy morality storytelling that you're used to with other crime dramas because it doesn't have that and because the area of Scampia is so otherworldly Gamara ends up feeling like really weird post-apocalyptic science fiction. It doesn't feel real, even though it's based on real events.

So that's my little recommendation. That's my little Christmas present. If you're sitting on your hoop over Christmas going, what will I binge watch on TV because I can't go to the pubs? Get a crack at Gamara. And it's on the streaming service now. Now is the name of the streaming service. It's on now and all five seasons are there.

And just start from the start, go from the beginning. Binge all five seasons because it's phenomenal. That's technically an advert because I told you where you can see it. I mentioned the streaming service now and they have advertised on this podcast before. So that's technically an advert but it's also not because I want to tell you about it anyway.

I've been roaring and shouting about Gamara since 2014 because it's incredible and I don't hear enough people talking about it. At one point a couple of years ago I was talking about Gamara so much on social media that the people who were making Gamara

sent me a chocolate pizza in the post which I've never fully gotten my head around because I suppose it's Italian and pizza is Italian and you can't just send me a pizza from Italy. So they sent me a chocolate pizza in the post.

And I was very appreciative of it. But, I don't know, it'd be like me sending an Italian person a pint of Guinness made out of biscuits. So this week's podcast is going to be festive. I've been asked multiple times, can you do a hot take about Christmas so I'll have a go at doing a hot take about Christmas now me personally I have a complicated relationship with Christmas because I didn't really grow up with Christmas I grew up with like half a Christmas

my dad was. I suppose a bit of a communist. And he really wasn't into the. The commercialism and the consumerism. And the festivities. And the pageantry of Christmas. He viewed it as. Unnecessarily consumerist and capitalist.

So I didn't really grow up with... Like, I didn't have Santa Claus. I didn't get the crushing disappointment of finding out that Santa Claus wasn't real. But I did get presents. So I grew up with, like. The good bits of Christmas. But not the festivities of Christmas. So. We would have all had a family dinner.

Because that's lovely. Because that's just human connection. And eating a nice meal. I'd have gotten gifts. I might not have gotten my gifts on Christmas day. I might have gotten them a few days beforehand. Or scattered all around different days. Didn't have a Christmas tree.

Never grew up with a Christmas tree or Christmas decorations in my house. Except one year. When I was about seven or eight. And I was like. All my friends have got fucking Christmas trees in their house. Can we have a Christmas tree at least? So my ma came up with a compromise. which was utterly bizarre now that i look back but we had a like a plastic palm tree like an all year round little palm tree that was made out of plastic and this looked nothing like

a fucking christmas tree this was like a plastic tropical palm tree that was two foot tall. And my ma put tinsel and one bauble on it. And that was my half Christmas Christmas tree. And the closest thing I had to kind of a Santa Claus mythology was one of my older brothers used to tell me a story about a friend of his. So his buddy was Irish and he was an English teacher. And he'd moved to Japan to do like TEFL teaching, right? And this would have been the early 90s.

So no internet, nothing like that. So this Irish fella is over in Japan teaching English. And he's the only western teacher in the school so all the other teachers his co-workers are Japanese people and in Japan they don't really celebrate Christmas at all so he starts mentioning to the other teachers ah fuck it yeah I'd love to go back to Ireland for Christmas you know but I'm gonna stay in Japan this Christmas yeah i'd love to go back to ireland for christmas you know but i'm gonna stay in japan this christmas but i'd love to be back home in ireland i'm feeling quite homesick so his co-workers decide let's do something nice for the irish lad when he comes in tomorrow

let's put some christmas decorations up around the office and stuff. So that he feels at home. So they do. And then he comes in the next morning. Into the staff room. And big huge surprise. Everyone's cheering. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas.

And he looks up on the wall. And he sees that. Santa Claus is nailed. to a crucifix. And I grew up hearing that story. And I used to think it was hilarious. I used to say to myself, of course, they don't have Christmas in Japan. They probably went and looked into a book. And they're like, all right, okay, it's Santa Claus.

Something to do with Christ. All right, fair enough. N nail him to a crucifix and that was my Christmas story and I loved it I thought it was so funny and then as soon as the internet came about when I was a bit older I found out that's just like a big urban myth

it didn't happen to my brother's friend that's there's multiple versions of that story that kind of went around as an urban myth uh about people in japan nailing santa claus to crucifixes because they'd never heard of christmas it's not true it's horseshit it's a made-up urban myth and that finding that out that was like when other people found out s Claus wasn't real but I did find out one thing about Christmas and Japan that balanced it out a little bit something that's true so Christmas

is recognized in Japan but it's quite different like Japan isn't a Christian country so there's no association with Christ or anything like that. They have Christmas markets. They have Christmas lights. It's like a lovely winter festival that they do. But one thing that's really odd. In Japan. Eating Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas Day is a tradition. And it's an interesting story. So I did a podcast a couple of months back.

About the history of kfc in ireland i spoke about a limerick man in the 70s called pat grace who was a bit of an eccentric individual and he met colonel sanders the real colonel sanders over in canada and he got the franchise for opening kfc's in ireland but when he came back and opened them he then had a dispute with KFC and said fuck ye I'm gonna open my own restaurants but keep the recipe and now as a result Limerick is the only place in the world where you can literally find the original Colonel Sanders KFC recipe and the one that you get in actual KFC is different well Japan had a similar kind of eccentric character

who opened the first KFC franchises there it was a fellow by the name of Takeshi Okawara and in 1970 he opened the first KFC's in Japan but one night

he had a very intenseFC's in Japan but one night he had a very intense dream and in this dream he envisioned KFC being associated with Christmas in Japan and he wrote it down and he embarked on this aggressive marketing campaign in Japan

to get Japanese people to eat KFC on Christmas day and it worked and now over in Japan To get Japanese people to. Eat KFC on Christmas Day. And it worked. And now over in Japan. Millions of people every Christmas Day. Like they book their Christmas dinner. Weeks in advance.

They all get a Christmas. Fried chicken bucket. On Christmas Day in Japan. And they dress up. Colonel Sanders as Santa Claus. Which is particularly funny. Because like Colonel Sanders. Santa Claus. Which is particularly funny because. Like Colonel Sanders is. A rotund.

Older grey haired man. And when you put a Santa Claus costume on him. He looks like Santa Claus. Except he doesn't have his beard. So when you see Colonel Sanders dressed as Santa Claus. In Japan. It doesn't look like Colonel Sanders. It just looks like Santa Claus with a soul patch. And I was asking myself, why is that so silly to me?

Why does that seem so silly and funny? That Santa Claus in Japan, the popular image is as a result of this corporate avatar, this big corporation's avatar dressed up as Santa Claus. And it's actually not that silly because Santa Claus as we know it in the West, that image of Santa Claus was actually constructed by Coca-Cola. Like on Coca-Cola's own website it says, before 1931 there were many different depictions of Santa Claus around the world including a tall gaunt man and an elf that was even a scary Santa Claus. But in 1931 Coca-Cola commissioned illustrator Haddon Sandblum to paint Santa

for Christmas advertisements. Those paintings established Santa as a warm, happy character with human features including rosy cheeks, a white beard, twinkling eyes and laughter lines. So, when I say Santa Claus to you and this vision comes into your head of the big white beard and the smiling face and the red costume, that was invented by Coca-Cola. Like, they didn't invent Santa Claus

Santa Claus is from like the 1830s from the Victorian period and he's based on a fella called Saint Nicholas who was a 13th century Turkish saint but the popular image of Santa Claus was a construction of the Coca-Cola company

this giant corporation advertising bleeding into real life bleeding into the popular imagination of the Coca-Cola company. This giant corporation. Advertising. Bleeding into real life. Bleeding into the popular imagination. Just like Colonel Sanders in a Santa Claus suit. I suppose what I'm teasing at from my hot take

is the complete social construction of what Christmas is. So I suppose the most obvious thing to say about Christmas is it's the celebration of the birth of Christ. Alright? Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day. Fair play to him.

But in the New Testament, the Bible, the New Testament of the Bible, there's actually no date given for the birth of Christ. It's not mentioned. The actual date of when he was born, it's not mentioned. So why do we do Christmas on the 25th of December? So at the start of the podcast I mentioned yesterday, the 21st of December, because it was the summer solstice. And the summer solstice is literally when the days start getting longer.

Today is a little bit longer than yesterday. And tomorrow is going to be even longer. You won't notice it, but that's the case. And that's always been the case. Because that's rooted in observable science. And something that's kind of ubiquitous to all cultures before organized religion. Sun worship, the worship of the sun. Like to primitive societies, they look up into the sky and there's this big glowing warm ball that provides everything.

It provides light, it provides heat and it's clearly responsible for the growth of crops and the health of animals the sun is life so early humans looked up at the sun and said well that's god that glowing ball up there is god it's very important when it's shining bright i'm warm and I've got a source of food. When it's not, when it's black, the sun isn't there, I'm fucking freezing cold and I don't have any food. So as you can imagine, the 21st of December is very, very fucking important. Like we today, we've lost contact with the terror of winter. Like we've got houses and we can keep ourselves warm and we can store food but to primitive societies winter would have been absolutely fucking terrifying you've got your harvest around august and you've got your food stored and hopefully some methods to preserve

food but by the time december gets around you're running out of food and you're very concerned about will there be another harvest is that sun gonna come back strong like if you don't have a solid understanding of astrophysics and astronomy and you believe that the sun is god like what how can you confidently say oh don't worry about it the sun is definitely coming back i know it's winter now but don't worry about it the sun will be back in a few months how do you know for sure you don't so the summer solstice is cause for great fucking celebration because there's your confirmation right there that yeah yeah, the sun is coming back. Like, in Ireland we have this wonderful, wonderful archaeological site called Newgrange.

Because Newgrange is, it's a passage tomb. It's 4,000 years old. It's older than the pyramids. And every fucking year on the 21st of December people go to Newgrange because 4,000 years ago the people that were living in Ireland had built this huge tomb and on the 21st of December the light of the summer solstice shines down this tomb and illuminates a central plate and the ingenuity of that is just incredible to think that 4 000 years ago there was people in ireland who had a sufficient understanding of astronomy to be able to build this giant tomb where the sun only shines down on it and exactly the time of the solstice that's amazing and people are always racking their brains about why did they want this 4000 years ago, what did they do

what rituals did they perform why, why does the sun come down here only at the solstice my guess is fucking paranoia I reckon to the people in Ireland 4000 years ago Newgrange to them was like the most important

scientific centre that they had available to them and what it's doing is testing whether the sun is actually coming back or not like if you're in the middle of December you're kind of running out of your rations

it's fucking freezing cold you kind of better hope that that sun comes back or you're absolutely fucked because another month of that cold and darkness and everybody starves so of course you're going to build this giant place with a shaft

and that on the 21st of December everyone gathers round and if that sun goes through that shaft and the light hits that plate then they can just rub their hands together and go that's it lads the sun is back the sun is fucking back we're sorted another year great and i reckon that's what newgrange is like we know obviously here's this building that can tell when the solstice is happening but we think of it as oh it was this big religious druidic thing

of course there would have been religion around it but i reckon it was a center of science that's science right there this is the most important piece of information that you're going to receive this year the sun is born again and it wasn't just the irish that were doing that the recognition of the summer solstice was something that was happening all over europe all over Europe. All over the northern hemisphere where the 21st of December is the fucking solstice. You have to assume it was happening

in the Americas as well where the solstice was occurring. But then you think of it in the context of Christianity like Christianity comes 2000 years after fucking Newgrange. Like the church clearly. Just picked the 25th of December.

They just picked it out of the air. It's not there in the bible. That Christ was born then. But the early church would have said. For thousands of years. All these people in Europe. Are celebrating the birth of the sun. On the 21st of December.

Let's just pick the fucking 25th. And say that. Christ was born then and Christ is basically the exact same as the son like ye think the son is God this fella here is God he's the son not only is he the son he's his own father he's God and the son and everything he's the whole shebang all at once. It was a corporate branding move. It was a social construct. Like your man in Japan. You know? Okay, people are recognising Christmas.

They're celebrating it. They're going out. How can I get everybody in Japan to also eat KFC on Christmas Day? Better do some strong advertising so that it makes sense. And that's what the early church did. They looked at... The summer solstice was being celebrated all over the gaff. do some strong advertising so that it makes sense and that's what the early church did they looked at the summer solstice was being celebrated all over the gaff let's assimilate the story of christ nicely into these pre-existing traditions so that it's a smooth transition and even today that's

quite nice because if you're not into christianity or you're not into religion in any way, and sometimes this might jar with you if you're celebrating Christmas, celebrate Christmas in terms of the rebirth of the sun. That's still happening. That's a beautiful thing to celebrate. Like I'm legitimately happy that the days are going to start getting longer now. That's something I'm actually happy about and something I'm quite happy celebrating Christmas for that so I'd really like to kind of tease at the roots of Christmas I want to talk about a Roman festival that was before Christmas called Saturnalia which happened around the 23rd of December and the Romans celebrated this and they kind of took it

from another celebration that the Greeks had before this but this was Christmas before Christmas as such and it was for the god Saturn but it celebrated the return of the sun on the solstice. Before I get into Saturnalia let's do a little ocarina pause. Don't have the ocarina, I've got the shaker. Ocarina is missing in action for quite some time. And I kind of wanted a little break from the ocarina and I like the shaker.

So here we go, here's the shaker pause. On April 5th, you must be very careful Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't.

The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? It's the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year.

It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said not real. It's not real. Who said that? The First Omen, only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health,

to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. A much more gentle sound, I think.

So that was the shaker pause. You would have heard an advertisement there for something. I don't know. It's algorithmically generated based on what you search for. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page.

Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This podcast needs to be my full-time job because of the amount of work that's required to put it out every week and the amount of research that goes into it. Thoroughly enjoyable work that I absolutely adore. But if you like listening to this podcast if it gives you a bit of peace during the week if it distracts you if you're consuming

it and enjoying it just please consider paying me for that work that i'm doing all right all i'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month and for that you get four and a half hours of content but if you can't afford this don't worry about it you can listen for free like you might be out of work you mightn't have the money right now you can listen for free that's absolutely fine because the person who's paying for this podcast is actually paying for you to listen for free so everybody gets a podcast i get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model that's based on kindness and soundness. Also the Patreon model keeps this podcast independent. No advertiser can come to me and tell me what to talk about. I get to put out

content each week that I'm genuinely passionate about and that I want to put out. I get to put out the podcast that I want to put out. I get to put out the podcast that I want to put out. Because when you rely upon sponsors and advertisers exclusively, they can change the content of the podcast. They can ask a podcaster to don't talk about this, do talk about that, speak more about this. Can you take that bit out?

And advertisers in general, they're not interested in the best podcast. They're not interested in the best podcast they're not interested in creative solutions they're only interested in making decisions that help their brand and that's no crack for a podcast listener so becoming a patron allows me to have full creative control over this podcast which is the reason you're listening to it in the first place and it means having the agency to turn down advertisers if I don't want to be involved with them and consider all that stuff not just for my podcast but for for any independent podcast that you're enjoying if you're listening to a small podcast

that has one person or a little team of people making it make sure and support those podcasts in any way you can and it doesn't have to be monetary you can share the podcast leave reviews like it all that stuff really helps any independent podcast especially in this new environment this post pandemic environment where small podcasters are kind of being buried by this new glut of large corporate podcasts that has a lot of money behind it and is just hiring big names and no one making the podcast is truly passionate about the content. So please support independent podcasters

within that environment. Catch me on Twitch for my never-ending video game musical. I won't be doing it this week because it's like Christmas Eve so I'm not going to be on Twitch this week I will be on it next week twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast

so in ancient Rome the thing you have to remember with Rome like Rome was like most of fucking Europe Rome lasted for a thousand years it was the Roman Empire was huge the Romans were the ones who crucified Christ

but in ancient Rome there was a festival that happened around from the 17th of December to the 23rd of December so focused around the solstice and this festival was called Saturnalia after the god Saturn

but it was a celebrationalia after the god Saturn. But it was a celebration of, oh, the sun is coming back. And this festival is one of the festivals in Europe that can be seen as a precursor to Christmas. Because it happens at the exact same time. So Saturnalia was, what makes Saturnalia important is it's this festival that lasts like about a week around what we now call Christmas. But within Saturnalia there's a tradition known as the Carnivalesque, right? It was a type of carnival, but what would happen during Saturnalia is the established rules of society would be reversed. So during Saturnalia people were allowed to gamble. People wouldn't work.

People would get shit-faced drunk. People would eat loads of food. People would dress in clothes that were the opposite of their gender. Saturnalia was like a controlled chaos. It was a festival where the people of Rome or the people of the Roman Empire got to go absolutely apeshit for a week and all the rules and regulations and causes of stress in their normal life for the rest of the year, they're gone. Society becomes topsy-turvy for a week. It was mayhem.

Think of it like fucking electric picnic when primary school teachers take ecstasy. What I'm describing there is referred to as the Carnivalesque. And that phrase, the Carnivalesque and that phrase the Carnivalesque comes from a Russian philosopher from the 19th century called Mikhail Bakhtin and Bakhtin developed this theory

of looking at the history of western culture in terms of the Carnivalesque when I say the west I mean cultures that can trace their roots to Greek and Roman ideas, alright, Europe, America, Australia. But with these cultures they tend to be very individualistic and hierarchical. So throughout Western history there's always these

oppressive forces at play. Whether these forces are very wealthy people controlling the poor or patriarchy or heteronormativity hierarchies of power right whether it be the church feudalism the political structure of the roman empire whatever there's always been strict hierarchy of power and that's a western thing and Mikhail Bakhtin his analysis kind of says that the reason that this prevailed is because it's a bit like a pressure cooker that if the people who are being oppressed

under a hierarchical structure are allowed to let off steam a little bit then it doesn't explode and he called this steam the carnivalesque the carnival so throughout all of western culture there's been these feasts and festivals whereby the rules of society are thrown on their heads for like a week you can drink all you want you can fuck all you want you can eat all you want you don't have to go to work and most importantly you can take the piss out of your rulers and it's okay for that small amount of time because one thing that Bacton analyzed in western culture is that

solemnity and seriousness that power structures are maintained by the people in power behaving in a very serious way so whether that be the military religion the roman empire whatever the fuck the people in power have this real performative seriousness that doesn't allow any humor in but during a time of carnival the carnivalesque you canivalesque, you can take the piss. You can take the piss out of those power structures. But once the carnival is over, straight back to normal life. You can't laugh at the king.

You can't laugh at the politician. You can't laugh at the priest. Because the very act of laughter deconstructs their power. Their power is based on a really performed seriousness. Also, Bakhtin states that within carnival and carnivalesque culture in western society the wearing of masks and costumes was hugely important because if you've got some festival where you're taking the absolute pace out of the local king and this is allowed for a week you better do it with a fucking mask on your face or if you want to go to a party and dress in a different gender or if you

want to be gay or you want to be adulterous you do it with a mask on your face so that when the carnival is over you don't get in trouble now why do i know about Mikael Bakhtin? Because when I was doing my master's degree in art in 2015 I was studying Mikael Bakhtin and bringing a lot of his theories into my own work. So when you do a master's in art right as an artist basically what you're doing is you do your art and then you have to show that you can explain exactly what it is you're doing using a lot of research and big words and that's basically it on an academic level so as an example if I appear on television on a dead serious talk show and I'm wearing a plastic bag in my head and I look like a fucking clown but I'm speaking about something that's really, really serious,

like suicide or mental health. But I'm speaking about it with genuine care and compassion. But while doing it, while looking like a clown with a mask on my face, I'm engaging there in a carnival-esque, backed-in type performance art. When the clown speaks with sincerity about something that's very serious that subverts the rules of society in a carnivalesque fashion so that the message actually has a lot more emotional resonance than if I was to obey the rules of society and only speak about mental health while wearing a suit

and performing solemnity now on a personal level I don't think an artist should have to do that I don't think an artist should have to be able to explain exactly what it is they're doing and contextualise it within research or using big words

I think that's harsh shit that's just the that there is the solemn hierarchical structure of academia within art which that was a set of rules i had to play by in order to get a master's degree but the reason the reason i'm saying it is i'm trying to explain the theories of mikhail bactin in order to work towards this hot take about christmas so this festival saturnalia that the Romans had, which was before Christmas, this was straight up carnivalesque.

It was a late December solstice celebration of the sun where for one week the rules of society are turned on its head and the ordinary people who are under the thumb of the powerful people get to do whatever the fuck they want and the powerful people would even participate like Roman generals and powerful politicians will put masks on their face and they would serve their servants like one thing that was hugely important in all carnivalesque traditions was the crowning of a false king. Like within a structure whereby if you have a king in power or an emperor in power, if you take the piss out of

that king or that emperor, you're fucking dead. Except during festivals. Like a good Irish example of this is we have a tradition in Kerry called the Puck Fair, where once a year they catch a wild goat and they put a crown on its head and they declare it the king. We also have Irish traditions such as on St Stephen's Day again down in Kerry there's a thing called the Ren Boys where people dress up in costumes made out of straw or whatever and they cover their faces and they go around in gangs and they call around to people's houses and they drink all the drink in people's houses and jump up and down and sing and dance and subvert the rules of society what

i'm getting at is christmas is a continuation of the carnivalesque the carnival tradition within western culture where it's a little period of time where the rules don't apply but by engaging in it it's also one of those things that keeps the status quo of power in place because we get to let off just the right amount of steam before we return to normality so saturn alia that roman festival as you can, that eventually developed into Christmas, right? When Christianity became a thing, like the Roman Empire became Christian, I think, around the year 300. So Saturnalia is one festival that would have been considered pagan. So anything that isn't Christian would have been called pagan.

So that was a pagan festival for the god Saturn. Then there was a German festival called Yule. You know the phrase Yuletide. Yule kind of developed into Christmas as well. And then there was other Celtic, there was Celtic traditions where cross-dressing again was it was a huge part of this but all of these pagan traditions eventually turned into christmas and these were pagan carnivalesque traditions and why christmas is carnivalesque is because christmas is about the birth of christ all right that's if you think of religion religion

is a very strict like Catholicism Protestantism Christianity the religious structure of Christianity very hierarchical very solemn there's fucking no room for humour within

Christianity it's dead serious throughout the middle ages people being fucking no room for humour within Christianity. It's dead serious. Throughout the Middle Ages people had been burned at the stake for heresy and all these things. But yet during the celebration of Christmas throughout the Middle Ages openly pagan things were allowed.

Like where do you think Christmas trees come from? What the fuck does a Christmas tree have to do with Christ? Nothing. The Christmas tree tradition like do with Christ? Nothing. The Christmas tree tradition, like that's a thousand years old. If you think of pre-Christmas festivities, which had to do with the solstice, the sun reappearing, what people used to do in pagan traditions is they would find an evergreen tree, like a pine tree. Because when you think of winter, it's death. All the leaves are falling.

There's no light. Deciduous trees are dying. So what people would do is they would get a tree whose leaves don't fall off, a fucking evergreen, a pine tree, and they would hang it over their door. So the Christmas tree came from a deeply pagan tradition. a fucking evergreen a pine tree and they would hang it over their door so the christmas tree came from a deeply pagan tradition and you get the this pine tree and then you put baubles on it and they represent fruit so it basically means here we are in december there's no sun there's no crops are growing but we have this evergreen tree with fruit on it with symbolic fruit now that's real pagan but yes it got comfortably assimilated into the christmas

tradition because it's carnival-esque christmas is topsy-turvy the rules don't apply technically that should be blasphemy you're supposed to be respecting the birth of the wonderful Jesus Christ and you're going around the place with a fucking evergreen tree like a pagan so what you find with Christmas when you trace the history of Christmas celebrations as a folk festival

throughout the middle ages throughout these really strict times where to say anything bad about religion is is blasphemy and heresy christmas existed as this tiny little window where the rules got turned on their heads and there wasn't consequences for paganism or for debauchery or for excessive eating or for excessive drinking or for not showing up to work. So basically, what Christmas developed as

was you had all these formerly pagan cultures being overtaken by Christianity and the strict power structure and hierarchy that that brought. But Christmas existed as the carnival period where those people could let that stuff out, could let off that steam, could still celebrate some pagan traditions and assimilate them

and for a blind eye to be turned for a small amount of time. And the thing is, when we think of Christmas today so if you think of Christmas today, Christmas means giving gifts getting together with family, eating a meal that's actually

that only really came in around the Victorian period around the late industrial revolution so before that point in Europe like the 1400s, the 1500s Christmas as it was celebrated by the ordinary people was still very carnivalesque so these people were like agricultural labourers

they lived in villages the food would have been harvested. They didn't have a lot of work to do because it's December and they're agricultural labourers. They were eating the food they'd saved up. They were drinking. They'd go apeshit at Christmas.

And what they also used to engage in is a thing called wassailing, where they, poor people, would, like, just for the period, the 12 days of Christmas, poor people would like just for the period the 12 days of christmas poor people would call to the houses of rich people and bang on the door and start screaming and roaring and demanding food for the rich people and it was all in good fun and the rich people would give them food and the society was flipped on its head for a few days. That was the carnivalesque. But what changed this was the start of the industrial revolution

and the appearance of cities and all the problems that went along with cities and also the amount of people that were in cities. So by the 18th century, now the poor people weren't like agricultural labourers in villages. Now they're workers in factories. And there's loads of them. And with the overcrowding that started to begin in cities around the 18th century,

you start to see the problems, modern problems like addiction, poverty, vagrancy. So now, when a carnivalesque mood happens at christmas and everyone gets shit-faced and now there's hundreds of people in the industrial slums of london now this carnival christmas celebration gets ugly now it turns into a riot now it becomesisocial. So this is where Christmas starts to develop into what we would now recognize as something Christmassy. And it starts with Queen Victoria or the Famine Queen as we call her here in Ireland. So Queen Victoria marries a German, Prince Albert from Germany. So I mentioned earlier a pagan festival called Yule and this would have been a Germanic pagan festival. This is where Christmas trees come from. Like I said the pagans years ago used to

have evergreen trees to symbolize this tree will grow even though there's no sun. So that had developed into Christmas trees with decorations on them. Also, the Germans were big into their Christmas decorations. Candles. The Germans were big into Yule logs. And the Germans were pretty big into a saint from Turkey from the 3rd century called fucking Saint Nicholas who became Santa Claus. So the modern trappings of Christmas, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, giving presents, spending time with family.

That started with the fucking Victorians because Victoria married a German. Then you have books like Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which is very much about charity, stuff like that comes out. So today's Christmas is a Victorian construction. But here's the sadness that I find within it. So as I mentioned earlier christmas was always carnivalesque right the rules of society tip upside down and there's debauchery and madness and then this kind of stops when the victorians come in and it stops around the late industrial

revolution because like i said debauchery in a country village with a small amount of people in the 1500s is very different to the victorian slums where you have poverty alcoholism vagrancy and the modern problems of society and the trauma of society but the thing is christmas still remains as carnival-esque. It doesn't become solemn. Because if Christmas was to become solemn, then it would become purely religious. It would be just about, this is Christ's fucking birthday, go to mass and do some religious shit. Christmas doesn't become that way.

It has nothing to do with Christ. Christmas still is utterly fucking ridiculous like a big theme of the carnivalesque is that the rules of society are turned upside down for a small period and humour and silliness and costumes and all this shit

is a huge part of the carnivalesque so like Santa Claus what the fuck is that he's from the North Pole and he goes around the place with a load of reindeer and he travels into everyone's house in 24 hours and unloads his sack on the end of children's beds. Like, that's absurd. That's utterly absurd. It has nothing to do with Christ. So that there is an example of the carnivalesque. This profound irrationality that's technically blasphemous on Christ's birthday

is permitted and allowed within the new Victorian definition of Christmas. So it's not solemn, it's still carnivalesque. But when it comes to what rules of society get turned on their head in the new modern definition of Christmas, the rules of society that get turned on their head in the new modern definition of Christmas. The rules of society that get turned on their head are the ones that are now created by modern capitalism. So within the industrial revolution, within the Victorian period and the emerging middle class, you have the conditions of modern capitalism. So if you're poor, that means you work in horrible conditions in a factory with no break and you're being absolutely exploited as a wage worker.

And then if you're middle class, maybe you own the factory or you have power within it and now you're pursuing massive amounts of greed. You no longer live in a small village, so you don't really know your neighbours. So you're in a community where you're disconnected from other people around you you're disconnected from your family you're disconnected from your sense of self so that environment is so toxic that what becomes subversive is simply spending time with your loved ones being generous to them enjoying a good meal and not having to go to work

like subversiveness at Christmas in the carnivalist tradition used to mean taking all your clothes off and fucking off into the woods and doing a bunch of pagan shit and taking the piss out of the king and this was allowed that's the whole point of it

that was the nature of a festival but now you think about everything you love about christmas you're seeing your brother who you haven't seen in a year oh my god we're all sitting together we haven't done this in so long you're giving and receiving gifts with people that you love. You're spending time and connecting with your family. You definitely don't have to go to work and your boss is not allowed to call you. Because of wage capitalism, the rat race, individualism, greed, distance that you must travel for work, moving away to work, because of all these things, something as basic as family, compassion and rest is now a subversive act of luxury that you can only do once a year.

So that's my hot take about Christmas. That's my hot take. Christmas still exists as a carnivalesque tradition where the rules are turned upside down and we're given a rebellious freedom for just one week. I hope that made sense because that was an extremely hot take that was an extremely hot take and I hope it was cohesive

and not too far of a stretch have a lovely Christmas enjoy yourself you cunts I'll be back next week I'm signing off now after I sign off I'm going to come back on with my new weekly bit where I show you a song from my Twitch stream.

Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. So this is a relatively new part of this podcast where i i sign off at the end with by showing you a song that i make on my weekly twitch stream and i leave it at the end because not everybody's interested in music and don't want to force it on anybody so basically what i do is

i go onto a website called twitch twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast and this is a live streaming website so once a week i play a video game called red dead redemption 2 live and this is like a digital environment it's a full huge map of the United States in the 19th century. And I just wander around it. But as I'm doing this, in my studio I have live instruments and recording equipment. So I use the events of the video game as inspiration to write and record songs in the moment. And it's a really enjoyable and fun way to make songs because the video game provides this continual

random input that keeps me in a state of flow so I just make up songs as I go along and I don't know what's going to happen next when I'm doing it I'm just consistently engaged in the act of playing it's like I'm playing with fucking Lego and I don't know what I'm going to make I'm just doing it in the act of playing. It's like I'm playing with fucking Lego. And I don't know what I'm going to make. I'm just doing it for the sake of it.

But instead of Lego, it's making up songs on the spot. So I'm going to play a song now that I actually made this last Thursday. The song is called I Was Up A Mountain Tying Up A Priest. Because in the video game, I was up a mountain on the video game and there was a priest he was preaching, he was talking shit so I tied him up and put him on the back of my horse and as that was

happening, it kind of inspired a song in the moment so what I'd do is you can go to twitch.tv forward slash the playing by podcast and you can even see me making this song actually. You can go, last week's full stream would be up. The song would have taken about 20 minutes to make live.

And then what I do is I cut it down to three minutes here. So that's what you're being played is a three minute version of this. But this song was 100% made up on the spot. I had the music the lyrics and I used the video game to inspire what those lyrics will be so here you go I was up a mountain tying up a priest I'll catch you next week If you see me on my horse And there's a priest tied up on the back of it Will you tell the guards? Will you run away and tell the guards?

I'm gonna have to shoot you I'm gonna have to show you I'm gonna have to kill you dead the wolves are coming for me the wolves are coming for me the wolves are coming for me they can smell that priest on the back of my heart they can smell his dead body cause I was up a mountain tying up a priest I was in the mountains

tying up a priest and I put his body on the back of my heart I was in the mountains, tying up a priest. And I put his body on the back of my horse. And I put his body on the back of my horse. I was in the mountains, tying up a priest. I was in the mountains Tying up a priest And I put his body on the back of my horse And I put his body on the back of my horse I was in the mountains

Tying up a... And I put his body on the back of my horse And I put his body on the back of my horse I was in the mountains Tying up a priest I was in the mountains, tying up the breeze. I was on the mountains, tying up this breeze. And I'm on my way Thank you. Terima kasih telah menonton! Thank you.