The Santa Spanking
OK, OK, so everybody knows that lumps of coal are not a clear enough message for the determined bad girl. Indeed, I’ve been somewhat dismayed to find that even a stocking full of switches doesn’t always lead to a year’s good behavior. Nope, sometimes Santa has to abandon mere hints and get right into the business of delivering a nice clear message to naughty girls:
That oughta do it!
A classic! Thank you for the timely nod to an old favourite fantasy!
David Jones where I live in Sydney has an ad just like this in its window at the moment, although she has a miniskirt on and it’s all sort of “prettier”, being an advertisment and in a public place and all that. (And Santa’s using a sort of golden birch-thing. I wonder what this one is using?). I didn’t have a camera on me, and, while I was thinking of going home and getting it to take a picture for this site, I decided people would think I was a pervert and did not have the courage. Good to see something very similar here anyway.
I thought that historically Santa has some other guy to come along with him to punish naughty boys and girls – that’s what my husband told me, anyway – Peter was the guy’s name or something? (Sorry, a historian’s wife, couldn’t help it).
Amber, the Santa stories vary wildly. I myself haven’t heard of a Santa’s helper to administer the spankings, but I can readily believe that there’s such a tradition out there.
I’ve always been interested in the overlap between Santa’s supposed reindeer and the goats said to pull Thor’s chariot. Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, Blitzen, right?
And Thor’s chariot goats were named Donner and Blitzen — which is to say, thunder and lightning.
Funny how the old myths get recycled into new clothing. There’s a fantasy for you; Thor with his big blacksmith arms puts aside his mighty hammer Mjolnir long enough to grab a short hickory stick and a misbehaving young woman. She’ll know she’s been spanked!
Where did you read that the name of Thor’s goats are Donner and Blitzen? The correct names on the goats are Tanngrisnir (tooth-grinder) and Tanngnjóstr (tooth-gnasher).
Oh, I grok the Thor idea. Very nice! (Though no goats anywhere in the vicinity, please.)
Sorry to put the burners on that rather nice idea, but Thor’s goats were called Tanngnostr and Tanngrisni (variant spellings exist, of course) roughly translated as Tooth-gnasher and Tooth-grinder. It sounds like the ‘Donner and Blitzen’ thing was amended much later by someone who didn’t really know the mythology and/or just wanted Thor’s link to thunder and lightning to be even more obvious.
The paralells and overlaps with Norse mythology do exist, though – one of the three figures that became our modern Santa was Odin himself, hence his appearing with a long grey beard and living in the snowy north, and the link to elves, and his ability to ‘fly’ through the air on his steed(s).
AB and Jimbo are correct, as a few minutes with Google will show. I believe I was having a mixed memory with the idea that in certain Germanic Christmas traditions, Santa Claus rides around in a chariot pulled by two goats named Donner and Blitzen. I read that in a book somewhere, but this website says similar:
“ThorR is always show as large, burly, and red-bearded; flame flashes from his eyes. He walks or rides in a chariot drawn by the two he-goats Tanngnjost (Tooth-gnasher) and Tanngrisnir (Tooth-gritter). It is interesting that in parts of Germany, Santa Claus also rides in a chariot draw by the two goats Donner and Blitzen (Thunder and Lightning).”
http://www.angelfire.com/wy/wyrd/list.html
Is it just me or does that look a lot like Ana Beatriz Barros, of Victoria’s Secret fame?
Whichever, let’s focus on the spanking fantasy here :). *in anticipation of the before the Midnight mass spanking*.
“Knecht Ruprecht” is the dark and scarey assistant to ST Nickolas in southern Germany and Austria areas. St, Nick knows everything, but it is Knect (Or Black Peter as he is known in other areas) who hands out the rewards and punishments. He carries a large sack fuilled with treats for the good children- and a large birch bundle to whip the children who have been naughty. Even today in Austria you can buy a bundle of birches with a red ribbon tied to the handle in shops before Christmas.
On Dec 6th, St Nickolas day, children who leave out thier shoes filled with hay (for the saints donkey)sometimes will get candy in return, and sometimes they will get switches, to warn them that if they do not shape up by Christmas they will only get a whipping and not presents!