NorsePlay.

  Every winter holiday season the memes roll out about Thor & his goats or Odin & Sleipnir as being the ancient origins for Father Christmas & Santa Claus and his reindeer. As easy a parallel as this is to make, many academics & others will tell you it's not true. As per the principles of NorsePlay, I would instead point out how the conversion process is being reversed in this possible bit of internet fakelore in favour of Heathenry. Given the two millennium long ownership of the winter holiday by monotheism in a long-game squatters' attempt to make Midwinter their own, the fact that these memes have become this annually re-occurring viral posting shows that the conversion has ultimately failed in terms of this re-connective & wanted polytheistic desire behind them (though always remember, there's room for everyone at this deep Winter feasting table, and no one can actually "own" a season -- it's everyone's). The simple cut & pa...

I probably should've posted this awesome Yule Log cake last week for those of you who mark Yule with the Winter Solstice, but this also pushes it forward for you others who re-stamp the 25th, or go by the lunisolar calendar. Anyhow, whenever you celebrate (heck, why not pick all of the above?), NorsePlay wishes you a Good Yule! [super realsies Yule Log Cake made by Heather Baird.] #     #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in  the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires'  Norse Gods and Giants  at age seven. Since t hen he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the  Map of Midgard  project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay.   If you have e mployment/ opportunities in  investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer,  do contact him .

Within the last episode of Brute Norse  there's a passage that before the Victorian livingroom global takeover of the Yule Tree (which may anyhow reflect & echo the far earlier interior hall tree from  The Saga of the Völsungs  with its sword-gift stuck in it by Jólfaðr [Yule-Father] Odin) there was an amazing Scandinavian tradition of assembling huge beautiful straw mobiles that were geometric cosmological models of the universe that would gently turn in the drafts from outside and the fireplace from the ceilings to admire over the winterbound nights : The above's a Norwegian Oro, while below's a Swedish Halmkrona: There are many other-regional variants from the Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, and more, so it was a rather widespread to Eastern Europe & Russia, and where it came from is anyone's guess, but that it got adopted, stuck, given a magical/representational meaning, and produced such craftworks of beauty seems totally worth re-adopting...