How Long Does the Santa Claus Live?

Santa Claus or Joulupukki as I know him in my own Finnish language has been a continuing presence in my life since my birth during the 1950s in Lapland, Finland. I am a Christmas child myself who was born in a city that resides both the Santa Claus’ Main Post Office at Napapiiri at the Arctic Circle and the long tradition of tourist industry around Santa/Julupukki, including the official University courses in Elf Profession. Just check here to believe it. I am not telling you fibs.

Once in a while, or quite often actually, researchers do tell you that Santa is a lie, check in here and if you still have doubts here it is in Finnish. Every now and then we are also reminded that adults think too much. I mean in no respect to demean the two articles presented here but I am convinced that whatever we believe does construct our reality, including the metaphysical reality of Santa. Check my previous 2010 posting here about what is the history of the Santa tradition I believe in.

This year, like every year, it has come to pass that people are considering Santa and their Christmas traditions, including its political correctness and the commercialisation surrounding the modern practice of giving enormous amounts of presents to everyone. It boosts the economy, say the economists and many, if not all the shops rely on their Christmas sales to cover much of their yearly expenses. This makes it understandable that we keep on staring the Christmas markets earlier and earlier in the year. And who wouldn’t like to boost the economy? Or maybe not.

I live in Australia and find that the Christmas for me starts with the decorations at the shopping center, because otherwise, it is summer. The season comes as a great contradiction to my birth home of Rovaniemi, where the winter snow falls plentiful and it is freezing cold. In Australia, in the heat and the sun, it is quite hard for me to think about Christmas in the way I used to as a child. Now my traditions much come from having fun with the grandchildren and imagining with them how Santa would ride the skis from Lapland to deliver the presents Downunder.

My grandchildren know very well, where the line of the fairy-tale and the reality lies. They think that it is ‘cool’ that they, for example, know exactly where the North Pole is: that it is at Rovaniemi, Finland. And why do they know is because they have been there themselves. My six-year old granddaughter insists on this. “Mummu, I have actually been there twice.” There is no buts about it. She does not think about it philosophically, or in any metaphorical way. For her North Pole is where the Santa lives and because she knows the Santa, Rovaniemi for her is the North Pole. It is possible for children to think about Santa philosophically as well. At the age of five, my elder son asked me how long I thought Santa would live and when I answered: “As long as you believe in him”, he immediately said: “Oh, just like God!” That was also clear at one go and the end of the discussion.

Oh no, my granddaughter thinks about it all as a great potential for performance. She needs the right costume, and the right music and the right atmosphere and we are on. This will be the best Christmas ever performed. I bet it will include the music from the movie Trolls as for her it is the best dancing soundtrack possible to imagine.

The other way, I get my Christmas spirit rising is through technology and internet. I plan on talking to my family situated around the world, especially the other granddaughter in London. We are planning on maybe decorating our Christmas trees together, at the same time, through connecting on Skype. At least we will build Lego Christmas decorations together in our weekly get-togethers. We will show and tell about all the little decorations I have collected and placed in our tree. They come with different memories of my family for generations. Before this tree decorating used to be on the 13^th of December, because the Saint Lucia’s Day was my mother’s day. The family tradition carried to us from Sweden through the WWII when my mother was a refugee as a child there. We remember, I can tell it all to my grandchildren in my mother tongue, in Finnish.

This year, though, like last year, my grandchildren are in a hurry, and so am I. So, we might decorate the tree during the first week of December, already. The artificial trees that last and last make this longer season possible. The positive part is that we can even choose the colour of the tree as we fancy. This year it will be black. And from there on, sitting quietly, watching the lights on that tree reminds me of the Christmases past, present and the future. Baking cookies and the Karelian Pies with kids makes my Christmas real.

Our Christmas or Yule/Joulu traditions as I say it in Finnish might change and adjust into new technology, new environments and blend with new traditions. Still, for us the message of Santa remains the same: compassion, kindness, light, fun and caring. To me, it is no lie, it is a reality worth sharing with my family and friends and passing on to children and grandchildren.

If the spirit of Santa grows into a figure of a jolly old man or a strong grandma like woman, it might not be so bad to imagine that it is the spirit of the ages, all the good parts from Odin to St Nicolaus and many other unimaginable realities blended together into a consideration of others and their plight. It is not always about us. Mostly it is about the truth. So, how long does the Santa live? I still say that wherever or whenever you are, it depends on your own capability to imagine.

Amongst the Childhood Memories; Christmas Characters Re-visited

Christmas is fast approaching. It is clearly evident that the shopping centers are starting to prepare earlier and at the same time people are too busy to notice and start thinking about it later and later. This is just the best time for the storybook characters to appear in their fancy best.

So, I found this Facebook page called 'Make your profile picture your favorite character until Christmas' and I 'liked' it. It was actually for the last year but who cares. This is cool, I thought and the next thing would be actually to do it. The picture attached to this posting shows where I have come to. My choice for this year will be the White Rabbit dressed as a Christmas character. I actually met him at the local shopping centre and was able to be photographed with him.

Steps to take when choosing your favorite profile character until this Christmas

1. Overall attitude

The first step is to decide if you like a traditional or recently created popular character as a favorite. Are you a traditionalist or a modernist? In the world of possible characters it makes a big difference.

Traditional characters for Christmas time would enhance the compassionate attitude of the season. Then you could also go for the quirky, or you could go for the elves. That would be enhancing the fun of the season. There is also the 'creepy' way.

My choice of the White Rabbit dressed as a Christmas character is somewhere between, a traditional storybook character with a quirky look about him. Mr Carroll could approve that, I think.

2. Following the times or maybe not

Step two is deciding do you what to follow the times or do you want to keep to the old look.

Sitting in a cafe at my local shopping centre observing this year's children's storybook parade I noticed that the characters walk much quicker than before.

The Loony Toons characters that marched past us were very agile. They are also taller and more streamlined and they have long skinny legs. No wonder that they can dance and sing and jump around the stage like anything. The other storybook characters were clearly influenced by Dr Zeuss characters or by the latest Christmas films.

The most alarming observation in my mind was that the Mother Santa and all her elves were so small and skinny. She wore high heals to boot. OMG, I say. They were cute, though. The tiny elves with skinny, skinny legs all dressed in green and red. On the positive side, the number of the little elves has grown. Instead of one round Santa and an elf, there are huddles of them all around the shopping place, including the Cat in the Hat and the Chrich.

Going with the flow is my choice. It allows for full enjoyment of all the new that has been created and lets you be inspired by the moment. If the old is reinvented, all the best for that, too.

3. Being charmed or not

The third step is to decide if you will be charmed or not by this new development.

So, I chose to be charmed by the crowds of tiny Helpers and Storybook Characters. For my favorite character I had three contestants, namely the Moomin Mother, Mad Hatter and the White  Rabbit.                                      
          
                                                           

   

It was a tough choice until I met the White Rabbit in person. This is a point for direct marketing, I was immediately persuaded.

Merry Christmas Season to Everyone! Let's be compassionate in small things as well as the big ones this year!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Contemplating Motherhood

On Mother’s Day

I never was a great believe in the Mother’s Day. I always thought that celebrating Mother for one day, when 364 days a year the mothers of the world were treated badly really wasn’t a celebration. I preferred the International Women’s Day on March the 8th because it highlights the importance of our work for building equal relationships between the sexes in our society. My view of Mother’s Day has been impeded by my knowledge of the inbuilt violence against women in our society, but it has grown on me. I am clearly thawing. It is the grandmotherhood that is doing the job of making me see the more positive side of the Mother’s Day celebration.

Do not take me in the wrong way. I have enjoyed many Mother’s Days. In fact my first Mother’s Day as a young mother was when I came home with a new baby boy. I have also instigated a tradition of buying pyjamas to everybody to celebrate Mother’s Day. It has been fun. I have enjoyed sending cards to my own mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother. I was aware that they clearly felt that this day was an important achievement and I have always respected their views. But that time when my daughter gave a Mother’s Day Speech at the Finnish Society’s Mother’s Day celebration a few years back started the thawing process for me for real. And then of course she gave me my first grandchild and my son gave me my second one. That got me researching about this phenomenon called Motherhood.

Biological considerations on motherhood

By interpreting what the brain research during the last 20 years says, I can quite confidentially trace my grandmother’s urge for compensate emotional strain by retail therapy to her mother. My greatgrandmother had lost two babies before giving birth to grandmother. This experience of deep loss had left her emotionally incapable of connecting with the new baby, cuddling her or smiling with her. That caused grandmother a lasting trauma.

According to the brain research, it is the right side of our brain that has the primary capacity to understand and regulate emotions (McGilchrist, 2010). The left side interprets more mixed feelings. A baby stores the face of the primary carer to the right side of the brain. The more we, mother or carer, adore them, interact with them and cuddle them,the more their capability for empathy is developed (Szalavitz and Perry, 2010). According to the most confirmed research done with rats, the way we nurture our young will choose the DNA pathways that determine how we and the generations after us nurture our young.

But all is not lost to biology as according to research we choose the best of the best by mirroring the carer that has nurtured us most as babies. So, interpreting this research leads me to conclude that my grandmother chose to mirror my greatgrandfather, who at the time, instead of greatgrandmother had the capacity left to adore her, cuddle her and think that she was the best. Due to this emotional interpretation she then in her turn adored my mother who then adored me. This was enhanced by my father adoring me as well as he thought that I along with my sister was the best of the best. Following this lead, I of course loved my babies ‘to bits’ and my kids with the help of their spouses love theirs the same.

This according to grandparental investment theory leads to the best possible way for our survival as a family (Coall and Hertwig, 2010). So, why wouldn’t our brain, after a long generational left brain preferred functional interpretation of the pieces of information coming from the whole reality of the right brain knowledge come to the logical conclusion that a day called Mother’s Day would be the best representation of the culmination of this development. That is that on one particular day all primary carers called Mothers in different languages should be celebrated as tokens for this empathy development in our society. This decision of course mirrors the similar logical process by which Alexandra Kollontai and others determined that March the 8th would be the International Women’s Day in rejection of the Mother’s Day celebrations that did not feel politically correct for them. This is of course why we now have a Father’s Day, a Children’s Day and as many token days as we care to celebrate for any reason what-so-ever. They are not the reality but bring the thought into focus for a time, just like our left brain likes it.

Mother’s Day as a cultural statement of intention

To me Mother’s Day as such has not been real. It has lacked consistency in mirroring what really is the daily life of a mother. I can see it as a statement of intention in relation to what would be ideal. However, we are nowhere near there. But as with the idea of Santa Claus as a representation of goodwill in society, the idea of Mother’s Day as representing how we would like to treat all the mothers of the world, every day, is a valid ideal.

When looking at the history of Motherhood, it can only be said that there is a huge lack of sources and materials from where to look for the record of the concrete experience of motherhood in our culture. Across the cultures, through the history, women have been described as ‘made for motherhood’. They are essentially mothers by virtue. According to available sources all women were born to motherhood (Vanderberg-Daves, 2002). Much of these sources are religious statements on Virgin Mothers of various religions as a picture perfect ideal of womanhood. For a long time this distorted picture has determined motherhood as ideal womanhood.

The other reality for women comes from the statistics of domestic violence across the cultures. For me, as a researcher who has researched violence against women for decades and as a result has at times been totally disillusioned by the utter horror of it all, Mother’s Day celebrations seem a little bit too small as an effort to bring the inequality of the situation into focus. However, I am now warming to the idea. As a historian of ideas, I do recognise that it takes centuries to bring an idea to reality and 99-years of Mother’s Days and about the same amount of the Women’s Days is really a short time.

This year I will happily accept the flowers for the Mother’s Day. In fact I’ll buy the Tulips all on my own. I will also go and get myself a Whipper Snipper to ensure that these flowers will keep growing in my garden for the sake of motherhood and grandmotherhood as a cultural statement of genuine change in the world for more empathy in humanity.


References:

COALL, D. & HERTWIG, R. 2010. Toward an integrative framework of grandparental investment. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 40.
MCGILCHRIST, I. 2010. The Master and His Emissary; The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World, New Haven and London, Yale University Press.
SZALAVITZ, M. & PERRY, B. D. 2010. Born For Love; Why Empathy is Essential - and Endangered, William Morrow, Harper Collins Publishers.
VANDERBERG-DAVES, J. 2002. Teaching Motherhood in History. Women's Studies Quarterly, 30, Fall, 3/4, 234-255.

Celebrating Childhood Memories Contemplated in the Light of Sciences and History of Ideas Versus Modern Film and Literature.

“A history of science is rich in the example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate context for a pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.”
(J. Robert Oppenheimer)








For the last week on Facebook (FB) people have been celebrating childhood memories. FB users have been encouraged to change their profile to their favourite childhood characters, either from literature, art, films or cartoons and such. Many of my friends have taken up the challenge. I have had a number of interesting discussions about our memories with my colleagues and friends, starting from “I don’t remember any of my toys or characters” to “such a wonderful childhood we had!” My friends are displaying a variety of characters on their profiles. I am noticing some culturally bound adaptations, though. But apart from that, this great multiplicity just proves that as people are individual as personalities, so are their childhood memories as represented by the characters they choose.




Lately I have also been reading a lot about the function of the brain and neuroscience in how our worldview keeps changing in accordance of how we experience our reality. Applying my new knowledge on brain neurons and their effect on our development and the role of childhood memories on our lives I am asking myself how the childhood characters we grew up with have influenced what we have became as adults.

I would say that over the years of maturing I have moved from Astrid Lingren’s Pippi Longstocking and Tove Janson’s Little Myy (because of the Finnish voice of the actor) combined with Mary Poppins as a movie character as my most memorable figures to Moomin Mum’s contemplative approach and Mrs Banks’ determination to save the world. However, much of it is still in relation to yet another memorable character, namely their ‘bag of tricks’.




I distinctly remember that sequence of the Mary Poppins’ musical where Mary opens her bag and takes out the lamp and other furniture to decorate her room. This similar scene was nearly copied by Hermione, in the last instalment of The Harry Potter movie series, where she opens her small beaded handbag and takes out the whole tent and camping equipment. I particularly have always admired the Moomin Mom’s handbag, where she finds what is necessary to fix anything and everything from sorrows to fun. Pippi’s bag of gold coins given to her by her father is the strait forward, no nonsense, representation of the modern world where money can short-circuit a lot of efforts for survival. No magical trick needed except for perhaps the adventurous spirit to find a historical shipwreck full of treasure. This kind of endeavour might not prove to be an easy task any more in the world where everything is already mapped quite extensively.

However, the bag of tricks remains in my mind a metaphor for daring to reach into the subconsciousness and look for out of the box ideas for new approached to solving problems presented to the world we live in.

It was a wonderful week to focus on such things from the childhood memories point of view. Now that Christmas is coming we might find a new ways for compassionate attitude to spread around the world. Here are some references on Pippi Longstocking you might be interested in:



Gaare J and Sjaastad Ø. 2002, Pippi & Sokrates, Filosofiska vandringar i Astrid Lingrens värld. Smedjebacken, Sweden. Natur och Kultur

http://www.dannelseskaravanen.dk/int_conference/socrates_pippi.htm

http://www.paideia.org/docs/research/AnnPihlgrenDissertation.pdf

Enjoy!