Santa Clause is famous for his bag of gifts, sleigh, and eight reindeer, along with his long-white beard and festive outfit. His origins as a character stretch from the god Odin and his many-legged horse, to European traditions of a more saintly Father Christmas, to shamanistic culture with its fly agaric mushrooms, hallucinations of flying animals, and elves. But Santa is changing. Movies like Violent Night, Fatman, and even Bad Santa are altering our cultural tradition, turning benevolence into malevolence. Likewise, movies such as Krampus or Mean One are turning malevolence into a glorified thing. This means that our ideas of what is Naughty or Nice have also been altered, resulting in a distorted version of reality - an inverted and imbalanced reality.

Shamanism dives into these upside down realms. It preserves a wealth of mysticism and mythology, and is partly responsible for our general Christmas traditions. Shamans have always been deformed, crippled, or mentally damaged individuals who have gone into another world and brought back helpful knowledge. Our governments shares in these qualities; they are crippled, suffering from dementia, brain damage, physical ailments, etc. They visit the other side and commune with therianthropes like Krampus and then return not to help their people, but to whip them into servitude for being Naughty. Virtually everything our government tells us is a fabrication, a delusion, a hallucination, as if they are all taking mushrooms as they consult their experts.

The idea of Santa Claus can also be found in our governments. Government officials, who supposedly represent the people, live wealthy and extravagant lives equivalent to some mystical character living at the North Pole, except they’re in Washington DC. Every year we are asked to believe in their power, told that if we are nice citizens instead of naughty ones, and that if we vote the right way, we will be rewarded. Government hands us a few dollars of ‘free’ money that isn’t free and tells us it’s a gift, while keeping the rest.

But the way that most government officials act is more akin to the Grinch. The Grinch is a trickster who takes presents to destroy them, or rearranges the order of who receives what - this is much like the Lords of Misrule during the Roman Saturnalia. Ultimately the Grinch hates Christmas and wants to destroy it, not understanding the deeper meaning behind the gifts and lights and decorations. Government officials act very much the same. They seem to hate America and it’s past, not understanding that America is more than wealth and abundance.

Everything good, decent, moral, and worth anything of value has been put on the Grinch’s sleigh and taken to the top of Mount Crumpet where he plans to dump it. Krampus, on the other hand, delivers what has been earned - what we deserve - and that is a big bag of coal.