Category: Christmas

  • Your Krampus Weekend Crash Course

    Your Krampus Weekend Crash Course

    Here is your Krampus weekend crash course.. for those who still don’t know.. (And no, not the movie, but the real lure)

    

    Krampusnacht. The Feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated in parts of Europe on 6 December.

    On the preceding evening of 5 December, Krampus Night or Krampusnacht, the wicked hairy devil appears on the streets. Sometimes accompanying St. Nicholas and sometimes on his own, Krampus visits homes and businesses.

    The paranormal should be kept in the season!!

    St. Nick is the patron saint of kids. Krampus is a force children don’t want to deal with.. with whips and punishments!

    The history of Krampus dates back much further than just modern Christianity and movie theater scripts.

    The notion of a Christmas demon has been around for some time.
    And the parables of Christmas showcase how this time of year is a dark and bleak moment before the rebirth and rise of the sun, the solstice where the days begin to lengthen again.. When the ‘son’ is born.

    Some believe Krampus is a pagan character who eventually transformed into the modern Christian version of the devil himself. Pagans today celebrate Krampus with runs, modern festivals, and homages to the night air as it descends over the land.

    Krampus has been the subject of widespread European attention for centuries. Over the past few years he has regained some official authority as the pagan beast of the holiday season because of his reemergence in pop culture and movies that are named after him.

    In some European lure, St. Nicholas and Krampus travel together, judging children as they meet them.

    So today.. as Krampus looms after nightfall, lock up your house tight and hope you’ll hear the bells of St. Nick instead of the chains of the one..the only…Krampus.

  • Santa Claus is real. Period!

    Santa Claus is real. Period!

    We have been hearing some awful rumors lately. .Apparently children are ending their timeless belief in Santa Claus in some big numbers. .

    Perhaps it is the loss of hope. The lack of love.. the dying of light during the darkness of seasons..

    It is unfortunate that so many are losing their age-old eagerness to forgo the earthly credences. Magic used to be alive during this season! You recall, it right?

    You were young once (or are now) ..

    Those childhood moments when the chill in the air felt more like an zealous burst of energy to your soul! When first snowflakes would fall, it would be true seasonal enchantment in the air..

    But we have been informed by sources that overall belief in Santa is hitting an all-time low. Officials report that children, most under 10 years of age, are still able to believe but doubt Santa at a much earlier age as time goes on.

    By 11 or 12, they are completely done with leaving cookies and milk and instead think their parents or guardians leave gifts under the tree..

    Kids even stop giving carrots for Rudolph at an earlier age..

    Hopefully we can out some facts out there about this waning tradition.

    TRADITIONS CHANGE

    So we wrote the intro to this post with some fun.. We know the truth about Santa, as do you .. deep down, you know. You really know.

    You know he is as real as the screen you are reading this on! After all, is anything real?

    But all joking and jest aside, yes.. Santa is real.

    Some facts you need to read

    The USPS believes in Santa.. so he is real.

    Operation Santa, according to the USPS’s site, originated in 1912. About 100 years ago, the USPS started receiving letters to Santa Claus and in 1912, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock decided to allow USPS employees — along with volunteers — to respond to the children’s letters. Now, you don’t even have to physically be at one of these regional post offices to select a letter — you can “adopt” a letter online, write back, and even give children gifts.

    You have to write out a formal address to Santa, which is 123 Elf Road, North Pole 88888. (And yes, you still need to use a stamp!)

    The science

    Let’s cut to the chase..
    Back in 2016, a science video showcased the physics behind Santa and why he could exist.. it is great education!

    Another video from 2014 gave us another very scientific answer as to whether Santa exists:

    Linda Harden—formerly known as The Human Neutrino, outlined her rationale of the existence of Santa Claus:

    No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

    There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear to) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

    Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west(which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding etc.

    This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

    The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

    353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim)would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

    And even paranormal radio hosts got into the mix.

    Back in 2011, Clyde Lewis spoke about a conversation he had with deceased but still famous physicist Stephen Hawking in a show entitled ‘Quantum Santa

    Lewis said,

    The Santa Claus metaphor would mean nothing to most people but to me it struck me as rather odd considering a meeting I had with physicist Stephen Hawking. Hawking spoke to a crowd at the University of Utah in the 1990’s and I happened to know someone who knew his assistant while he was staying in Utah. Upon meeting Hawking I was a little nervous about telling him what I did for a living. I told him I worked in the media and that I was a talk show host and news reporter. He asked me what kind of topics I covered and I told him I talked about aliens and Conspiracy theories. He was not at all critical of my interest in such things and spoke to me about all kinds of possibilities in the Universe.


    He brought up Santa Claus as a model for things that are credulous. However he did make it clear that he was very serious about the issue. He said that in the ether that both Santa and Mickey Mouse can be very real and to a child –the thought is a very powerful agent. Santa Claus is impossible using classical physics, but in a quantum sense Santa can be very real.
    I was completely beside myself, here I was in the presence of a genius and all we could discuss is possible proof of Santa Claus.


    With the usage of paralleled processing it can be theorized Santa has the ability to do the job he is said to do simultaneously. It is done in the same manner as sending an e-mail to multiple recipients at the same time. Years ago this was unthinkable, today in a split second you can deliver an e-mail to millions of people simultaneously without even having to leave your chair. How can anyone track the speed of that? The possibility to us is limited to the technological practice we take for granted.
    There are fewer varieties of toys in the world than e-mail recipients and yet we can’t wrap our minds around the fact that in some future time line the simultaneous appearance of matter cannot be accomplished and yet an e-mail is a thought electronically sent and it is very possible that people in all time zones can receive it.


    Fax machines a rarely used today, but there is an argument that can be made about one piece of paper being inserted in a machine in one place and having millions of copies coming out in offices all over the world received by people.
    Now, if the next logical leap of science is to take that knowledge of parallel processing and bring it out of the computer and into our material world we can now see that the old traditional Santa Claus model is flawed but the new scientific progress can make the new Santa hypothesis closer to reality

    So yeah. All that.

    When the idea of Santa not being real comes up to my now 11-year-old son, I answer honestly. As a matter of fact, just the other night in the car he began to press me hard on whether Santa was real and how he could be.

    I told him the truth, as I know it from research and science: We live in a multiverse. All things are possible and likely. So Santa, in this multiverse, exists as well. Magic is real on Christmas and, even if we don’t see him or he does bring gifts this year, he is very real.

    And by the way.. if he is real, so is Krampus. So be good.. or those ringing bells will bring coal and scorn from the Christmas demon.

    So hear’s to keeping it real at Christmas!
    Magic exists if you believe.
    And since Santa is real, there is no reason magic can’t be either.

  • BLACK FRIDAY AS WE KNOW IT IS DEAD

    BLACK FRIDAY AS WE KNOW IT IS DEAD

    If you went shopping today you may have noticed no lines.

    No excitement.

    No drama..

    No fights.

    And quite frankly no deals–but were there ever deals? It was all fake anyway, right?

    In the end, everything is cyclical–including Black Friday’s demise.

    A few reports for your viewing..

    It’s over..

  • The Christmas of ‘something is missing’

    The Christmas of ‘something is missing’

    I try gauging the mood of the holidays by how happy or not happy my own son is.. Now ten years into life, his belief in Santa is waning–or has waned. At times it feels he is playing along with adults and ponders to himself, “they can’t really believe this, can they?”

    Before bed for the past few nights, Ayden’s normally talkative demeanor in an attempt to say away just a little bit longer has been pushed aside. Instead he seems to be a more pensive, thoughtful, and even concerned young man..

    For two nights now, Ayden told me this before dozing off: Something is missing. When pressed for more information, he simply responded he doesn’t know what it is, but he definitely feels like something is missing..

    IT IS MISSING. BUT WHAT IS IT?

    So he’s right.. In the wisdom of a young child, we can gather some truth..

    For months we have been told that vaccines will work.. scratch that.. boosters will work.. scratch that. The virus is going to rage! And if you are one of the holdouts that still didn’t get vaccinated against COVID-19, the President has a darkly stark message for your: Cloudy with a chance of death.

    The overwhelming majority of school children in my son’s district have been faced with quarantines at a moment’s notice, constant cycles of COVID nasal swab tests when necessary, and the perverse threat of constant violence. Just last week, schools nationwide were in a tizzy over threats of national violence December 17 due to videos being posted on TikTok. It was ruled a hoax, but enough fear was generated to have armed guards patrolling hallways if your local learning centers.

    Kids are taking this all in.

    During President Joe Biden’s death and destruction dark winter warnings today in the address to the nation, he said one thing we all agree on: We are tired of it all. Tired of COVID.. burned out by the constant burnout..

    A few weeks ago when I started warning some family and readers about Omicron, most of the warnings went on deaf ears.

    On my Instagram page, I use images of horror movies often to state messages. For COVID related posts, I use Freddy Krueger. Right as Thanksgiving dinner was still cooling, I posted a warning about what our Christmas plans would involve. Omicron was front and center in my mind, despite health officials today saying ‘we never saw it comin’!’https://www.instagram.com/p/CWtCvILFCNW/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=14&wp=1316&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fcoalspeaker.com&rp=%2F2021%2F12%2F21%2Fthe-christmas-of-something-is-missing%2F#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A7923%7D

    THE KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT

    In January 2021, four out of 10 adults in the United States reported symptoms of anxiety or depression disorder – a 400 percent increase from January 2019. Health care workers are particularly exposed: more than half of workers on the front line could be at risk for one or more mental health problems, alongside the health risks involved in working with COVID-19 patients.

    Children also face a mental health crisis during the pandemic. Emergency department visits by children for mental health issues went up about 30 percent for kids ages 12-17 and 24 percent for children ages 5-11 between March and October of 2020.

    And that was just 2020’s numbers.. Just picture what the raging burnout of 2021 and now 2022 are going to look like..

    This is what the PEW research center wrote just a few weeks ago, now what seems like ages ago before Omicron’s fires began to burn:After more than 18 months of school closures and social isolation, the nation’s more than 50 million public school children are mostly back at their desks. But two months into the fall semester, teachers and students already are saying they need a break.

    The grief, anxiety and depression children have experienced during the pandemic is welling over into classrooms and hallways, resulting in crying and disruptive behavior in many younger kids and increased violence and bullying among adolescents. For many other children, who keep their sadness and fear inside, the pressures of school have become too great.  According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts among adolescents jumped 31% in 2020, compared with 2019. In February and March of this year, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts were 51% higher among girls aged 12–17 than during the same period in 2019.

    It is understandable to be advocating for scientific pathways to end the pandemic, including the use of masks, vaccines and boosters. But we are also apparently ignoring another evolving mental endemic–pandemic perhaps if the same feeling kids in America have end up having in other parts of the world.

    CHRISTMAS OF DISCONTENT

    There are so many negative pieces of information being published across the entire World Wide Web — can we still call it that in 2022??

    But these Debbie Downer headlines are simply … the norm.

    Just this month, along with Omicron headlines, we also faced this impending doom:

    NOT THE FRIES!!?
    SAY IT AIN’T SO JOE!

    It just seems to be a nailbiter..

    We all wanted 2020 to end. We couldn’t wait for the peaceful days of ’21 … seems like ages ago, no?

    As a matter of fact, just one year ago right about now TIME magazine put the famous big X on their cover over 2020. The same X they used for Hitler, Hussein, Osama.. And 2020.

    Perhaps they spoke to soon…

    THE SOLUTIONS TO FINDING ‘IT’

    So Ayden does not know exactly what “it” could be that is missing.. I hope it’s not the Christmas spirit, though personally our family has been dealt a bizarre hand this year. COVID cases within the bloodline, family member dying of other causes.. hospitalizations.. It has been an entire autumn of discontent.

    That coupled with the aging prospects that the vaccine will end the pandemic as the President declared on July 4 when we were all told to take off our masks…

    My son will open gifts this Christmas.. Santa will arrive, even if he does not find credibility in such adult claims. And the movement of one calendar year will go on to the next..

    But will we collectively find what we are missing?
    Or is it so long gone that we can never find it again…?

  • The war on Krampus in Leavenworth Washington

    The war on Krampus in Leavenworth Washington

    IN LEAVENWORTH, CHRISTMAS SKIRMISH BREAKS OUT OVER REBRANDING AND KRAMPUS DRINK CRAWL →

    The real war on Christmas is the war on Krampus!?

    Here is what we know..  A Facebook posting by a Leavenworth restaurant co-owner has escalated into two religion-advocacy groups warning of the “erasure of Christmas customs” and the bringing of “demonic influences” into the tourist town’s annual holiday festivities..

    Costumed members of Krampus Seattle tour Leavenworth on Dec. 4. The Family Policy Institute of Washington took umbrage at the Krampus appearance, calling them “demonic horned half-goat cosplayers.” (Courtesy of Krampus Seattle)

    MORE from the iconic town..

    Charge No. 1: The Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce took the word “Christmas” out of the name for its famous holiday festival. The “Christmas Lighting Festival” was rebranded “Village of Lights,” the term commonly used on travel sites and news stories about the event, although the chamber had its official name as “Village of Lights: Christmastown.”

    Charge No. 2: On Dec. 4, on opening weekend of monthlong Christmas festivities, the town welcomed members of Krampus Seattle. They danced and paraded in their hairy, horned costumes inspired by the mythical Bavarian creature that’s half-demon, half-goat and that punishes those who misbehave at Christmas. The local chamber of commerce even promoted a “Krampus Drink Crawl.”

    According to the Lynnwood-based Family Policy Institute of Washington, headed by Mark Miloscia, conservative former state senator from Federal Way: “At an event that is supposed [to] honor the birth of Jesus Christ, town officials have chosen to include demonic influences … These attacks on Christianity are becoming the norm throughout the country.”

    MORE…

    “What is the unbelievable to me is that Christmas Town USA has decided to replace a family friendly ‘Christmas Lighting’ to celebrate the ‘Village of Lights.’ And this week the Chamber had the audacity/naivety/stupidity to kick off this non-holiday by inviting Krampus Seattle, a group of demonic horned half-goat cosplayers to give speeches at our pavilion and pub crawl throughout the downtown terrifying our children.”

    The Seattle TIMES has the full rest of the story…

  • Old newspapers predictions were wrong on Krampus ‘going out of style’

    Old newspapers predictions were wrong on Krampus ‘going out of style’

    We took some time to look back in history as to how often newspapers of America and the world talked about Krampus during Christmas..

    It was a mixture of mentions, especially tied to St. Nicholas day, and also American reporting on the Austrian tradition.

    A few opinion based snippets talked about how harmful Krampus was to the mind of a child and how fear should be left out of the season..

    In 1935, an AP news report circulated in various city news rags.. this cutout comes from the Pittsburgh POST-GAZETT on December 25, 1935: The devilish Santa was losing is popularity, fake news of the day reported..

    The days of the unpleasant Santa were numbered, the Associated Press reported in 1935–children were so scared they would tremble for days. Authorities condemned him. And his pagan tradition had no place in the season of goodwill, the AP concluded.

    Fast forward to today: Krampus has never been more popular..

  • Happy #Krampusnacht: Keeping the Krampus in Christmas

    Happy #Krampusnacht: Keeping the Krampus in Christmas

    Krampusnacht. The Feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated in parts of Europe on 6 December.

    Some think Halloween is the most paranormal time of the year!!! Tradition tells us, it just begins on Samhain with the ultimate culmination at Christmas..

    x x x

    On the preceding evening of 5 December, Krampus Night or Krampusnacht, the wicked hairy devil appears on the streets. Sometimes accompanying St. Nicholas and sometimes on his own, Krampus visits homes and businesses.

    The paranormal should be kept in the season!!

    Beginning around Halloween, the most paranormal time of year evokes memories from ancient times, pagan festivals, and as we know today, Krampusnacht.

    St. Nick is the patron saint of kids. Krampus is a force children don’t want to deal with.. with whips and punishments!

    The history of Krampus dates back much further than just modern Christianity and movie theater scripts.

    The notion of a Christmas demon has been around for some time.
    And the parables of Christmas showcase how this time of year is a dark and bleak moment before the rebirth and rise of the sun, the solstice where the days begin to lengthen again.. When the ‘son’ is born.

    Some believe Krampus is a pagan character who eventually transformed into the modern Christian version of the devil himself. Pagans today celebrate Krampus with runs, modern festivals, and homages to the night air as it descends over the land.

    Krampus has been the subject of widespread European attention for centuries. Over the past few years he has regained some official authority as the pagan beast of the holiday season because of his reemergence in pop culture and movies that are named after him.

    In some European lure, St. Nicholas and Krampus travel together, judging children as they meet them.

    Even when I was a child in Holy Spirit School in Mt. Carmel, we celebrated St. Nicholas day with style: Kids would put their shoes in the hallway until they heard bells, knowing that St. Nick stopped by and gave candy. IF there was coal? ….a whole other story.

    So today.. as Krampus looms after nightfall, lock up your house tight and hope you’ll hear the bells of St. Nick instead of the chains of the one..the only…Krampus.

  • The numbers: Did we just see the end of Black Friday?

    The numbers: Did we just see the end of Black Friday?

    It is too early to stick a fork in it, but things sure seemed quiet this year.

    Despite previous years’ fights and retail mayhem, we went silent in 2021.. yes the pandemic. We know. But even with that said, a semblance of a return to “normal” tried to occur before the omicron outbreak started in South Africa.. and even with that, these numbers:

    Retail watchers say that the “consumers,” as they refer to the huddled massive of bargain basement shoppers, are starting to browse earlier.. online retail is going to soon far outweigh the brick and mortar..

    Stores being closed had an impact as well..

    On Thanksgiving day, visits to brick-and-mortar stores cratered 90.4% from 2019 levels, Sensormatic found. Retailers including TargetWalmart and Best Buy opted to keep their doors closed to customers on the holiday. Target has said it will be a permanent shift.