There are two named individuals known to live at the North Pole.

December 24, 2023 10:44 AM

"Something’s off about this story." What's going on with Santa Claus and the northernmost tip of the Earth? Sam Kriss (previously) explores. (SLMedium)
posted by doctornemo (14 comments total)

What an excellent writeup. I'd love some sourcing on a few claims, and the side-step to speculation is a little jarring, but still, the conclusions are at least a bit brain wrinkling.
posted by sedimentflux at 11:26 AM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry to be a damp squib on this, and the article may be very good, but I'm afraid I won't read it. The author was a relatively prominent young left journalist in the UK until October 2017 when a credible allegation of sexual assault was made against him, and he left journalism to become a banker.
posted by ambrosen at 11:47 AM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Whoever Santa is, or whatever the sketchy backstory, The Irish Air Corps wants you to know that, without them, in 2023, there would be no ho ho Christmas as we've come to expect it. In a clever cross-over with Pinocchio, all the actors are wooden.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:41 PM on December 24, 2023

(Not on Medium; on Substack. Have they merged? Did the author redirect?)
posted by clew at 12:46 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

The foundational modern Christmas poem "A Visit From St Nick" was written in the 1820s-1830s, which was a full 50 years before anthropologist Franz Boas was even born. And furthermore this theory seems to rest on the extremely dubious conflation of the indigenous tribes of BC/Vancouver Island with the Inuit.
posted by muddgirl at 12:50 PM on December 24, 2023

(maybe this was meant to be a metaphorical Christmas meditation but I won't be surprised to see "Did YOU know we STOLE CHRISTMAS from the INUITS???"on TikTok in a few years.)
posted by muddgirl at 1:01 PM on December 24, 2023

"He shares this lodge with his wife, Qominaga, who dresses in strips of red-and-white cedar bark; the two of them sometimes take the form of monstrous black birds and fly south to steal people away and eat them."

So this is why Santa Claus has a castle at the North Pole complete with trebuchet and manalets.

Santa also has a small air force.
recon in force, blitzen.
posted by clavdivs at 1:04 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Baxbakwalanuxsiwae dances and sings, but all his songs contain only one word: hāp; eat.

This is the origin of Black Friday.
posted by leotrotsky at 3:32 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Not on Medium; on Substack" - my bad. Dear mods, can you correct, please?
posted by doctornemo at 5:05 PM on December 24, 2023

the two of them sometimes take the form of monstrous black birds and fly south to steal people away and eat them

It's like it's the exact same story!
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:33 PM on December 24, 2023

he left journalism to become a banker

Did he? I remember it being a Twitter rumor that he came from money but I don’t really find anything backing this particular assertion at the moment.

(as far as I know he was always more of an essayist than a journalist, he just used to get published by the likes of Jacobin before the allegations)
posted by atoxyl at 8:56 PM on December 24, 2023

He shares this lodge with his wife, Qominaga

I guess women don't count as individuals.
posted by Literaryhero at 10:40 PM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Now that's a good read
posted by wolfpants at 12:45 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Literaryhero: as ambrosen noted at the beginning of the comment thread here, that is entirely on brand for Sam Kriss.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:05 PM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]