Did you know there’s enough queer magic running through our Holiday traditions to make MAGA apoplectic? You’ve heard the hysteria before: the Left’s war on Christmas, woke is destroying the NYC Thanksgiving Parade, and… my god… the Left is even transing the gingerbread men:
Because it’s the Left that is preventing us from engaging with the traditional aspects of the holiday season, you see. Because Santa Claus is just white, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, who is also white BTW, and if we just return to the true holiday traditions, the West won’t be destroyed by Leftist woke, you see.
I, for one, agree with the political Right; the Left needs to care more about the traditional aspects of the Holiday season. So, the first thing we need to do is return the NYC Thanksgiving Day Parade to its Victorian roots as a drag queen parade.
What follows is The Philadelphia Record’s 1887 account of the annual New York City Thanksgiving Day parade:
Every Thanksgiving day the streets are filled with boys dressed in women’s clothes and with hideous masks on their faces, who chase after pedestrians and solicit alms. Then there is the regular parade of “The Ragamuffins,” which seems to be a regularly organized club, the members of which are recruited from the Fourth ward. They parade through the streets in carts and on horseback, and are dressed in the most outlandish and fantastical costumes. The great fun of this lawless turnout is the kissing and hugging by men of other men dressed up as women. And such women! They are decked out in filthy plaited and backs, their cheeks and black their eyes and wrestle with their supposed sweethearts. Woe betide a person if, surprised by this singular cavalcade passing up Fifth avenue, he should stop along the curbstone to examine it more carefully. He could thank his stars if he should get off with no more serious attention than an “Ah, there! stay there!” or a “Johnny get your gun!” directed at him, two popular slang expressions out of which I have never been able to glean anything, thong they seem to have an occult meaning for the initiated.
Lest you think the modern “Ragamuffin Parade” is representative of the Victorian Ragamuffin Parades, these New World holiday activities[1] come from the long Old World tradition of the Christmas Mumming and Mummering, which, traditionally speaking, frequently featured drag. Consider the following snip from the Wikipedia article on Mummers:
In keeping with the theme of an inversion of rules, and of disguise, crossdressing was a common strategy, and men would sometimes dress as women and women as men. Travelling from house to house, some mummers would carry their own musical instruments to play, sing and dance in the houses they visited.
Like the 1887 article, a 1909 issue of Appleton’s Magazine speculated on the origin of this New York tradition of a Thanksgiving Day mass-crossdressing event:
Why Thanksgiving Day should be a day of mummery is not known… The favorite disguise among the boys is to tog themselves out in the worn-out finery of their sisters. All day long they swarm about the streets in groups and parties, parading to the music of tin cans, importuning the passer-by for pennies… Perhaps these revels are the remnants of Guy Fawkes Day and the Gunpowder Plot.
Notably, without using the “ragamuffin” or “mumming” terminology, a 1911 newspaper speculated that immigrants brought the practice to New York City. By 1924, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade became the de facto Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The Tradition of Transgressing Christmas Gender
We in the US have a long tradition of very ignorant people very confidently asserting that the Coca-Cola Santa Claus is all about honoring the nativity story promoted by theocratic fascists. While a lot of print and digital ink has been spilled pointing out that the Bible isn’t even consistent about the birth of Jesus –featuring different birthplaces, times, ancestry, and events– or how the nativity story functions to import Zoroastrian mythology into the foundation of Christianity, theocratic fascists are eager to tell anyone who will listen, how it’s the woke who are somehow queering the Christ out of Christmas traditions. So, in the interest of bringing traditional aspects of Christmas more fully into our collective consciousness during this time of year, let us consider the queer aspects of our traditional Christmas figures:
Odin/ Santa Claus
In the same way that Wednesday honors Odin as his day, the Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum notes that “Yule” is the name for Odin, so that Yule time honors Odin.
| Aspect | Óðinn (Odin) | Santa Claus |
|---|---|---|
| Main festival association | Yule (jól), a holiday honoring Odin that was later secularized as a midwinter figure attached to Christian feast. | Christmas, a holiday honoring Jesus that was later secularized as a midwinter figure attached to Christian feast. |
| Appearance | Old, white‑bearded man in fur‑trimmed coat, sometimes depicted as having one eye. | Old, white‑bearded man in fur‑trimmed coat. |
| Mode of travel | Winter nighttime rider associated with the Wild Hunt. | Winter nighttime rider associated with gift giving on Christmas Eve. |
| Mount | 8-legged flying horse. | 8 flying reindeer. |
| Companions / observers | Magical ravens who bring him news and an elven retinue from the Wild Hunt. | Magical omniscience and an elven retinue associated with flying reindeer. |
| Relation to gifts | Grants victory, poetry, and favors. | Grants presents to children. |
| Religious context today | A largely secular pop-culture figure embedded in, but now transcending, the Pagan Yule celebration. | A largely secular pop-culture figure embedded in, but now transcending, the Christian Christmas celebration. |
Notably, in addition to Odin, the Wild Hunt was led by some of the queer Christmas characters we consider below, including Knecht Ruprecht and Perchta.
Okay, “So what?” you might say. How does Odin, acting as a mythological backdrop to Santa Claus mythology, establish a tradition of queerness?
While Odin’s traditional queerness is often excised from modern representations, the ancient lore about Odin did touch on his queerness. For instance, ergi was a slur that essentially correlated to the mid-20th century meaning of “fag” or “queer.” This homophobic slur was sometimes used against men who practiced a type of women’s magic called seiðr. Not only did Odin practice seiðr, but he was also a master of the craft. As an aside, a master of seiðr would have the all-knowing power we now attribute to Santa Claus. Regardless, in one of the Old World sagas, Odin comments on Loki’s gender transgressions and Loki likewise lists Odin’s gender transgressions, explicitly saying that Odin was ergi.
The Perchta
Before Christianity came for Alpine region winter traditions, there was a winter goddess, Perchta, who had two gendered aspects: the female Frau Perchta and the male Quantembermann. As Christianity was spread at the point of a sword throughout the Alpine region, the lore became that Perchta, now demonized, was enslaved and was recast as Krampus.
 |  |
| Perchta as female Krampus | Perchta as male Krampus |
Like Odin, Perchta led the Wild Hunt.
Belsnickel
Beltznickle is a character who disciplines children during Christmas. A rough-bearded visage, Beltznickle is also known as the Christmas Woman. In 1824, Jacob Brown wrote that Santa Claus wasn’t part of their Holiday tradition in Allegany County, Maryland. Instead, Beltznickle was the central Christmas character:
He was known as Kriskinkle, Beltznickle, and sometimes as the Christmas woman. Children then not only saw the mysterious person, but felt him or rather his stripes upon their backs with his switch. The annual visitor would make his appearance some hours after dark, thoroughly disguised, especially the face, which would sometimes be covered with a hideously ugly phiz – generally wore a female garb – hence the name Christmas woman – sometimes it would be a veritable woman but with masculine force and action. He or she would be equipped with an ample sack about the shoulders filled with cakes, nuts, and fruits, and a long hazel switch which was supposed to have some kind of a charm in it as well as a sting.
Interestingly, Nova Scotia has turned Beltznickle into a verb, so that women who crossdress during mumming parades are said to be “belsnickling.”
The Christmas Witch
In the US, some Icelandic Christmas traditions are becoming more widely known in pop culture. For instance, the gigantic Yule Cat, Jólakötturinn, is becoming more popularized, as are the 13 Yule Lads. Whelp, they exist because of Grýla, the Christmas witch, the mother of the Yule lads, and to whom the Yule cat belongs. Grýla, who is intersex, also appears in many mumming traditions.
Knecht Ruprecht
Seemingly related to Beltznickle in function is Knecht Ruprecht, whom Jacob Grimm said is known as Robin Goodfellow[2] in Britton is also known as Rû Clås and Bullerclås and accompanies Santa Claus on his rounds. Knecht Ruprecht is accompanied by men in drag. Young women who dress as the male Knecht Ruprecht figure are known as De hêle Christ “The Holy Christ,” making the Right’s grievances around queering Christmas seem ahistorical at best. Like Odin, Knecht Ruprecht led the Wild Hunt.
The Protestant Gender Neutral Christmas Christ
During Christmas, Old World Protestants would celebrate the gender-neutral Christkind or Christkindl as the gift‑bringer on Christmas Eve rather than the Catholic-coded St. Nicholas. In 1527, Martin Luther rejected the Catholic practice of celebrating Saint Nicholas.
So, Protestants, traditionally speaking, should organize their Christmas round an officially genderless, Christ‑child gift‑bringer whose public embodiment is a teenage girl in bridal‑angel costume representing a male savior, rather than Santa Claus.
La Befana and Italian Holiday Drag
Italy has, for centuries, embraced the Holiday tradition of La Befana, who is a Holiday witch who brings coal to the bad children on Epiphany Eve. While the Holiday tradition includes women dressed as Befana, the Christmas Witch, it also features groups of men dressed in drag called “befanotti,” who go door to door on that night, singing for food “for themselves and for Befana.” In Venice, rather than parading through town in drag, celebrants have a boat… drag race…called the “Regata della Befana” wherein men dress in drag and race boats along the Grand Canal.
The next time a theocratic fascist claims that the Left is erasing our Holiday traditions, they better be in walking in a drag parade, waiting on an intersex Christmas witch, and be celebrating a non-binary Christ child because, if they’re not doing that, THEY are the ones trying to destroy our Western Holiday traditions.
So, this year, make your Holiday more traditional with some gender transgression.
[1] Here, it should be noted that practically all Jim Crow-era costuming events from Ragamuffin and Mardi Gras to Halloween and Christmas Parades, often included people, and not infrequently children, dressed in race and class-baiting costuming.
[2] A strong case can be made for Robin Goodfellow’s queerness, from his identification with women’s roles and rape prevention, to his homoerotic partnership with Oberon; there’s a reason portrayals of him over the years tend to cast him as a woman, as androgynous, or as explicitly non‑binary.
