The Truth As I See It

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Venerable Lady Maggie the Extemporaneous of Longer Interval Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My family is Russian-Jewish, so we have a bit of an odd approach to the festive season. Russian Orthodox Christians celebrate a kind of Christmas that most Australiand and Americans wouldn't recognise - it's not actually commercialised at all, it basically consists of mass and uh, mass. On the 7th of January, for some reason. Anyway, because nobody likes to feel left out, all that Christmas commercialisation had to be channeled into something - and it is. It's called New Year. It was probably invented because Uncle Stalin thought religion sucked cos it got in the way of people's brainwashing loyalty to the state. But you know you'd have a revolution if somebody actually banned Christmas.

So essentially, in Russia, on New Year's Eve: you have a pine tree. It's decorated. You can put a star on top and everything. You put presents under it. It's not called a Christmas tree. It's just called a Pine Tree. You also have a jolly fat man in a red suit, who hands out presents to good little boys and girls. He's not called Santa Claus. He's called Grandfather Frost. There's little additions, like the snow princess and whatnot, but basically it's the typical Aussie department store Christmas, only not for Christmas. It's for New Year.

This is awfully convenient for everyone concerned, because Christians can have their cake and eat it (We Don't Commercialise The Birth Of Our Saviour, Ho Ho Ho), and Jewish people can join in on the fun without feeling vaguely guilty about it. Cos, you know, it's not actually Christmas.

Which is a long rambling way to say I got my presents kind of spread out across Hanukkah/Christmas/New Year's Eve. And now I shall post a few photos of some cool presents!

Warning: Post contains Oscar Wilde poetry and zombies.

( stop! photo-cut time! )