In advance of Yule I shall just remind people that although in the past I pointed out that Odin's epithet JÓLFAÐR "yule father" sounds like Father Christmas, that is in fact just a coincidence. Odin was indeed the principle god of the Yule festival, but he is not related to Santa Claus.
Father Christmas and Santa Claus are two separate figures who got merged together recently. The latter was mainly in West Germanic speaking continental Europe and was based on Saint Nicolas, while the former was in France and the British Isles and is literally a personification of Christmas itself. Neither existed in Scandinavia or Iceland until recently. The Nordic equivalent was a goat and it is perhaps of relevance that early English depictions of Father Christmas depict him riding on a goat so there may be a connection between the Julbok and Father Christmas but maybe not.
The reindeer and North pole stuff is all modern invention from USA so any resemblance to Odin is coincidence.
Also, as a heathen father, I don't consider it pious to tell my children that the fat purveyor of plastic toys is our god. It isn't. I also refrain from referring to the small pointy hatted servants as "elves" since in our religion this term is reserved for honoured ancestral spirits. I prefer to say gnome so as to avoid confusion. The Nordic countries call them nisse but this may derive from a term meaning "ancestor" which raises similar concerns.
In advance of Yule I shall just remind people that although in the past I pointed out that Odin's epithet JÓLFAÐR "yule father" sounds like Father Christmas, that is in fact just a coincidence. Odin was indeed the principle god of the Yule festival, but he is not related to Santa Claus.
Father Christmas and Santa Claus are two separate figures who got merged together recently. The latter was mainly in West Germanic speaking continental Europe and was based on Saint Nicolas, while the former was in France and the British Isles and is literally a personification of Christmas itself. Neither existed in Scandinavia or Iceland until recently. The Nordic equivalent was a goat and it is perhaps of relevance that early English depictions of Father Christmas depict him riding on a goat so there may be a connection between the Julbok and Father Christmas but maybe not.
The reindeer and North pole stuff is all modern invention from USA so any resemblance to Odin is coincidence.
Also, as a heathen father, I don't consider it pious to tell my children that the fat purveyor of plastic toys is our god. It isn't. I also refrain from referring to the small pointy hatted servants as "elves" since in our religion this term is reserved for honoured ancestral spirits. I prefer to say gnome so as to avoid confusion. The Nordic countries call them nisse but this may derive from a term meaning "ancestor" which raises similar concerns.
BY Survive the Jive: All-feed
Warning: Undefined variable $i in /var/www/group-telegram/post.php on line 260
"There is a significant risk of insider threat or hacking of Telegram systems that could expose all of these chats to the Russian government," said Eva Galperin with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has called for Telegram to improve its privacy practices. The next bit isn’t clear, but Durov reportedly claimed that his resignation, dated March 21st, was an April Fools’ prank. TechCrunch implies that it was a matter of principle, but it’s hard to be clear on the wheres, whos and whys. Similarly, on April 17th, the Moscow Times quoted Durov as saying that he quit the company after being pressured to reveal account details about Ukrainians protesting the then-president Viktor Yanukovych. "Your messages about the movement of the enemy through the official chatbot … bring new trophies every day," the government agency tweeted. Also in the latest update is the ability for users to create a unique @username from the Settings page, providing others with an easy way to contact them via Search or their t.me/username link without sharing their phone number. The company maintains that it cannot act against individual or group chats, which are “private amongst their participants,” but it will respond to requests in relation to sticker sets, channels and bots which are publicly available. During the invasion of Ukraine, Pavel Durov has wrestled with this issue a lot more prominently than he has before. Channels like Donbass Insider and Bellum Acta, as reported by Foreign Policy, started pumping out pro-Russian propaganda as the invasion began. So much so that the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council issued a statement labeling which accounts are Russian-backed. Ukrainian officials, in potential violation of the Geneva Convention, have shared imagery of dead and captured Russian soldiers on the platform.
from br
