Celebrity drag queen Wanda Starr writes about Christmas – in bloody Iceland.
As any probable Trump supporter will tell you, there is a war going on against Christmas.
Led by Islamist Muslims, aided by their key backers, the gays and radical feminists, the festival is being torn apart at its very seams. Christmas decorations are being ripped from public spaces; traditions are being lost to history; and Baby Jesus is aborted in an alternate timeline every time someone utters the damnable words, ‘Happy Holidays’.
It’s probably the only ethical war happening in the world right now. Christmas is the season where families come together and create rifts that last until someone dies; when colleagues at terrible office parties create the sexual harassment lawsuits that needed to be addressed over the next year; and when children sing in public.
The war against Christmas is happening, and I know what side I’m on. After some experience of this terrible season in several countries, however, I say that that the most urgent frontier is Iceland.
Icelanders take all the terrible things about the Yuletide we know and hate worldwide, and add a handful of their own. Even some of the things about Christmas elsewhere that are bearable they either remove or ruin.
Icelanders take all the terrible things about the Yuletide we know and hate worldwide, and add a handful of their own. Even some of the things about Christmas elsewhere that are bearable they either remove or ruin.
Take, for example, Black Friday. Worldwide, this is perhaps the only good day of the season. Not only can you get a smashing bargain, but it’s an ‘off’-day for assault laws. Back in the UK, I always found it a wonderful opportunity to bond with my mother.
In Iceland, however, I went on Laugavegur for Black Friday, and I kid you not, I was the only one armed. No one was fighting. Everyone just moved politely aside, or, if they didn’t see me, fell to a single punch. Everywhere I went, it was like beating down a nursery full of unknowing infants, but nowhere near as fun.
They don’t only do the shopping wrong; they have the most ludicrous ideas of Christmas folklore. They have no flying reindeer, no sleigh, no elf sweatshop. It almost warrants pity; imagine an upbringing so twisted that you never knew the true meaning of Destiny’s Child’s 2001 hit ‘Rudolph’.
Iceland also has no Santa Claus. Last year, this would have seemed more tragic, but with 2016’s Harvey Weinstein related news, the idea of a morbidly obese older man breaking into your house late at night with a full sack has quite lost its appeal.
Instead, Iceland has a troll woman called Grýla who has had thirteen sons. Like how our Santa Claus tends to sail over much of impoverished Africa and South America with brief raising of the middle finger, Grýla also punishes the economically disadvantaged children under her remit. She choses to eat them if they do not get any clothes, with the help of a gigantic Christmas Cat.
While our Santa neglects the impoverished because he is a creation of western imperialist capitalism, Grýla does this seemingly compassionately, out of a omnipresent knowledge that Icelanders need to radically upgrade their style, and that some of what they were wearing last year was just criminal.
The thirteen sons of Grýla are, typical of Icelandic storytelling, basic caricatures of gross behaviours, crassly constructed with no depth or development. One of their names is Sausage-Stealer, and his character is that he steals sausages. Spoon-Licker, meanwhile, is best and only known for licking spoons. I won’t get started on the shocking behaviours of Pot-Clanger.
Icelanders put on lots of cultural events to try and make up for this example of a millennium without creativity. One such ordeal you can endure is the outdoor Christmas Village in Hafnafjörður. The only reason to normally go to Hafnafjörður is to stand on the harbour edge and wonder if it’s all worth it, but over Christmas, Icelanders like to pretend that this is another.
At the Christmas Village you can enjoy festive decorations, the spirit of a winter wonderland, a world of confectionary and shows with the aforementioned Yule Lads, all the while developing irreversible frostbite in all extremities and having your skin ripped raw from your bones by the annual blizzard.
So if you come to Iceland for the Christmas season, you are setting yourself up for a disaster of Biblical proportions. Expect storms worse than those that befell Noah and rip-offs worse than Eve got from that snake.
As horrible as it sounds, if you’ve found yourself at the Christmas Village in Hafnafjörður, you’ll probably be grateful for the escape.
So if you come to Iceland for the Christmas season, you are setting yourself up for a disaster of Biblical proportions. Expect storms worse than those that befell Noah and rip-offs worse than Eve got from that snake. You’ll have about as much luck as the Virgin Mary trying to find a place to sleep, with all the goddamn Airbnbs, and to top if off, you’re less likely to see a desirable man walking around than in Jerusalem, twenty years after King Herod’s little killing spree.