Truth and Myth About Christmas

This morning, the rush of Christmas preparations is already almost over, and around midday Finnish people go to listen to the Declaration of Christmas Peace, which dates back to the Middle Ages. Later in the evening, at the festive table, the Christmas Gospel is read, telling how the child Jesus was born to Mary, who had become pregnant as a virgin and who, together with her betrothed Joseph, had gone to Bethlehem to be registered for taxation.

This story, familiar to all Westerners, is a rather beautiful narrative. In addition, for many people it is associated with such childhood memories that they wish to revive them even if their worldview is not theistic. If anything, this shows how extremely important traditions are to people.

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As most of you—my esteemed readers—are probably aware, many Christmas traditions are much older than Christianity. One of their sources is the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was celebrated for a week around the time of the winter solstice.

The description of Saturnalia given, for example, on Wikipedia sounds very familiar, although there are of course differences beyond the Christian nature of the celebration. During the festival, people gave each other gifts, and there was plenty of festive food, games, and merrymaking. It is also interesting that in the Roman temple considered the center of Saturnalia, the cult statue of Saturn had its feet unbound.

On the other hand, Saturnalia was led by a carnival king chosen for the occasion, and slaves were granted the freedoms of free people. This meant that they were allowed to gamble, become publicly intoxicated, cast aside the cloak of restrained behavior, and even act insolently. The streets, too, were filled with boisterous celebration.

These latter Roman customs do not belong to the Christmases of my generation, but I have noticed that, at least in terms of celebrating, Finland is gradually changing. Not everyone spends Christmas at home anymore; instead, people set off on boisterous holiday trips to the south or the north. And perhaps nightlife, too, is livelier than before even in cities where people’s homes are located.

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The ancient Romans had neither Christmas trees nor Santa Claus. The origin of the former is not known for certain.

According to Estonians, the first public Christmas tree was erected in Tallinn as early as 1441, but Latvian archival sources claim that the Brotherhood of the Blackheads brought the Christmas tree to Riga in 1510. In addition, there is a well-known account according to which the Christmas tree originated in 16th-century Germany, in the area of present-day Strasbourg.

What is certain, however, is that the Christmas tree tradition does not originate from Finland or even from the Nordic countries, since spruce trees began to appear in people’s homes here—initially among the nobility—only in the 19th century. Among the common people, the Christmas tree became widespread only about a hundred years ago.

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Santa Claus, of course, lives on Korvatunturi in Finland (the name translates as “Ear Mountain”), together with Mrs. Claus and his elves. This is so despite the fact that some who have lost their faith in him believe that Santa Claus originated as a kind of successor to the tradition of Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra who lived in the 4th century.

Even more absurd is the idea held by Americans that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and travels around with flying reindeer—as if they did not know that there are no reindeer living at the North Pole at all. And even if there were, they certainly would not know how to fly.

In Finland, however, there have always also been relatives of Santa Claus: the Nuutti goats and Kekri goats. They are known to have gone from house to house, first drinking the alcoholic beverages offered to them, second distributing gifts to well-behaved children, and as a third option handing out birch twigs to the naughty ones.

Fortunately, in recent years Santa Claus has reduced the first and third of these pastimes and has instead focused more on listening to Christmas songs sung in children’s clear voices and on distributing gifts.

With these words—taken more or less seriously—I wish you, my esteemed readers, a very good and happy Christmas!

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A Different Kind of Christmas
Christmas gift to the Holy Land
Merry Christmas!

Javier Milei and the Great Western Opportunity

The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, criticized phenomena related to feminism, DEI principles, environmental radicalism, and gender ideology at the World Economic Forum meeting. He described mass immigration and the cultural shame of Western nations as self-destructive and called for a historical shift in the West.

By this, he primarily referred to traditional Western values, such as individual freedom and equality of opportunity. In contrast, he viewed their recent challengers—woke ideology and state interventionism—as questionable and as the root causes of the West’s current problems, arguing that they rely on collectivist ideology and work against individual liberty.

Instead of contemporary value liberalism, Milei identified the pillars of Western civilization as respect for freedom and private property, a free market economy, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. He stated that these values inherently include personal responsibility for one’s livelihood, equality before the law, and equality of opportunity.

According to the Argentine president, each fundamental pillar of our civilization has been replaced with a distorted version of itself, leading to a situation where luxuries acquired at the expense of others have become human rights, and institutions have taken on the role of punishing dissenting opinions.

Thus, in Milei’s view, the DEI movement, immigration, environmental radicalism, and gender ideology serve only the expansion of the state and distort Western ideals. Feminism and gender ideology, he argued, have become detached from equality and now promote a struggle between the sexes instead of advocating for the equal treatment of men and women.

He also questioned why Westerners today see themselves as responsible for all the world’s evils and believe they must atone by opening their borders to everyone—even if this leads to reverse colonialism and the collective suicide of Western nations.

In the short term, the primary beneficiaries of this development are political movements that push a distorted worldview, but ultimately, they too will collapse as societies crumble.

* * *

According to Milei, we are now at a turning point, where a historic opportunity for great change is emerging. It remains to be seen whether the West will seize this opportunity.

Winds of change have already swept through Milei’s Argentina, my home country of Finland, Italy, and the USA. Next, it will be up to the German people, who will elect a new parliament on February 23.

At the moment, it appears that the election in Germany will be won by AfD and CDU/CSU, with the former in particular aligning closely with Milei’s stance on immigration. Meanwhile, the green-left coalition advocating progressive liberal values seems poised for a crushing defeat.

It remains to be seen whether change will take place in Germany and across the West. And even if it does, will the people push this transformation far into the future, or will the 2020s be remembered as just another fleeting anomaly on the path of Western decline—much like the era of Constantine the Great in Roman history?

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Friedrich Merz Needs the AfD – A Precedent from Finland
Prediction: Sharia law in force in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France by the year 2044
A white family does not represent real Londoners

A thousand years of unintegrated immigration

After the pro-immigration political left succeeded in elections in both the United Kingdom and France – and also in the European elections in Finland – I recalled an entry I wrote in 2019 on my Finnish-language blog. I have therefore decided to translate it into English. So here it is, dear readers!

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One of the critical issues for Europe in the 21st century is immigration from developing countries. Particularly important is the question of how large the new population, which has a negative impact on its environment, will become. In other words, how many of the newcomers will fail to integrate into European societies and contribute to maintaining its welfare.

In relation to this question, I read an interesting research report that studied the DNA of people buried in the area of ancient Rome over thousands of years. This gave insight into how the population of the area had developed.

Before the development of agriculture, the Romans belonged to the group of Western European hunter-gatherers, but with the advent of agriculture, people of Anatolian and Iranian origin arrived in the area. During the Copper and Bronze Ages, the proportion of the hunter-gatherer population or their descendants increased again in the area, but the Anatolian-Iranian genetic makeup remained dominant.

By 900 BCE, the population had received a significant influx of people from the steppe regions of Eastern Europe and from Iran. Additionally, some people arrived from Western North Africa. This population genetically closely resembled modern-day Romans.

However, Rome grew and its population became more diverse. People came particularly from the east, from the areas of present-day Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Jordan, and Syria, as well as from Anatolia and Iran, to the extent that these population groups made up a significantly larger proportion of the city's inhabitants than the descendants of Iron Age Romans.

The situation changed in the Middle Ages when the genetic makeup of Rome's population reverted to being largely similar to that of Central and Northern Europe. At the same time, the metropolis of a million people from antiquity collapsed into a city of about 100,000 inhabitants. In other words, as Rome fell, its multicultural society from ancient times disintegrated, leaving behind only the original Iron Age-like population, while other population groups moved elsewhere.

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According to the study, a multicultural society is nothing new in Europe, as even in antiquity, large cities attracted people from great distances. Part of that population certainly consisted of slaves, who are estimated to have made up as much as a third of Rome's population, but there must have also been a large number of free professionals among them.

The biggest difference compared to modern times was probably that newcomers to Rome were not known to be pampered with welfare services – unless slavery is counted as such – but had to earn their living themselves. Thus, the disappearance of the population with the collapse of the great empire is understandable as the basis for their livelihood vanished.

Reflecting on modern times, I was nonetheless surprised by the associated population genetic change, as the Roman Empire, and thus also the multicultural city of Rome, lasted for about a thousand years. One might have thought that there would have been a lot of intermarriage between the city's population groups and/or that families from elsewhere would have at least established themselves as respected inhabitants of the city.

If that had been the case, the genetic composition of the city's population should have remained roughly the same when it collapsed. Since this did not happen, it can be concluded that even a thousand years was not enough for the multicultural population of Rome to integrate.

This should be remembered when discussing Finnish - as well as European - immigration policy. If and when we accept large numbers of people from cultural backgrounds different from our own, they will remain a separate segment from the majority population for up to a thousand years, even if they are integrated into the workforce.

As such, they will also leave our northern country immediately if living conditions here deteriorate. Right now, this would particularly mean the deterioration of welfare state services for some of our immigrant groups.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
French Election Results: A Deep Dive into Tactical Voting and Its Implications
Elections in the UK: A Shift Toward Hand-Waving Politics?
The European Parliament elections were a celebration for the far-left in Finland