Christmas: Why monsters haunt Christmas in Europe but not America - by Caitlin Hu

The worst isn’t the screams or the snow or the mind-numbing blare of “Night on Bald Mountain” on repeat. It’s the cowbells: a rusty jangle that means the Christmas monsters are coming.

Until Jan. 6, demons, witches and monsters haunt Europe.

The season of terror begins on Dec. 5, the eve of Saint Nicholas’ Day, with public parades of the saint’s supposed companions: Across the Italian, Austrian and Slovenian Alps, cowbell-slung demons called Krampus storm mountain towns. In France, the legendary serial killer and butcher Pere Fouettard (Father Whipper) threatens naughty children with his whip, while in Belgium and the Netherlands, a controversial child-kidnapper called Zwarte Piet (Black Piet) rides through canals on a steamship.

Like relatives returning home for the holidays, more monsters show up with increasing frequency as Christmas approaches. Every night from Dec. 12 until Christmas Day, the trollish Yule Lads peep through windows, snatch sausages and gorge themselves on stolen skyr in Iceland. On Dec. 25, 

goat-footed Kallikantzaros goblins emerge from underground and demand piggyback rides in Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Balkans, and Germany’s Frau Perchta creeps into homes to slit open bad children and stuff their bellies with straw. Both do their mischief throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas until Jan. 6, when Italian children finally hang their stockings and the witch La Befana shows up with lumps of coal. And with legends and names that vary from region to region and even village to village, these are only a few of the continent’s mythical troublemakers played annually by adults in costume.

Read more: Why monsters haunt Christmas in Europe but not America - Quartz

US Politics: 'Tis the Season for Politics to Make Us Worse - by Trevor Burrus

Politics makes us worse—and at no time more so than around the holidays.

“If I have to listen to my crazy Tea Party uncle say one more thing about Michael Brown and Ferguson, I’m going to flip over the dinner table and retreat to my childhood room to look at old issues of Seventeen.”

“What are these liberal universities doing to our son?!? I’m not sure we should let him go back there.”
“When did you get so angry at the world, Mom and Dad? Is there something that isn’t Obama’s fault?!?”

Welcome to an American holiday tradition. Apple pie now comes with a side of political yelling, especially after a few glasses of eggnog.

The problem, of course, is that “they” don’t get it. How could they? Mom and Dad’s brains might as well be directly hooked to Fox News like the humans in the Matrix. The children’s “progressive” universities are as hermetically sealed off from reality as North Korea. And don’t even get me started on Uncle Tim, whose rural worldview is a strange mixture of a fear of black helicopters and a demand for increased farm subsidies.

How can you be expected to live in the same state, let alone country, with people who vote for fascism while you are voting for freedom? When they live in a fake world created by a self-serving news media and you live in reality? It’s probably best if we just double spike the eggnog and watch A Christmas Story for the third time.

Classical liberal and libertarian principles are about providing an operating system for free and diverse people to thrive cooperatively rather than combatively, creating a Minecraft for human ingenuity and flourishing rather than a Call of Duty fight to the death. Limiting the scope of political decision-making creates a type of mutual disarmament—“I won’t try to control your education or health care if you don’t try to control mine.”

Minimal government has virtues beyond lower debt, less crowded prisons, and less militarized police. It might even save your family.

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Islam in Europe: In the Firm Grip of Honour

The setting: A Muslim family somewhere in Berlin. The father meets his son. The two have not seen each other for some time and it is a warm reunion. The son tells of his plans to get married. The father is overjoyed – until he hears what sort of woman his son has chosen. His fiancé is a Miss Anna Schmidt from Sweden. But worst of all, she is not a Muslim.

Upon hearing the details, the father flies into a rage. "I can't believe what you are saying," he screams. He cannot even imagine having a non-Muslim daughter-in-law. "Do not force me to decide between you and her," begs the son in an unsteady voice. Yet, this only infuriates the father even more. "I made you what you are today. I have given you everything," the father continues. "And you dare to tell me about your decision?"

This encounter is fictional, but it could easily reflect a real-life conflict. The dialogue was conceived by young Muslims from the Heroes project in the Berlin district of Neukölln, home to a large number of Muslim immigrants.

Read  more: In the Firm Grip of Honour - Qantara.de