Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Santa Claus and Clausaphobia

Every December, the world is gripped in a pandemic of Clausaphobia – the irrational fear of Santa Claus.  Although this is a mental disorder, there is considerable evidence that it’s contagious.  First of all, it has a distinct season, roughly from American Thanksgiving until December 26th — when it suddenly disappears as if it was never there in the first place.  Secondly, people who get the condition are quite noticeably afflicted; they simply can’t shut up on the subject.  Finally, as fate would have it, it seems to be spread by word of mouth.  Over the years, there’s been a lot of claptrap written in defence of Clausaphobia — as though those who suffer from its debilitating effects are, in fact, quite normal.  These fables have been repeated, at concert pitch, for so long that many otherwise sane people are now in danger of contracting this condition.  However, a small group of learned men and women are fighting back.  Equipped with science and reason they are desperately holding this disease at bay.  In the interests of helping control a worldwide scourge, here is a brief synopsis of their findings.

First, the fables.  In almost every Christmas book ever written, the story of Santa Claus starts out in some godforsaken town in Turkey.  Apparently, there was a guy there named Nicholas.  He was a priest or something, and he was so generous the Church made him a saint.  Fine!  There are a few scraps of evidence that some of this might be true.  For example, this Nicholas could very well have been a real 4th century bishop named Nikolaos of Myra.  However, historians have never agreed on that or any other where, when or why of this little fairy tale.  In fact, there is no definitive evidence whatsoever that this (or any other) Nicholas has any historical connection to Santa Claus.  However, this hasn’t deterred the myth makers.  Invariably they go on to relate a number of tales about their various Nicholases (Nicholi?) to demonstrate a vague link to the common practices of our modern day Santa Claus.  Unfortunately, they are all different stories concerning shoes, stockings, children, lumps of coal and what-have-you (no two alike) and none of them is backed up with factual findings.  In place of hard evidence, anthropologists and social historians theorize that Santa Claus grew out of these improbable Nicholas legends. They maintain that quaint local folk traditions somehow not only survived the Dark Ages but actually thrived, spreading throughout Europe.  Again, without a lick of corroborating evidence!  What a crock!  This has led to modern confusion and frustration — the root cause of Clausaphobia.

Let’s set the record straight.  Here’s the real story of Santa Claus, based on historical fact.  Santa Claus has been around forever.  He’s known by a number of different names — Sinterklaas in Holland, Father Christmas in Britain, Pere Noel in France etc. etc. — but it’s all the same guy.  He lives at the North Pole with Mrs. Claus (who, oddly enough, doesn’t have a first name) a ton of elves and the reindeer.  All year long, the elves make toys in a gigantic workshop.  Then, once a year, Santa loads up his magic sleigh, hitches up the reindeer (who can fly, by the way) and goes around the world, delivering toys to good girls and boys.  How do I know this?  Documented proof!  Santa Claus has actually been seen – at least three times — once by Clement Moore in 1823, then again by Thomas Nast in the early 1860s and finally by Haddon Sundblom sometime in the late 1920s.  There are also a few secret contemporary photographs which haven’t been authenticated.  However let’s just stick to the facts.

In 1823, Clement Moore, a professor at Columbia College, woke up on Christmas Eve and witnessed Santa Claus delivering toys to his house.  He wrote a poem about his experience, called ‘Twas the Night before Christmas which was published in the Sentinel newspaper in Troy, New York.  In that poem, Moore describes Santa quite accurately.  He also describes the reindeer (miraculously remembering Santa’s names for them) and their ability to fly.  There is some controversy over Moore’s account, however, because he describes the scene as “a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer” and goes on to call Santa himself “a right jolly old elf.”  Since we know (from corroborating evidence) that Santa Claus is actually quite a large gentleman, we can only conclude that Clement either didn’t have his glasses on or suffered from an undiagnosed eye ailment.

Santa Claus was next seen by Thomas Nast, sometime in the 1860s.  Nast was a cartoonist and social commentator who gave us, among other things, Uncle Sam, the symbols of both the Republican and Democratic political parties and the term “nasty.”  Obviously, a witness to history like Nast would not let his encounter with Santa Claus go unrecorded.  In the January 3rd, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly, Nast drew an illustration of Santa Claus meeting Union troops and passing out gifts during the Civil War.  We know this portrayal to be accurate because Santa Claus appears exactly as Clement Moore described him!  Clearly, these two depictions are of the same person.  Nast seems to have developed a long-term relationship with Santa Claus, because, twenty years later, he drew him again in what looks like a seated portrait.

The next documented sighting of Santa Claus occurred sometime in the late 1920s.  Haddan Sundblom, an advertising artist, must have met Santa on several occasions or even convinced him to once again pose for a portrait.  In 1931, Sundblom painted a picture of Santa as an advertisement for the Coca Cola™ Company.  It appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.  Sundblom’s image was universally recognized as Santa Claus; there were no complaints, nor any suggestions of inaccuracy.  Not one single person in the entire world even hinted that this might not be Santa Claus.  In fact, Sundblom’s portrait was so accurate that over the last 80 years, it has been plagiarized unmercifully.

These are just three examples that document the truth about Santa Claus.  There are more.

This Christmas, as you celebrate the season of joy, remember that there are those among us who are frightened and confused.  And although education is our best defence against Clausaphobia, don’t confront those who suffer (clausaphobes get very agitated at the truth.)  Accept them.  They are poor unfortunates, and it’s not their fault.  Perhaps, you can make a difference if you just say in a kindly voice, “You don’t have to believe.  Just write to Santa.  He’ll answer.”
Santa Claus
North Pole
Canada
H0H 0H0

Pearl Harbor: The Reason Why

I love history.  It reads like a bad novel.  History has so many oddities, improbabilities and strange coincidences that, if you didn’t know it was true, you’d think it was all fake.  For example, today is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  (FYI: you can’t just say “Pearl Harbor” anymore; nobody knows what you’re talking about.)  Whatever you call it though, aside from the American nuclear attack on Hiroshima three and a half years later, Pearl Harbor was the most important event in the 20th century.  It turned a European civil war into World War II, ended the worst economic depression in history and catapulted smalltown Americans onto the global stage – a role they’ve never been comfortable with.  That’s the thing about history though it’s full of unintended consequences that very few people see at the time.  I doubt very much if many Americans — even today — realize that the attack on Pearl Harbor was not the opening salvo in a carefully orchestrated Japanese plan to dominate the Pacific.  In fact, I think they’d be surprised to learn that, in general, the Japanese didn’t even want to go to war with the US (they were much more interested in Britain) and the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor was actually the direct result of a half-forgotten battle near the nowhere village of Nomonhan stuck somewhere on the Mongolian border.

Depending on how much time you’ve got, you can trace what Franklin Roosevelt called “December 7th, a day that will live in infamy” all the way back to a cold night in 1930, when a couple of Japanese colonels, stationed in Kwantung, China , got into the sake and hatched a plot to invade Manchuria.  Ishawara Kanji and Itagaki Seishiro, the particular colonels, knew what every person in Japan knows to this day.  Japan is a small bunch of islands that can hardly feed itself.  It has no natural resources, and unless it dominates international trade, it will always be at the mercy of every bullyboy with an attitude who happens to stroll by.  Remember, it was the American, Commodore Perry who dramatically pointed this out in 1853, when he sailed into Tokyo Bay, pointed his cannons  at anyone who poked their head up, and suggested the Japanese sign a treaty he just happened to have lying around the quarterdeck.  Anyway, Ishawara and Itagaki got to talking and decided that Japan needed a dependable source of raw materials (which, by coincidence, was going begging just across the border in Manchuria.)  They came up with a cunning plan, and on September 18th, 1931 manufactured an “incident” with China that sent Imperial Japanese troops across the border.  The Pacific Ocean, Pearl Harbor and America were never on the agenda.

In the 1930s, Japanese politics was so complicated it’s almost impossible to understand.  For example, the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, who, as a living god, commanded absolute obedience from every Japanese citizen, never actually issued any orders just in case they weren’t obeyed.  However, in a nutshell, there were two political factions: the army (who saw the future intimately tied to mainland Asia) and the navy (who wanted a crack at the European imperial powers, Britain, France and the Netherlands.)  For most of the decade, the army dominated the government in Tokyo.  They saw China falling apart at the seams and figured with a few armoured divisions, some airplanes, and maybe a little poison gas here and there, they could take advantage of the situation.  China would become a Japanese province with a vast pool of subservient labour and a ready market for Japanese goods.  They also saw the resources of Manchuria dwarfed by the almost limitless expanse of Soviet Russia, which (once again) was now just across the border.  Remember, also, Japan, with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, was member of the Anti-Comintern (anti-communist) Pact.  They saw the Soviets as their natural enemies.  Besides, quite a few senior army officers had been young soldiers when Japan slapped the snot out of Russia back in 1905.  They didn’t see any problem with pointing their tanks north again.  It was quick and easy and handy to the homeland.

In 1932, Japanese troops reached the border between Manchuria and Soviet Mongolia.  The well trained victorious Kwantung army didn’t really see any need to slam on the brakes when their natural enemy, the Soviet Union was just an imaginary line away from getting its ass kicked a second time.  Over the next seven years, there were hundreds of very bloody “incidents” in the undeclared border war.  These “incidents” escalated over time until 1939, when a bunch of Japanese officers (without permission from Tokyo) decided to get serious and see just how tough these Soviets were.  They sent a couple of divisions to occupy the disputed territory.

The battle of Khalkhin Gol went back and forth for a couple of months.  However, times were changing for the Soviet Union.  They were in the middle of negotiating a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, which they signed in August, 1939.  This gave them the freedom to send a lot of soldiers and armour — that weren’t going to be needed against Germany in Europe — to the Far East to settle scores with Japan.  They were commanded by General Zhukov (the guy who would go on to defend Stalingrad in 1942 and take the Nazi surrender in Berlin in 1945.)  He massed over 50,000 Soviet troops, complete with tanks and airplanes, in an offensive assault in August.  He encircled the Japanese forces, at a village called Nomonhan, and when they wouldn’t surrender, destroyed them.  It was a humiliating defeat and it broke the back of the army’s independent power in Tokyo.  The way north was now blocked by a resurgent enemy, the Soviet Union and a back-stabbing ally, the Germans.  It was the navy’s turn to run the show.

Japan still needed raw materials, and the only other convenient place to get them was in southern Asia where the Europeans, preoccupied by their own war in Europe, were hanging on to their colonies by prestige alone.  There was rubber in British Malaysia and oil and gas in Indonesia (the Dutch East Indies.)   The problem was, in the ocean, directly between Japan and Jakarta, was The Philippines, an American colony.   Japan could not run the risk of having their military cut off from the homeland by a belligerent American navy, possibly based in the Philippines.  They needed to neutralize American sea power in the Pacific before they could go after the resources of the crumbling European empires.  And where was the America Pacific fleet based?  Pearl Harbor!

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Euro Crisis and the Golden Rule

I’m amazed at how long it has taken our European friends to realize what reality looks like.  It’s as if they got into the Christmas cheer back in 1989 and never got out.  If you recall, that was the year the two different Germanys danced on the wall and all was well with the world.  At that time, the idea was that without a bothersome Iron Curtain messing things up, Europeans could finally learn to live with each other and become the superpower they were always meant to be.  This has been Europe’s elusive dream ever since Hadrian ruled all the good bits of the continent at the high-water mark of the Roman Empire.  The cunning plan was to slowly integrate everything from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and create an economic powerhouse that would fear nothing in its path.  What a difference a generation makes!  These days, the Germans aren’t dancing anymore — and neither is anybody else.  The grandiose schemes of 1989 got waylaid — for good and sufficient reason.  Europe is now on the brink of a catastrophe that would make the fall of the Roman Empire look like a minor inconvenience.  So, after only twenty years to think about it Europeans are suddenly looking around for — as Monty Python once said to an astounded television audience — “Something completely different!”

Even as you read this, Merkel and Sarkozy are discussing (plotting is such a hard word) ways to take over Europe.  In the 3,000 years of recorded European history, there has never been such a reluctant power grab.  Neither one of them wants this (although Sarkozy has that suspect Napoleon thing going on) but at the end of the day, they have no choice.  They have to do it.  It’s either that or there isn’t going to be a Europe to take over.  Time is running out, so whatever they do had better be big and bold and work right out of the box.

You need to understand something about the European situation before you can understand what Merkel and Sarkozy are up against, however.  There’s a difference between the European Union and the Euro zone.  Not all countries in the European Union use the Euro.  Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden among others, still use their own pounds, krone or what have you.  Therefore, their stake in the game is quite different.  Even though their national currency is not going to be at the epicentre of the financial earthquake, the non-euro EU members are obviously going to take a serious kicking if the Greeks, Italians and Spanish hit the fan.  Plus, they’re probably going to be on the hook for any attempted bailout.  You don’t have to be a Euro sceptic to see more liabilities than benefits.  If things in Europe aren’t fixed pretty quickly, there’s a real danger that a lot of people will be wondering just how much this Euro experiment is actually worth and they might even start looking around for the exits.   Merkel and Sarkozy already know that it’s not just the Euro that’s at stake here but the future of the European Union itself.

Merkel and Sarkozy need to forget about integrated economies, long term solutions, ECB realignment, blah, blah, blah, and restore some confidence in the Euro – today.  The Euro is an unusual currency.  Like the magician’s assistant in the levitation trick, there’s nothing holding it up.  Whole books have been written on what the Euro is and isn’t, but they all boil down to the same thing – faith.  The Euro is based on the simple idea that 400 million Europeans are willing and able to pay.  That’s it.  The Euro is in such dire straits right now because nobody believes that anymore.  The big money boys are looking at the balance sheets and thinking they’re about to get left holding the bag — and it’s going to be full of useless paper.  Therefore, like Sunday morning evangelists, Merkel and Sarkozy need to convince them that as long as they keep the faith, they’re not going to go to hell.

The only way they can do that is quit applying billion dollar band-aids and lay down a heavy duty set of rules.  As of this morning, the nations of the Euro zone need to start taking their fiscal marching orders from the bureaucrats in Berlin.  It’s the only way the banks are ever going to refinance the ridiculous mortgage the Europeans have saddled themselves with.  If Germany and her little sister, France, are willing to co-sign an unlimited line of credit to the southern half of the continent — and put up their taxpayers as collateral — they need to have a serious repayment plan.  Otherwise, they are just going to be sucked into the bottomless financial pit the Europeans have been digging down south.  This isn’t about national sovereignty or petty politics; it’s cold, hard economics.  Anything less and the crisis just deepens and threatens the European Union itself.

Merkel and Sarkozy have got to get tough and invoke the Golden Rule: We make the gold; We make the rules.