Merry Christmas 2015 from Geeky Chiquitas!

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas, from Geeky Chiquitas!

We hope you guys are having a wonderful holiday. As I (Kimi) write this, I am sitting on my bed at home, snuggled under a blanket, and listening to the Under the Mistletoe playlist on Spotify, as occasionally a firework goes off (which is pretty weird since it's morning here). Meanwhile, Audrey and Beryl are off at Osaka, Japan, doing who knows what (I haven't had an update from them yet) but probably having fun, taking lots of selfies, slurping ramen, and building snowmen (is there snow in Japan right now??? I'm not sure).

Last night for Christmas Eve, we had dinner at my grandparents' place with some relatives. I've been complaining for the past few days that I can't seem to feel the Christmas vibes, no matter what I do or how hard I try. And now that it's finally Christmas, meh, still no holiday vibes. A few years back, Christmas was such a fun holiday and I remember all my cousins would be around at my grandparents' house, since it's our tradition to spend it there. This year, a lot of them have other plans with their family (ehem Beryl and Audrey are gone) so I'm stuck spending the Christmas with my own immediate family, plus a few of my cousins, who are all unfortunately toddlers - and while toddlers are cute, they are no use making conversation with and usually sleep early, so you get stuck doing nothing as you wait for the clock to strike midnight for Christmas day, which is basically what I did last night.

The Untold Story of How Christmas Songs Ruined My Childhood

analysis
I have never been a great fan of Santa Claus, even if during my childhood years I was being led to believe by several adults that this nice fat man with a beard apparently gives out gifts to children who behaved and were nice throughout the year. I didn't really buy this so I made trouble everywhere I went, without the thought of landing in Santa's naughty list crossing my mind.

I honestly didn't care about all this Santa crap, nor did I believe he was real. And I think I owe it to several Christmas songs for ruining the image of Santa and my childhood at that.

Come on, I wish I were a little more innocent that I had believed in Santa or in something that magical, even. But thanks to these Christmas songs I've listened to as a kid, I've gotten quite suspicious. Though I didn't really understand what they truly meant when I was a kid, I still felt a bit peeved while listening to them. It just gave me this feeling of distrust. It wasn't even just about Santa anymore, because plenty of these supposedly festive songs just gave me this sinking feeling inside. 

Now that I'm older, I took the liberty to research the lyrics and make my own analysis.

And boy, I wish I hadn't.

1. Santa Baby

I first heard Madonna's version of this and I didn't quite understand the lyrics as a child but it surely disturbed me. When I got older, I realized that the song was about this woman flirting with Santa and asking him to sleep with her and give her cars, money, a yacht, and other fancy stuff. Not sure if said woman is a prostitute, but the thought of an old nice man who's usually likened to a grandfather figure sleeping with this younger woman is certainly not that nice of an image. Believe me.

I also don't know if I have a dirty mind or these lyrics really are euphemisms for something else a bit more sensual:

"Hurry down the chimney tonight" "Come and trim my Christmas tree" 

The History of Christmas

25
In this post, I want to talk about the history of Christmas, the real one. 

I'm gonna start off by saying that Christmas started out as a pagan holiday called 'Saturnalia'. This isn't really big news but I'm only getting started. 

'Saturnalia' is a week long celebration wherein each Roman community will pick a victim to represent the 'Lord of Misrule' and this victim will indulge in food and other physical pleasures for a whole week, at the end of this week they brutally kill the victim thinking that this would destroy the forces of evil. In addition to all of this, people would also get heavily drunk, go from house to house while singing naked, raping people, eating human-shaped cookies (gingerbread man?), and many more.

So, how did a celebration like this become Christmas for us? Christian leaders thought that taking this festival and making it a Christian celebration would turn the pagan masses into Christians. Their problem was that ' Saturnalia' had nothing to do with Christianity, so to remedy this, they named 'Saturnalia's' concluding day (December 25) as the day of Jesus Christ's birth. 

 Christmas is a lie! They say that it's the day of Christ's birth! They have millions believing it; even I believed it, but of course, thanks to google, I know better. 

Pope Paul II actually forced Jews to run naked through the streets of Rome to amuse the Roman citizen and it is said that the Jews were richly fed before the race so as to make it harder for them and more amusing for the Romans.

Anyway, before I start cursing those Christian leaders who made up the lie, I will talk about some of the most popular Christmas traditions. I'll try not to ruin your view on these things, like I probably did with the Christmas thing.

1. Mistletoe
'Kissing under the mistletoe' is actually a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.

GCQ Christmas Rituals

Ampaos
'Twas the night before Christmas...


HAPPY HAPPY CHRISTMAS from the Geeky Chiquitas!

We've spent the past 10 days counting down to this day, and finally it's Christmas Day! ❤️

I know some of you will be like "I don't feel the Christmas spirit" and all just cause it's the mainstream thing to feel like right now, but in our family we love Christmas! So let us share some of the stuff we do EVERY SINGLE YEAR during Christmas:

1. We celebrate Christmas Eve, not Christmas day.
I've always thought we celebrated Christmas Eve cause we wanted to countdown to midnight and be together when it's finally Christmas, but not really. I think it's because everyone else celebrates Christmas Eve so we being the bandwagonners we are of course we didn't want to miss out. I asked my mom for good measure and she had no great reason to celebrate Christmas on the 24th Eve not the 25th. We just do.

2. Stockings

In our family, everyone hangs stockings by the stairs. In all our houses, cousins relatives, every house that has a child, there are stockings by the stairs with the child's name. And we all pretend that a fat man with a beard wearing red robes sneaks into our house at night while we're all sleeping, through somewhere (definitely not the chimney cause we don't have one) and puts candy and goodies inside. When in fact, from the 18 year old to the 4 year old in the family, no one is dumb enough to think that that's real. We all know an aunt puts the candy inside, but what the heck right? Even 'Santa' knows that we know that she isn't actually Santa but we all like a little bit of make believe and just ride off each other for fun.

3. Baked Macaroni
We ALWAYS have baked macaroni during Christmas Eve. And we can't eat it till midnight. We eat other stuff for dinner - like BBQ, chicken, lechon, fish, etc - but the baked Mac is hands off til the clock strikes 12. There isn't really any explanation for this either. Someone jokingly commented that's it's for long life, but baked Mac? Really? Are you dumb?