mollyannice:

chancellorfangirl:

bbcphile:

si-mi-chiamano-meghan:

alia-andreth:

incorrect-middleearth-quotes:

redwoodtators:

lonelydad38:

mediumsizedboy:

trans-junk-rat:

who The fuck names meds “Zoloft” sounds like some dark wizard cursing me for not wiping my feet before I enter his house and “sertraline” is his snakewife

Xanax the White

I saw a quiz on the internet once where there was a list of names and you had to guess whether it was a Tolkien elf or a prescription medicine.

http://quizzes.howstuffworks.com/quiz/drug-or-tolkien-elf-quiz

I got 21 out of thirty. This quiz is so much harder than it looks…

– Mod Manwë

To be fair, “Edrahil”does sound like a prescription drug.

@bbcphile @sufficientlylargen

Well, I failed that test abysmally. 😀

Galadriel can cause suicidal thoughts, so please consult your doctor.

I got 18 out of 30. I don’t know how I got that high.

thewiccanwitchling:

spellbookbitch:

systlin:

orie-ana:

systlin:

icel0vesfire:

“You know mistletoe is important to Druids but do you know why people kiss under the mistletoe? It’s a Norse myth. Baldur the son of Odin was the most beloved by the other gods. So much that they wanted to protect him from all the dangers in the world. His mother, Frigg, took an oath from fire and water, metal, stone and every living thing, that they would never hurt Baldur. At a gathering, they tested him. Stones, arrows and flame were all hurled at him. Nothing worked. But there was one god that wasn’t so enamored of Baldur, the god of mischief, Loki. Loki discovered that Frigg had forgotten to ask mistletoe, a tiny, seemingly harmless plant and completely overlooked. Loki fashioned a dart out of mistletoe and it killed Baldur. Frigg was heartbroken. She decreed that mistletoe would never again be used as a weapon and that she would place a kiss on anyone who passed under it. So now we hang mistletoe underneath our door during the holidays so that we will never overlook it again.”

Reblogging again because SOMEONE ASK ME ABOUT WHERE SANTA CAME FROM AND WHY HE HAS EIGHT REINDEER DO IT. 

@systlin why?

OKAY BUCKLE UP CHILDREN

Santa? Is Odin. With a bit of the Turkish Saint Nicholas plastered over top to make him more acceptable to Christianity.

Let’s wind this back a bit.

So. In Norse tradition, Odin rose with the wild hunt on Midwinter. Children would leave out offerings of hay or root vegetables in their shoes for Slepnir, Odin’s horse. In norse tradition, all gifts create an obligation that must be returned in kind, so if Odin found the offerings pleasing he would leave treats and sweets in return.

So. We have a magical bearded man riding through the sky on a winter feast day and leaving treats for children in footwear if they pleased him. Sound familiar? Yeah.

As for Slepnir, Odin’s mount? He has eight legs. So. Bearded man with powerful magic flying through the air on an eight-legged steed on a winter feast day and leaving treats for children in their footwear if they pleased him.

Yeah.

Enter Christianity. Now, the midwinter season is important to all cultures that live in cold climates. The passing of the worst of the hard times and the beginning of the longer days and the promise of the return of life and light and fertility is a powerful thing. There were Christian festival days around the same time as Midwinter was celebrated in many polytheistic faiths. Christians found that they couldn’t get people to stop celebrating the feast days they’d been celebrating for several thousand years, so opted instead to just absorb those traditions into their OWN midwinter festivals. It was a far easier and more effective way of convincing people to convert.

So. The tradition of Odin leaving gifts hung on, in a far different form. This was helped by the legend of Saint Nicholas, a Turkish man who inherited a large amount of wealth and who was known and beloved for his habit of slipping money to poor people via leaving it in their stockings as they were hung out to dry after wash day, or by dropping it down their chimneys. This was similar enough to the old Odin myth of leaving gifts in footwear to paste right over top of the older stories with relative ease. So, the man delivering gifts became not Odin, but St. Nick, who delivered gifts via stocking and chimney.

However, the idea of him flying through the sky, being associated with elves, possessing powerful magic, and the eight-legged steed stuck. (reindeer, incidentally, are an animal with a lot of symbol and power in Norse tales. Ullr, the god of the hunt, had ties to reindeer, and at some point the eight legged horse became eight reindeer.)

Incidentally the image of Santa as a chubby little jolly man didn’t come around until modern advertising began depicting him that way. Before that? A tall, strong man, usually with a staff (echoing Odin’s staff or spear).

So. There you have it. Santa, the jolly bearded old man of beloved childhood Christmas memories? If you ever wondered where he came from in a ‘Christian’ holiday, there’s your answer. He didn’t. He’s the amalgamation of an ancient Norse god and a Middle Eastern saint, filtered through the lens of pop culture.

Jim Butcher actually did this very well in the Dresden Files, where Odin makes several appearances, one wearing the mantle of Father Christmas.

Christianity never really managed to make the old gods vanish.

I love these omg origins of holidays fascinate me

My heart melted even more.

furiousgoldfish:

it’s hard to see abuser as a monster once you knew them for a long time, maybe even all of your life, because it’s all there in your mind, you know them as a person who laughs and talks and fights so stubbornly for what they want, you’ve seen them act like a child, you’ve seen them laugh and cheer when they get what they want, you’ve seen them act all high and mighty when they talk in front of others, you’ve come to understood that they just sometimes want things so badly it’s no better than to give it to them, you’ve come to appreciate it’s useless to expect them to control themselves, or for them to stop when they think they’re right, you learned all it takes to take care of them almost as if you’ve been taking care of a child, you’ve gotten used to that terrifying anxiety and walking on eggshells when it feels like they might hurt you, you’ve gotten used to their derogatory “jokes” and you learned that you should always assume they meant the best no matter what kind of pain they cause to you. They’ve been humanized, even endeared in your eyes, you’ve spent so much energy and time learning how to live with them, it would feel like a huge loss to have all that energy wasted, to have all of your affection abandoned.

It takes so many steps backwards to see this individual as abusive, often you can’t even do it while you’re too close to them because guilt and memories and mind blocks they already put in your mind will stop you. Abusers do so many things just to be humanized, to be viewed as nice and good and faultless. They learn all their life how to lure out empathy, how to make you feel sorry, make you feel guilty, make you feel like you’re demonizing them if you even say out loud what they did to you.

Only if you can push away everything they do to appear lovable and caring, and focus on the amount of damage they caused to you, the amount of pain and hardship and trauma you’re going thru because of them, you can get a glimpse of what they truly are. While you’re around them, it’s often impossible to even estimate the trauma you’re suffering, or connect it to them, as they will often imply or outright claim the pain you go thru is due to you yourself, or outer factors. Only once you can see the damage, and connect it with it’s cause, you realize they didn’t care they put you thru all that. They would be happy doing it to you all their life if it pleased them. They don’t care you’re a human being, they don’t even see you as one. They would convince both you and themselves that you deserved all that. That you exist to be hurt by them.

Only monsters do this to other human beings. And them acting like humans makes it all the more terrifying. Because you can’t tell the difference, until it’s too late. This is why it’s okay to demonize anyone who hurts you. Don’t let anyone present themselves as human to you, while they don’t care if they’re causing you pain. 

klaviergavinwiki:

me throughout the year: if only i could justify buying this Thing Maybe christmas or my birthday.

my mom: give me a list of things you want for christmas/your birthday

me: i have never wanted for anything ever in my entire life