"Real life? Or is this just fantasy?" The story of the stories of Santa.

I've always had a soft spot for Santa Claus. Heck, I know, we all do but for me it goes further than that. I was named after him, or more specifically, St Nicholas, and now, almost 46 years later, I'm fat and jolly.

Santa Claus, like Christmas itself, is a combination of history, Christian mythology and Pagan mythology. Generally speaking, stories, factual and legendary, of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra in the 4th century became mixed with Norse mythology, largely stories of Odin, and other traditions and stories, to create this jolly fat fellow in red and white with a big beard, who whips around the world in one night to bring all good children presents on Christmas Eve. He has been celebrated in song and stories,movies and books, and portrayed as elf, human, jolly, stern, and psychotic robot. The only thing missing is a gritty re-boot, although that can only be a matter of time. Odin's missing eye could come in handy.

There have been attempts to give Santa a backstory, one that explains the elves, the workshop, the red and white look, the reindeer, the gift giving, the stockings, and above all the magic. The first attempt that I knew of was one of Rankin and Bass' stop motion animation classics, Santa Claus is coming to town. There the story is told by Fred Astaire and Santa was voiced by Mickey Rooney.

I saw this annually for many years on TV and since TV now is not so helpful, I watch it on DVD every year. It's set in a Ruritanian country, and Kris, an orphan brought up by elves, defies the miserable rule of Burgermeister Meisterburger to bring gifts to the children of a small town. Eventually, with the help of a reformed Winter Warlock and others, he does the same to the world. It's a charming tale, one of the best of the Rankin Bass stable.

It was some years later I discovered they had gone to the well a second time with The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, a much darker and more mythical approach. Indeed, some fifteen years separate the two films. There the Great Ak, Master Woodsman, with many other forest spirits and creatures, debate whether the man called Claus had done enough to earn the Mantle of Immortality. A baby abandoned in a magic forest becomes Claus, a skilled toymaker. Again he conceives the idea of spreading happiness with toys, helped by his adoptive faery and elven family. But this quest is actively opposed by certain forest spirits who will kill him if they can. This one was not considered as successful, although I found it striking on first viewing. When the credits told me it was based on the novel by L Frank Baum, he of the Oz books, I was determined to find it.

This was pre-internet days (yes children, there were such times) and obscure books were difficult to find. Many years later I did find a copy in a second-hand bookstore. Sadly, I found it more in the vein of Baum's lesser Oz books, episodic, lacking a strong drive, and Claus is not the main mover in removing the threats to him or achieving his dreams, and so becomes a passive character. I have not seen the TV special for a long time, but I remember it as better. Perhaps I am wrong. I should get hold of it too. There is a more recent 2D animation, but it is not very good, although it did hold the attention of my  seven-year-old niece nicely.

More recently, Jeff Guinn attempted to bring the stories of Nicholas of Myra together with fables of Santa to write theThe Autobiography of Santa Claus. It's an admirable attempt to marry history and myth into a coherent whole but for me it was bit earnest and a teeny bit dull - it lacked magic.

This year has seen a wonderful addition to the ranks,  A boy called Christmas, by Matt Haig. While it hits many of the same points, elves, reindeer, presents, stockings etc it does so in a charming, off-beat and irreverent way, and the story as a whole has unexpected, fresh rhythm. 

You may wonder how I know the true story of Father Christmas and I will tell you you shouldn't question such things. Not right at the start of a book. It's rude, for one thing. All you need to understand is that I do know the story of Father Christmas, or why else would I be writing it? 

Nikolas, born on Christmas day, is the son of a woodcutter in Finland, whose only two Christmas presents ever have been a sleigh and a doll made out of a turnip. When his father joins an ambitious group looking for proof of elves up in Lapland, Nikolas is left in the care of his deeply unpleasant aunt Carlotta, and, as you might say, adventure ensues.

This is not a twee, nor even a safe story. Nikolas and the other characters he meets on the way are in genuine danger, and death and exploding heads can ensue. But through it all is the thread of belief in magic, and believing though you've never seen it, like a mouse can believe in cheese, even if he's never seen cheese. The illustrations by Chris Mould are fun and charming, and occasionally help to push the story along, or at least explicate a point otherwise glossed over. There's even some reindeer poo and wee jokes, if you like that sort of thing - and who doesn't? And in the end, it all boils down to the joy of giving.

I think this would make a lovely gift, and would be excellent book to be read aloud. I think you should get in quick before it becomes a classic book everyone knows. And available in bookstores right now!

SaveSave

Tried to smile, gave it all away? 'Smile' lost and almost found.

There is an excellent series of small books on great or significant albums called 33 1/3.  If you are interested in popular music, you may want to get hold of these. Each album is selected by the author, each with their individual approach and style, reflecting on the album, the artist, and the times they operate in.  With more than one hundred books and counting in the series- from Serge Gainsborough, to Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash, Hole, Public Enemy, Flying Burrito Brothers, Black Sabbath and Kanye West - they cover a wide range of style and times. If you feel so moved, you can pitch an album and have a go yourself.

Personally, I have Swordfishtrombones (Tom Waits) ABBA Gold, Pet Sounds, and Smile (both The Beach Boys) from the series. So far, only the Beach Boys have two albums covered in the catalogue. Even odder, one of those albums doesn't exist. Not really. Which is maybe why it's there.

Smile was the great unfinished album of the 60s. So the story goes, hearing the Beatles' Rubber Soul, Brian Wilson, the composer and producer for the Beach Boys, was inspired to write an album in which every song was good, no filler. The result was Pet Sounds, often held up as one of the great albums. The Beatles' response to that was Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, no slouch itself. Wilson went to top that with Smile, a teenage symphony to God, as he termed it. But pressure from his band, himself, his drug-use, his already fragile psyche, and from the industry saw increasingly-eccentric Wilson crack, and put the tapes away, never he said to be used. Wilson himself went into a long period of psychological trauma, from which he emerged periodically only to fall back, until he made a solo comeback, problematic in itself,  in the late 80s. The man back today producing new music, appearing live around the world, is a scarred-survivor.

But some of the songs did come out on other albums; 'Heroes and Villains', 'Barnyard', 'Vegetables', 'Momma Says' 'Wind Chimes', 'Wonderful' and 'Surf's Up', the song that prompted Leonard Bernstein to call Wilson a genius, all made their way onto other releases, some as whole songs, some as fragments. (Van Dyke Parks, Wilson's lyricist for Smile, suggested 'Surf's Up' be put on one album and used as the title instead of the planned Landlocked, and the album should sell a million. He was right.) Wilson's magnum opus, 'Good Vibrations', previously released as a single, was the band's first million seller and was meant to be the album's climax. Why that never happened has been the topic of books, movies, articles and countless discussions and arguments.

The Beach Boys next album instead of Smile was Smiley Smile, which Carl Wilson described as a bunt, rather than a home run. The Beach Boys stumbled ahead of the game here, with an album whose production was simpler and more direct. Dylan and the Beatles were both to offer much simpler albums in its wake. Hopes that Smile would ever see the light of day faded and fans responded with pirated bootleg versions, arguing over which songs would make the album and in which order. My favourite comment of all time, about just about anything on the internet, was one fan who declared, "I don't care what Brian Wilson says, [name of song] was never going to be on Smile!"  If that doesn't sum up the world of internet comments, I don't know what does. 

Then in 2004, the unthinkable happened; Brian Wilson toured presenting a live version of Smile, then released a studio album, Brian Wilson presents SMiLE. The arguments started immediately, how much was this the Smile album, really? It was forty years since he had first attempted it, production methods are all so different, didn't he say it should never be released,  the voices were not the Beach Boys, and so on. Indeed, given what had happened to him in the interim, how much was Brian Wilson still Brian Wilson? The album was a critical success, winning a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Then in 2011, the Beach Boys management released The Smile Sessions, doing what the fans had been doing for decades, creating an album from the session tapes. It too was supervised by Wilson but it too is not the Smile album, by definition. In any case, there are now two official versions of an album that doesn't exist.

Being a bit of a Beach Boys tragic, I have both versions in my collection. Wilson's is the better for mine, better finished with a better flow, which only makes sense, as he extensively reworked the material with a band, led by musical director Darian Sahanaja, while Parks reworked the lyrics. The voices are not the Beach Boys, but they're pretty darn good. I can also see why the rest of the band was so worried about it. It is an unusual album, a collection of three suites rather than a traditional pop album. Park's lyrics are poetic, obscure, baroque.  You can hear the influence of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Wilson attempting to give pop music the same veneer and relationship to classical music as Gershwin did for jazz. The opening number, 'Our Prayer', would not sound out of place next to the 'Humming Chorus' from Madame Butterfly. The album has a ambition and scope that is unmatched in popular music.

In any case, 33 1/3's Smile is an atypical book in the series. Usually, the track by track analysis of the album takes up the bulk of the book. Instead, we have an essay on the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, the progress of their music and its place in the popular pantheon, as well as an examination of the story and myth of Smile. Only in the last few pages are individual tracks glanced at.  The author Luis Sanchez finds a much more positive story in the tapes from the Smile sessions. Instead of a man falling apart, he hears a man in control of himself, his music and sensitive to the needs of his collaborators. There are other books on the subject that I think are better. As it never actually examines the album itself, it doesn't really fit in with the series. I was disappointed. There is much to discuss with the extraordinary music and lyrics, the differences between the 1966 tapes and the 2004 versions musically, lyrically, as well as the differing track orders proposed by Wilson then and now, but Sanchez does nothing with any of this. It's a missed opportunity.

Why Smile was never finished in 1966 remains a mystery. We can never know what it would have been like, but at least we now have some good educated guesses to go on.

SaveSave

For what it is worth

For what it is worth, here are some of the images that got their creators murdered. Technically I suppose this puts me at risk but I seriously doubt I put my life in danger by publishing them. Even from this small selection you can see that Charlie Hebdo is an equal-opportunity offender. If you google them, you'll find absolutely spectacular Christian blasphemies, among other images, all offensive to someone I'm sure. Charlie Hebdo are in the tradition of French anti-clericalism, one of the moving spirits behind the French Revolution. 

Remember, if you don't believe in freedom of speech for speech you don't like, you don't really believe in freedom of speech. 

We must not allow the fanatics for whatever cause damage or limit our freedom. 

We must not make excuses for them.

We must stand for what we believe.