Darkest Christmas: December 1942 and a world at war

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Eartha Kitt made the song “Santa Baby” famous in 1953, and it’s still a Christmas classic today. But if you take a closer look at the lyrics, the weird mixture of children’s traditions and the sexualization of Santa is more unsettling than charming.

Darkest Christmas December 1942 and a World at War by Peter

In Greenland, there’s a special Christmas delicacy called Kiviak. It’s the body of a seal, stuffed with the carcasses of around 400 auks (small, very cute birds), that has then been left out for 3 to 18 months. The air is squeezed out of the seal, and then the body is coated with seal grease to prevent the whole thing from rotting. The auks ferment in that time, so that when the seal is finally opened around Christmas time, they can be eaten raw. What a… lovely surprise. It was shattering and dehumanising, after a number of months of chronic sleep deprivation, I’m seeing things no 24-year-old should ever see. I was a burned-out husk of my former self. I’d come to regard the public as the enemy. People became acronyms. On the small white cards which served as the record of a visit to A&E I’d record the history: I wish it wasn’t so, but I think it’s hard to argue against the reality of where we are with integrated software vs interoperable systems. I understand how hard it is for NHS staff this Christmas. We have 3 kids and 2 of them are junior doctors on the front line. Their workloads are overwhelming, and I can see them developing the character-armour and detachment from people required to survive.Like many in the NHS, there is a feeling here that technology will solve all – interoperability, AI, EPR and so on. I have 50+ years in IT and hundreds of visits to NHS clinics and hospitals and my conclusion is that the Clinical PROCESSES are badly deigned ad hoc or non-existent. The surgeon above spelled out his needs. This is what is needed but those needs need to be stated in clinical flow diagrams with data sources and sinks included – no technology, just a diagram which shows how his part of the world wants to operate. This is then translated into an IT architecture to map on to the processes and then that architecture is translated into products or technology in IT terms. I have diagrams to illustrate this principle, free if you send a note to me at [email protected] The message in a nutshell is Process design (by clinicians) first, then architecture, then technology. The fact that NHS efforts seem to start with technology tells me they will never get it right, however hard they try and whatever ‘shiny’ new technology they employ. Trust me, I have been around a long, long time and know this from experience. Maybe NHS IT’s darkest hour is the turning point. It maybe it isn’t too late to build an open NHS IT ecosystem, more like the app store than a 30 year-old monoliths we’ve converged on but it will require leadership who understand the need to put NHS staff ahead of dogma and AI pie in the sky. Maybe NHS IT can save the NHS? The author Piers Torday had been similarly obsessed with the story as a child. He wanted to stage an adaptation while at university with two friends who shared his passion for it, but the rights were not available, and the project was forgotten. Twenty-five years on, the stars aligned: the same friends were now a theatre executive and a producer, and Torday’s new adaptation of The Box of Delights has just opened at Wilton’s Music Hall in east London. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" has been covered by everyone from Amy Grant to Barry Manilow, but it was originally written for the 1944 movie Meet Me in Saint Louis and sung by Judy Garland. Hugh Martin was given the task of creating a song that could show the family's sadness over celebrating the last Christmas in a home they were soon moving from. With lyrics like "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last," Martin did such a good job of writing a melancholy tune that Garland complained it was too depressing. Lots of people like to take their picture with Santa, but the picture you can get in Scottsdale, Arizona is a little bit different. The Scottsdale Gun Club lets you take a picture where you and Santa are both armed to the teeth with all manner of machine guns.

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In Portugal, the Christmas morning feast is called Consoda. It’s much like Christmas meals elsewhere in the world, but there’s one key difference: the Portuguese set places for alminhas a penar, or “the souls of the dead.” That’s right, they eat their Christmas meal with ghosts. Inspired by the earnest James Brown original from his Funky Christmas album — in which JB implores Santa to please pay a visit to the “soul brothers” — Snoop and his Dogg Pound elves fly through the night in their ’64 Impala sleigh, elucidating the yuletide realities of the “needy and greedy.” But amid all the gangstas and dope fiends, the song is really about the power of Christmas to evoke feelings of innocence and family, even if you’ve gotta harvest your turkey down at the church shelter. C.A. Merle Haggard –“If We Make It through December” (1973)Despite what Hallmark has led you to believe, the history of Christmas is filled with terrifying figures. Even modern Christmas traditions, such as watching holiday-themed movies, can prove unnerving to a child. Consider the time-tested film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which features a terrifying carnivorous snow monster as the primary antagonist.

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In Eastern Europe, one of the stories told to children is about Frau Perchta, or the Christmas Witch. She has two faces, a nice face that she shows to nice children, and a scary face she shows to bad ones. She comes into homes on the 12th night of Christmas and leaves a piece of silver in the shoes of nice children. For years, people have dressed up as Santa to delight little children around Christmas time, but SantaCon has somewhat tainted the tradition. An infamous pub crawl that started in New York City and has now spread to many other cities, and not only does having hundreds of people dress up as Santa spoil the illusion for the kids that witness the event, but their drunken antics cause damage and public nuisance every year. Nativity scenes seem like a pretty standard Christmas tradition, but in Catalonia they’re a little… different. Specifically, they feature a character called a caganer. There’s no good way to say this: caganer means “defecator,” and in the scenes they’re squatting, with their pants down, with a pile of poop on the ground beneath them. Seriously. Gryla has a variety of companions, including the Yule Lads – her 13 unruly troll children/ Large Adult Sons – and the Jólakötturinn, or Yule Cat. So it’s a joy for those of us who like a bit of pagan magic with our mince pies to see two examples enjoying a revival, on stage and through the power of social media.It could be worse, I could be an NHS Equality and Diversity manager appointed to ensure compliance with equal pay, gender pay gap, social mobility and ethnic diversity targets invented by central government who awoke this week to find cabinet ministers using me as a right-wing meme for what is wrong with the NHS ignoring the fact that my role is a symptom of their over-regulation of the NHS after 12 years of their control.