Just waking.

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It was 14:00, almost exactly, before I realized I was still alive. I slept well, and very long. I don't remember alarms, cats, nothing. I do feel much better, so far. I am hoping the good feeling lasts. I need to get into town, shortly. It would be good to shop while the sun is still up and what warmth comes of it is still available. A quick shower and off to it.

As a Christmas approaches I remember my first non-traditional stories of Santa. I read stories about a man, probably a pagan priest and messenger for the king(s) of old who traveled the winter doing his task. Possibly in the summer too, but it was in the winter when he acted as a sort of Santa. On his way, knowing that people had little in the winter, he would bring gifts to the children of the villages he visited. He was called various things, but the one I first heard was Wōden.

In my mind, from all I have read, I suspect he was a real man, or men really. Wōden may have been the name of the first, or one of the first. And either later became a title so he was known, like the Dread Pirate Roberts, perhaps? If of course for different reasons. It may then have remained a title, entering into the mythic when he, or he and several others, joined to become Odin. Here is a piece that covers some of it, though my sources were stories and mythology and probably differ in various and many ways. It was an interesting myth for me, for a number of reasons. Understand, while I don't abide myth, or paganism, that is all gentiles had until Christ. There is some wisdom to be found in those tales. They weren't all just stories, or ways to understand the incomprehensible, but they too gathered wisdom and set social standards of the time. Another of my favorites was Zeus needing his head cracked open to release Athena. Oh what I can do with that one! Better to have one's head staved in then to have a woman trapped in one's noggin! And much, much more, given my nature. Never you mind.

Well, have a great day. I hope you have gotten to it better and faster than I have?