The Hidden History of Santa Revealed!

Thom Hartmann
5 min readDec 23, 2022

May all your dreams and good work be realized as our sun’s eternal energy returns to full life in our part of Earth this coming New Year…

Image by Ron Porter from Pixabay

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Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, a connection to some of the most ancient of all known northern European shamanic traditions. Like people living in the north for millennia, we continue to embrace them with regional, national, and religious tweaks.

It occurs during the week of the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, when ancient holy men and women lit “yule logs” to push back the darkness and implore the gods or nature to bring back the light of summer.

As Henry Bourne wrote in 1725:

“For as both December and January were called Guili or Yule, upon Account of the Sun’s Returning, and the Increase of the Days; so, I am apt to believe, the Log has had the Name of the Yule-Log, from its being burnt as an Emblem of the returning Sun, and the Increase of its Light and Heat.”

When Louise and I lived in Stadtsteinach, Germany, Herr Mueller led us up a mountainside deep into the Franconian forest on Christmas eve in 1986 where our community had covered a pine tree with candles: we sang carols and he…

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Thom Hartmann

America’s #1 progressive talk show host & NY Times bestselling author. Thom’s writings also appear at HartmannReport.com.