In one episode from season two of TNT's "The Closer", top cop Brenda Johnson gives her team a little pep talk while they run a stakeout to catch a CIA mole. In it, she tells them about pragmatism and idealism, as exemplified by kings and the Church in the "Dark Ages". Brenda states that neither side is ever completely right, that they have both done terrible things, and that it's generally "best to stay on the sidelines and let them duke it out." But every so often, one side decides to destroy the world just to win the argument. And then, you have to take a side. "So tonight," she says, "we serve the King."

The CW network's Horror/Dark Fantasy show "Supernatural", about two outlaw brothers hunting down ghosts, demons, monsters and urban legends on the back roads of America, has a not-dissimilar theme, in an even more pessimistic key. Creator Eric Kripke has stated that the goal of the show is to do a horror movie every week. So, when the writers decided in the show's third season that they were going to do a "very special" Christmas episode, I'm sure you could all guess right off that this was not a show for the kids. And with the focus on ancient Scandinavian human sacrifice, St. Nicholas' dark companions and Grendel-style monsters/gods who yank their victims up chimneys and munch on them like fruitcake in the basement, it's a bloody Christmas indeed. Especially once the two brother-heroes of the show get captured and subjected to a very nasty Yuletide dinner tradition.

The mythology of the show ranges violently between Reformation-era and late-ancient/early medieval imagery and tropes. Demons, for example, are not physical beings, and must manifest themselves by possessing human bodies. Soulful younger brother Sam Winchester has visions of the future and other strange talents shared by a group of others his age. Too bad these come from his mother apparently being the bride of a demon and his destiny as the Antichrist. Bummer.

Surprisingly, Sam is the more conventional and sane of the two brothers. Older brother Dean is a cheerful pagan/atheist whose bravado masks a damaged fatalism as dark as eighth-century Anglo-Saxon author, the Venerable Bede's, famous metaphor of the pagan world. In Bede's version of Anglo-Saxon paganism, life is like:

"the swift flight of a sparrow through the room...with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately out another, whilst he is within is safe from the winter, but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant. "

In season two's Houses of the Holy, the brothers get a post-Christmas case (complete with the very real snow that got dumped on Vancouver last winter) of an apparent angel inciting down-and-out people to murder those who seem on the surface to be good citizens, but are evil murderers and pedophiles underneath. Sam wants to believe that they may be hunting an angel, because that would confirm his belief in a higher power. But Dean, frustrated by being locked down in a motel room after inadvertently ending up a fugitive from the FBI, would rather classify what they're hunting as a demon or ghost and get uncomfortably cozy with the Magic Fingers machine on his bed than start believing in angels.

"I believe in what I can see," he tells Sam. "There's no higher power. There's no God. There's just chaos and violence and random, unpredictable evil that comes out of nowhere and rips you to shreds...It's one of the perks of the job [that] we don't have to operate on faith. We can be sure." By the end of the episode, the brothers have switched places. Sam has exorcised the "angel", who turned out to be the troubled spirit of a murdered Catholic priest. Meanwhile, Dean has witnessed the freak-accident death of an incipient serial killer and now believes, very tentatively, that he's seen "God's will". Small surprise, in the context of the show, that angels in the Supernatural universe are terrifyingly medieval heralds of divine justice, not the fluffy best buds of the post-Victorian era.

Dean believes in demons because he's exorcised them, ghosts because he's banished them, pagan gods and monsters because he's fought (and sometimes destroyed) them. He is bitter because their mother burned to death in a fire set by a demon when Sam was a baby and that their obsessed father raised his sons as ghost-hunters in a series of ugly motel rooms. Charged early on with guarding and raising his brother, Dean has no self-esteem whatsoever, to the point of almost saintly humility. This is offset by a hedonism that embraces wine, women and song. But Dean's enjoyment of life doesn't stop him from going down to the crossroads to make a deal with a demon for his brother's life after Sam is killed near the end of season two. This gets Dean a year to live. As you can see, the show's writers are accessing a fair number of myths and legends.

In this week's Christmas episode, "A Very Supernatural Christmas", the humor is pitch-black, the body count high and the gore gruesome. It's Dean's last Christmas and he wants to celebrate it, even though he's not really sure what the holiday is about. "Christmas is Jesus' birthday," he tells Sam, who replies that it's a syncretic mix of pagan and Christian traditions. "What are you gonna tell me next, that the Easter Bunny's Jewish?" Dean retorts. Yup, we're in Jeff Foxworthy territory.

The episode references three myths, one a group of dark legends related to Santa Claus, another a Norse tradition of human sacrifice and the third a pretty ingenious take on Beowulf. The brothers investigate the disappearances of three men who were dragged up the chimney in front of their children or grandchildren. At first, Sam and Dean think that they are investigating an "anti-Claus", which Sam mistakenly identifies as a "shady brother" of Santa Claus. Actually, this figure derives from a group surrounding St. Nicholas in Northern Europe known as the "Companions of St. Nicholas". Most prominent are Krampusz from Eastern Europe and Zarte Piet (Black Peter) from the Netherlands, both mentioned in the episode. Also mentioned is Belsnickel (found among the Pennsylvania Dutch).

These companions reflect late medieval and Reformation era images of the Devil: specifically, dark skin and physical disfigurement (including horns). Most notably, Black Peter is represented as a stereotypical Spanish Moor and slave, an image that is now considered to be offensive. In the past, the figure could have been a way of reducing the very real Muslim threat of the Ottoman Empire in Christian minds to a figure of fun in service to an eastern Christian saint. These figures probably derive from a story that St. Nicholas was such a powerful saint that he was able to harness even the Devil to do his bidding at Christmas. Their function was to scare the Hell out of bad little kids by whipping them or leaving them lousy presents, presumably so St. Nick could then be put across as an entirely benign figure. But of course, since both the Companions and the Saint come from a monotheistic culture, they actually serve Santa Claus himself, and do his bidding. Which is a theologically nice way to keep Santa's hands clean.

At any rate, about a third of the way through (in the middle of a horrific rendition of "Silent Night"), the brothers decide that they are actually onto some kind of human sacrificial ritual. Some viewers have identified it as Celtic, but it actually appears to be the Swedish tradition of "Midvinterblot" (mid-winter-sacrifice), in which both animals and humans were sacrificed. The major festival to the winter god in Celtic mythology, Samhain, was not at the winter solstice but around Halloween. The writers of the show seem to have it in a bit for the old Norse religion, as season one's "Scarecrow" centered around a murderous Norse harvest god from the pantheon known as the "Vanir". Loki (possibly the lethal trickster god of season two's "Tall Tales") comes from the rival Aesir, led by Odin, who had once engaged in a major war with the Vanir. Maybe. Loki is an ambiguous figure who may not even have been a god.

There is a distinct possibility that Dean, particularly, is being set up in opposition to the Vanir in some way, or possibly even as a liminal pagan/Christian figure. Dean went hunting the Vanir on his own during a time when he and Sam had split up, but later, he showed favoritism toward the trickster, declaring, "I liked him. He had style."

Having determined that the anti-Santa angle was the dead end (the writers wisely having left the Companions as too politically incorrect to continue safely), the brothers focus on a Leave-It-to-Beaver couple who are selling meadowsweet wreaths, instead. Now, I got a bit skeptical when Sam started talking about meadowsweet as some sort of catnip for Celtic pagan gods. The big heavy found in the stomachs of bog bodies (the strongest evidence for Celtic human sacrifice outside of seriously biased Roman stories) is mistletoe, though that could be from crop contamination. Holly and ivy aren't exactly innocently Christian, either. But that's neither here nor there. Once the brothers get down into the basement and discover all sorts of body parts from the kidnap victims, they are attacked by the couple and things take a very interesting turn. After Dean is coldcocked trying to rescue a trapped Sam, Sam shines his flashlight on the couple, showing monster faces underneath.

And suddenly, I got it. The writers weren't doing Celtic pagan gods, or Norse pagan gods, either. They were doing Mr. and Mrs. Grendel (instead of the original Grendel and his mother). And that got me all perky, because I've always liked that part of Beowulf.

It makes sense--Grendel comes into the hall of the Geats at night and snatches men from around the hearth. Mr. Grendel yanks men up *through* the hearth. Grendel eats his prey; so do Mr. and Mrs. Grendel. Grendel represents no apparent divine principle (the Christian writer who set down Beowulf centuries after the poem's creation claimed Grendel was a descendant of Cain). Neither do Mr. and Mrs. Grendel. Sam makes a reference to the idea that they are providing mild weather in exchange for the sacrifices, just what the Midvinterblot is supposed to invoke, but no humans knowingly ask for this, the couple themselves don't mention it and it's otherwise never followed up (except for one ambiguous note at the very end).

Further similarities: Grendel and his mother exist outside of the laws of society; Mr. and Mrs. Grendel appear to have "assimilated" (as Mr. Grendel puts it), but continue to engage in repugnant practices that would make them outlaws were they publicly known. We have no real evidence, aside from their word, that they were ever actual gods, and not monsters masquerading as gods to get easier pickings. Especially significant is the timeline that the couple give to the brothers for their decline in favor--either this is a mistake of the writers (pretty likely), or we're meant to question what Mr. and Mrs. Grendel are saying. The wife claims that they've been in eclipse for "two millennium [sic]", but Midvinterblot was not abolished until about eight centuries ago, paganism persisting in Viking Scandinavia quite a long time after it was superseded by Christianity in other parts of Western Europe. Even Celtic paganism did not really give way to Christianity until about fifteen centuries ago. The only other candidate would be the Greek Lenaea (Festival of the Wild Women) in which Maenads, drunk on wine and divinity, tore apart a man in honor of their deity Dionysius, god of the vine. But the human sacrifice component (let alone the feminist one) doesn't appear to have survived past the sixth or seventh century B.C. So, two millennia doesn't work for any of these traditions.

So far in Supernatural, we've already seen variations of pagan gods and not-so-pagan figures--a harvest deity (a Norse Vanir) that trades fertility in exchange for human sacrifice and is invincible inside its own grove unless its sacred tree is burned; a trickster god or demigod that embarrasses, humiliates and even kills the high and mighty and is both immortal and invulnerable; and a herald of God's vengeance (or justice) that is invisible, omniscient, elusive and most certainly invulnerable. It was inevitable that we'd get a couple of false gods in there at some point.

Incidentally, if Mr. and Mrs. Grendel in this episode were Vanir, they were also likely brother and sister, as the original Vanir appear to have engaged in sibling incest rather frequently. Just in case this episode hadn't completely icked you out yet.

The episode does not (quite) end on this note, however. Sam and Dean kick Grendel-butt (with a Christmas tree, no less) and take off before the authorities can show up and get a look in the basement. In flashbacks to their childhood, we see that Sam was the one who gave Dean his horned-god pendant. Sam was originally going to give it to their father, and it appears to have been some kind of protection amulet rather than just something sentimental. But when their father fails to return on Christmas, being out hunting monsters, Sam gives the amulet to Dean instead, correctly identifying Dean as his true protector.

In the present, Dean gets his wish. Sam decides to create the Christmas spirit that Dean had asked for in their motel room (number 12, naturally). Touched, Dean takes his brother's offering in the spirit intended, rum-laced eggnog and all, they exchange appropriately tacky gifts, and the episode ends with an exterior shot of them watching sports while Dean's beloved Impala muscle car gathers snow outside, an indication that Mr. and Mrs. Grendel's bloody grip on the weather has finally slackened. Christmas, against the odds, has triumphed one more time.

I wish you a hopeful Christmas.
I wish you a brave new year.
All anguish, pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear.

They said there'd be snow at Christmas.
They said there'd be peace on earth.
Hallelujah, Noël, be it Heaven or Hell,
The Christmas we get we deserve.

(Emerson, Lake and Palmer, "I Believe in Father Christmas")


Paula R. Stiles