Before Santa, There Was The Deer Mother
I don’t love Christmas. It feels like a holiday appropriated from Paganism to shift the focus from celebrating nature and the seasons to celebrating commercialism and men who save the day by being born and bringing presents. Or eternal life in heaven. Whatever.
While different cultures have their own version of the iconic Santa, I’ve only recently come to know about The Deer Mother. While I’m not surprised this story has all but vanished from our collective consciousness, I’m excited to have discovered it.
Yes, before Rudolph was hauling Santa’s cookie-loving ass all around the world to bring presents to kids whose parents have money, there was the Deer Mother, a reindeer who pulled the sleigh of the Sun Goddess on Winter Solstice, bringing light with her horns. Like Santa, there are different goddesses whose sleighs and chariots she pulls: Beaivi, the sun goddess of the Sami, the indigenous people of Lapland, Norway; Saule, the Latvian goddess who threw amber — a representation of light — down chimneys as she flew by; Rohanitsa, the winter goddess of Ukraine, with antlers growing out her head.
Since Neolithic times, reindeer have been revered by northern people, as they relied upon them for food, clothing and shelter. They were also symbolic of fertility, the feminine, and associated with the sun. Reindeers and their…
