The origin of Father Christmas

Part 2

Well then, where was I?  I better have another glass of wine to help me tell this story.  In those far off days there lived a Germanic tribe right up in the north and to the east. This is where the sun hardly sets in the summer and doesn't rise much in the winter. The landscape is lit by volcanoes, or possibly dragon's breath, up in the mountains and trolls lurk, waiting to eat lone travellers. Now these people weren't the Vandals, who hadn't really started smashing Rome or any thing else up back then, but still lived by hunting and trapping in the frozen forests, and they weren't Goths, who didn't make castles or even dress in velvet and paint their eyes black, but they did like to make war on their neighbours and sacrifice enemies to their Gods. In fact they would fight everyone around, which gave them lots of people to sacrifice. They weren't even Alemanni, who did already like tp drink beer, although the Burgundians hadn't developed a taste for red wine yet, the Lombards hadn't started banking and the Franks were still practicing throwing their hand axes. They definitely weren't Angles, or Saxons, Danes or Friesians; these people all lived on their sand flats, islands and marshes around the North Sea and fished, fought, farted and fornicated (oh, dear children, ignore that bit) because they hadn't invaded Britain at that time. Those misty islands were still full of Celts, who had fun setting fire to wicker baskets, full of birds, animals and children, and using sickles to cut down mistletoe. This was used as a fertility symbol to make certain that there were lots of little Celts running around dressed in woad and little else.

No, these were early proto Germanic people who were closer to the Sarmatians or Scythians than Teutons and were real Bahbahbah barbarians. They hunted, fished and herded reindeer, as cattle weren't hardy enough to survive in the harsh climate of the steppes, taiga and sparse forest, just below the tundra.