It’s not often that you pick up a Christmas book and find every last one of your assumptions about this most sacred of Christian holidays gleefully shattered into a million small and pointy, could-be-weaponised pieces.
But that’s what happened when I picked up a copy of A Very Klingon Christmas by Paul Ruditis with illustrations by Patrick Faricy, which purports to tell the true story of the day that, on Earth at least, celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ but which on the Klingon homeworld of Qo’noS, marks the birth of the greatest, most noble warrior to ever live, Kahless.
In fact, this beautifully laid out work, which tells its information-packed revelatory tale in rhyming couplets that glide off the tongue like fresh targ off a freshly-oiled bat’leth, goes so far as to say that Christmas is not a Terran story at all, but one taken, hook, line and disruptor from the Klingons, much like we slavishly appropriated the works of the Klingon’s most revered playwright, Shakespeare.
And Ruditis makes a compelling case of it, overturning all our assumptions about Christmas being an Earth-bound holiday, one whose traditions, so we have always been told, were drawn from pagan traditions such as the Roman Empire’s week-long feast of Saturnalia, the Asheira Cult’s veneration of trees and Thomas Nast/Coca-Cola’s re-tolling of Saint Nicholas into a jolly red man in a suit.
None of this, it turns out, is even remotely true.
The holiday we call Christmas is, in fact, a brazen usurping of the tale of brave Kahless, “The Most fearless of fighters we’ll never forget. For his equal among us have never been met.”
In typical gung-ho Klingon fashion, where I fancy nothing is ever done with half-baked or less-than-honourable intent, the birth of this greatest of Klingon warriors is marked by all manner of rites that look suspiciously like our much-loved Christmas traditions.
For instance, where we might go wassailing or carol singing, from door to door, boisterous, hearty of lung Klingon singers will shout out “battle carols for all the night long”, their ardour only enhanced by “hot mulled blood wine”.
Or take the person of Santa Qlas, who arrives, magically beamed by transporter (no clumsy chimney entries for him!) on what the Klingons call Khristmas Eve, to deliver all manner of presents such as mek’leth or disruptors to the good boys and girls … and Tribbles, of which there is always much resulting trouble, to the those of less noble behaviour.
He even has a sled of sorts pulled through the sky pulled “by eight tiny birds of prey”:
“On Ch’Tang! On, Ki’Tang!
On, M’Char! And Slivin!”
Can you see the eerie similarities to our Christmas traditions?
Of course, it’s also possible that A Very Klingon Khristmas is brilliantly-realised, poetically-delivered and beautifully-illustrated parody of our very Christmas traditions, providing as good as explanation as any for the presence of trees, a man in red suits, reindeer, presents and blinking, tangled lights in our homes come December.
It makes as much sense as all the usual pagan origins that are cited, and is really a great deal more fun, and not to mention eye-opening.
And whether you’re a hardcore Star Trek fan, or only have the occasional urge to “boldly go where no one has gone before”, you’ll find a great deal to inform, amuse and delight in this book which appropriately enough finishes off its entertaining rhyming tale with another catchphrase it’s entirely possible we culturally-thieving humans have also taken for ourselves:
“Happy Kristmas to all, and to all a maj ram!”
