Santa Claus Meets Juan Samore

Santa Claus Meets Juan Samore
A Pirate Christmas Story

Presumably, you know who and what Santa Claus is. So let me tell you some things about Juan Samore, then. CAPTAIN Samore, some would insist, he was a pirate as fierce and greedy, as bloodthirsty and successful, as ever sailed the seas for gold, guts and glory.

Handsome as he was wicked, Captain Juan Samore had a twirl to his moustache, a point to his goatee, a ring of gold in his ear, plumed feather in his velvet hat, and he wore the finest silk scarves. Needless to say, his manicure was as perfect as his language was foul in several tongues. Whereas some pirate captains have a parrot that roosts on their shoulder and others have a pet monkey as a familiar, Samore kept a large chameleon lizard that gripped onto his shoulder and hissed into his ear. Some think that the Captain could see through the independently twirling eyes of the lizard but anyone who saw the man would know that he felt through that reptilian’s heart.

One fine Christmas Eve found Captain Juan Samore celebrating with his crew aboard the Corpse Raider down in the Caribbean, and let me tell you, they were not observing the holy day in prayer or reflection of Our Savior’s Birth. No ma’am, they were being about as bad as pirates can be. Mind you, these were not nice jolly pirates like the ones that disembark from Hollywood these days, but truly avaricious ones who would not hesitate to kill your mother for her gold fillings. They had just captured a slave trader’s ship (which was not considered pirate in the day but you and I know better now). The slaves thought they had been freed but then the pirates chained them back down back on the rowers' benches of their own ship. They made the poor slaves row the ship in circles for their drunken amusement. And they were fighting, and drinking rum from off the plundered ship, and singing, singing those pirate versions of Christmas carols like:

Swab the decks with boughs of holly!
Tis the season to be Jolly...Roger
Harharharharharrr...harharharrrharrrrrr!

So occupied they were, with their singing and fighting and drinking, and laughing at the men who fell off the spinning ship’s deck that they did not notice what was coming in from the north.

It piled up high, wide and white and loomed over the Corpse Raider before Captain Samore could retreat, a hurricane-sized blizzard from the North Pole which whitened the Caribbean sky with a snow flurry and blinded the whole crew. Only the slaves could still see what they were doing, and the spin of the pirate ship joined the spiral of the snow hurricane winds, and up into the spout spun the whole ship, up, up into the storm.

Riding the snow blizzard, and now back to their drinking, crew and captain and ship sailed into the dark night of the north. ALL the way north they flew, and when the storm came to rest, it still had enough force to suck up the ice, opening up a little pond of water right there at the North Pole. The Corpse Raider splashed down into it, its bobbing mast looking for all the world like a North Pole itself. When the snowy whiteness of the blizzard thinned, the dizzy pirates found themselves floating in a tiny sea surrounded by ice in the cold Arctic sunshine. And who was that strange man? No pirate, you could tell, who taunted them from way above, up top in the crow’s nest? Wearing hat and gloves of fur and velvet that made the pirates jealous?

Santa Claus.

Santa swung his big bag over his shoulder and tempted the pirates with what was inside. “Let me see, looking at the list, you all seem to be getting a bunch of coal. Here ya go!”

“Arrrr, arrrrgh!” swore the pirates.

“Hey you shouldn’t knock it, you could burn it and keep warm,” said Santa. “But... what DO you boys want?” he asked.

Every pirate then stopped trying to light the coal, and drew their swords, daggers, and pistols, and in one voice yelled:
“GO-O-O-O-OLD!”

“Gold!” “And silver!” “And rubies!” “And emeralds!” “And pearls!” “And diamonds!” “GOLD!”

So Santa started pouring down gold, treasures of all kinds, along with many other precious things the pirates would not appreciate.

The ship filled up with Santa’s plunder, and began to sink. Slaves broke their chains and tried to save them all by tossing the gold into the sea, but the pirates yelled for more gold even as they were sinking into the icy water.

Some say that there were no survivors, that pirates and slaves alike swam down to Davy Jones locker for a very long stay. I say, someone must have survived, perhaps by riding a polar bear to shore, or else who would tell the story?

Captain Juan Samore climbed the mast hand over hook as his ship sank, until only he and the crow’s nest were above water.

Santa said to Samore, “It looks like you have room for just one more gift, Samore.” And he held out a life preserver, a color of such pure bright platinum, it looked like a white cloud with a silver lining. Samore knew just by looking at it that it was so light, and so buoyant that it could save not just his own soul, rescue the drowned crew and slaves, and raise up the sunken ship he had ruined. He began to warm his heart, and moved to reach his hook up towards the magic life preserver...

“But don’t choose now, consider THIS!” taunted Santa.

Santa then pulled the last treasure out of his bag and held it up in his other hand. It was a huge golden anchor, exquisitely tooled and studded with all manner of jewels. ANY pirate would consider it the ultimate improvement to his ship, an anchor of the heaviest gold.
Juan Samore then stretched his hook toward the anchor. Below, bubbles of drowned pirates broke the water around him. Thinking again, Samore again turned and reached for the life preserver which Santa offered in the other hand. Just then, the lizard on Samore’s shoulder shot out its sticky tongue and caught the golden anchor, making the choice for the pirate. The anchor dropped and the last of the pirate ship with Captain Juan Samore and crows nest and all disappeared under the North pole. Immediately the North Pole ice cap froze over, covering ship, captain, crew, slaves, treasure and all. Santa, of course was caught up in his reindeer draw sled which had been awaiting him nearby.

Many years have gone by but still the stories are told of adventurers, treasure hunters, filmmakers and fools venture to find Samore’s pirate gold under the North Pole, but all of them sink with the heaviness of greed, fame, or budgets.

Others say that if the North Pole ever again unfreezes, that Juan Samore and his ruthless pirate crew and ship would be loosed out into the world. That is a good reason why many people nowadays fight global warming, whether they know it or not.

But all of us know that every child and every soul who shows kindness, generosity, respect, good humor or patience gives the grace that is needed for Santa’s elves to retrieve the pirate gold ounce by troy ounce from under the North Pole, melt it, remold and reshape it into joy and blessings to return to the world.




-Princess Poysen Iviee Dec. 2004

Holiday Rounds

Xmas/Yule hit early this year for me. Barely back from Thanksgiving when last weekend off to Galveston to do an early Xmas with my parents, since they are visiting back home. Broke I am, but fortunately I make, buy and sell stuff, so for the relatives I generally loot the store, throw a bunch of stuff I make, soaps that my biz partner makes, some high quality perfumes form India, local hot sauces, tattoo booklets, in a box then dump it on a table and let everybody grab what they want. Well, everyone wants the cookies. I highly recommend this kind of giving.

Mainly we got wined and dined unmerciful by the parents. LM rented us a minivan and we took bikes, but really we were not able to work off the calories they put on us at one of Galveston’s favorite restaurants among locals. Two nights in a row, and on the secong, we found a homemade carrot cake that one of the waitresses had made for us _in her own home_! We even went to Bishop’s Palace, a major attraction which me, living there 18 years and they, many more til they retired, had never seen! My great great grandfather worked on that spiral staircase, and after he died they were going through his stuff, and his carpentry tools that he brought from Germany, nobody, even the carpenters, knew what they were for. And my old highschool boyfriend's sister was a tour guide. Her persona was of a creepy ghost girl, but I’m not sure if it is an act, or if she really is embodying one of Gresham’s daughters! Folks and I agreed, Galveston is better as tourists, rather than living there.

LM is right now snowboarding in Colorado. This is just after he healed up from a very traumatic infection that involved and emergency surgical procedure, loads of antibiotics, painkillers, me driving a car from the emergency room, and lots of figuring out what to do about this huge ugly gash! Man, I love this stuff, as long as it doesn’t threaten my LM. He was saved by modern medicine, and all my herbal remedies could not have saved him. Humbling, and we might want to get used to life being a little more precarious.

I just recently gave a very well received class on magic with Faeries with another local magic teacher. We will be offering a follow up in what could become a series. I have not written much about Faerie stuff here, other than a few poems inspired by Thomas the Rhymer, but this is my main religious/spiritual pathwork, a very edge area of inquiry even among Pagans, and I wonder if mainstream Paganism and most modern religion have more in common than Faery Spiritualism. This has been my spiritual work for some but not all of my first 40 years, and now it is starting to come out as opposed to the taking in of the first half of my life.

Since the weather has gotten colder, I have not spun a hoolah hoop in weeks. Sometimes that is one of the things that makes me not sleep, trying to work out new tricks in my head. But by next summer for sure, I will have performance grade hoop acts together, for a local fire performance group that I love.

Last week I took cuttings of some of my herb plants, because the weather was right, and the moon sign and everything. Lavender, Thyme, Basil (just in case) Marjoram, Sage, and Dittany of Crete. I found an old folder of my landscaping customers, and there was the receipt for this original Lavender strain, from 1994. So this Lavender strain has been with me for 10 years. When the cuttings take root, which could be real fast, I pot them up. Maybe I will give one for my neighbor, the client for whom I originally planted these Lavenders, as a Yule gift! Yes, I will!

I really do not want this blog to become journal or diary entries like this one. What I try to make it is screeds, essays, monographs and expositions. I have one that just needs some more typing. So hopefully before any more of these entries on “what’s going on in my life that keeps me from writing” appears, you will be treated to a how-to paper I wrote in 1996 on facilitated consensus process decision making. This will be my offering to the guy who is putting together the document on how to survive the oil crash. It struck me that self-governance is a skill that could be every bit as needed as how to make rain cisterns or fix plumbing, and after a survey of what is on the web, I think my how-to paper is a better than what is out there. The only purely creative offering I have in mind is a Yule story I have to come up with for a local Xmas/Yule function where I have a storytelling gig. if it translates to written as well a s oral tradition, I will post it here.

Maybe ya’ll didn’t know that I am an Elf in Santa’s service!!?? Buy only items that say "made in USA" which REALLY stands for Union of Santa's Associates.