Culture

Legend of the Thunder Oak | Christmas Legends

By Felipe Robayo / December 15, 2020

During an era when the vikings ruled the northern seas, and the people praised the God of War, Thor’s throne was a thunder oak, giant as can be, and nourished on human and animal blood, flesh and bone.

Year after year, the vikings sailed to different lands for the offerings, and whoever didn’t yield their part in peace or surrender willingly, then the chants of war banged in helmets and the axes drew blood in the name of the throne.

And while some abided and willingly turned in their offering, others were starting to get tired of losing family members and useful members of society to that hoard of hairy and helmetted brutes.

They wished they left them alone, but knew those wishes were beyond their control.

Yet they wished each on his own heart, at waking, during meals and labor, before bed and even while sleeping: “Oh, please, let our blood spill no more!”

And so their will, shaking heavens, the earth and the underworld awoke a spirit named Liberty.

“Who dares awaken me?” Said she in her darkest of caverns, where she’d been laying for more than ten millennia. But no one was there to answer, only the echo of the wishes of the people.

And so, immersed in those cries of redemption, she took some clay and molded a man seven feet tall. She gave him an axe of gold and a shield of titanium and tugnsten alloy. She snapped her fingers and out came a spark which landed in the clay figure’s eyes. She blew some air through his nostrils and saw how his chest started to go up and down.

She pushed her index onto his heart and it started pumping. His eyes opened up wide.

“You are Winfred. You must settle these voices. Finish their suffering,” said his creator.

And so Winfred, axe and shield in hand, led by the voices arrived in the most ravaged settlements of all. Winfred felt horrified with the grim view of bodies and houses scattered on the ground, the presence of fire visiting houses and of axes making way through.

So the people showed Winfred the way to the Thunder Oak, the root of all their pain. He arrived while Thor’s priests held winter mass, the offerings tied up and ready to cast their blood.

Winfred drew his axe and with one blow knocked the giant Thunder Oak with a thunderclap. The tree fell and crumbled a forest, yet a fig tree stood right next to the fallen oak. And Winfred said: “Behold the fig tree, source of your heat and your home. This tree represents peace amongst you. You shall shed blood no more, and instead gather ’round the fig tree adorned with lights and filled with gifts at its roots.” And so the people were free and in Christmas we celebrate in family this most precious gift.

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