Daddy, why do people put lighted deer in their front yards?
We're headed towards the tail-end of November, and the front yards in my neighborhood are suddenly sprouting deer.
These are not the wild animals, although here within sight of downtown Minneapolis we've got a sizable urban herd. (They mostly live in the wooded Mississippi Valley that runs through the heart of town.) No, these are Yule Deer.
(Up here in Snow Country, if you want to decorate outdoors, you've got to do it early.)
As a pagan, and myself a worshiper of the Deer Man, I find it deeply amusing that one of the foremost symbols of American Christmas: the Secular Holiday should be the Deer.
The connection is pretty tenuous. Presumably these are the reindeer that pull Santa's sleigh. Of course, the Deer of Light that you see in people's yards are clearly not reindeer. You can tell because reindeer have a very distinctive antler configuration. No, the Yule Deer are based—insofar as there's a natural prototype at all—on the American Whitetail, as (after all) they should be.
No, there's a deeper logic here. Now is, of course, Deer Time. Here in the North, the Rut begins around Samhain and runs (roughly) through Yule: Samhain breeding for Bealtaine fawning. For us predators, that also means it's the time of the Hunt.
How many good gifts deer give us: food, clothing, shelter. No wonder we're the People of the Deer.
Around now, my friend Sirius will be unpacking the Yule Stag. It's one of those made-in-China-for-the-Western-Market Santa maquettes: red fur robe, faux holly crown, shouldered sack of goodies, et al.
Oh, but see his shiny black hooves, and gaze into the big buck eyes of his royal deer head, branching antlers and all.
They're all for the Yule Stag, son.
On His antlers, He brings back the light.