Saturnalia the Next Generation

It's the start of December and Penny has a pointy elf hat and Christmas jumper on and is writing on a white board.

"Ok, on or around December 25th we have the midwinter solstice, Christmas, the birthday of Jesus, also Mitras, Horus, Hercules, Zeus, the end of Saturnalia and the Rex Sol Invictus, the feast of Winter veil, Pancha Ganapati, Hogswatch, Yule, Festivus, Kwanzaa and Newtonmas."

Sheldon nods. "so we can now break this down into the Traditions we will accept and celebrate, acknowledge for social convention or simply ignore as spurious" .

She draws three columns. "Can't you just think of Christmas as Saturnalia the next generation? You love the Next Generation. Same mission, new actors, better special effects. "

he huffs "Hardly"

She grins, "come on, The solstice is like the hump day of winter"

"Humbug, it's just a bunch of baloney created by the tinsel industry."

"It can be fun!"

"Except for the stupidity of Santa claus"

"What do you have against Santa?"

"he's just massively illogical. the number of people he'd have to visit in one night, the mass of a sleigh full of gifts, The required acceleration of the sleigh is massive. Energetically it's just not possible, if he tried he'd explode from friction with the atmosphere." Sheldon is on a roll with a favourite rant "Plus how does he know who's bad or good? without telepathic powers he'd need to be watching everyone in the world all the time. How? secret cameras? spies? Black ops elves?"

She sighs "ok, well we can discount the fun value of Santa's 1984 style total surveillance police state"

Sheldon keeps on "I wrote a paper on it when I was younger, breaking down the globe by religion, age and population density, average children per household, adding in the significant proportion of secular Christmas celebrators and discounting groups like Jehovah's witnesses, assuming a 50/50 naughty to nice ratio it means that almost every house is visited. the time frame that near the winter solstice means the Northern Hemisphere, which has a higher population than the southern, has longer nights." He sketches out a globe with a sleigh and a big red woosh arrow round it "My formulas are still sound, so using the current population of 7.6 Billion he'd have to visit 273,000,000 houses is 26.4 hours of darkness." he scowls. "The only remotely logical thing is Rudolph having a red nose as the longer wavelengths of red light penetrate fog better than white light"

An hour of list writing later...

Penny sighs "I think we've got somewhere finally. I like to follow the social conventions but don't really care for the reasons. You don't like the reasons and don't care about the trappings. So we'll have a Newton-mas tree that just happens to look like a Christmas tree but with scientifically appropriate shiny decorations, we won't pander to Jesus' Birthday, Santa's oppressive police state or have any bull sacrifices. We will give and receive gifts from those we class as friends and the advantage of being a couple is that I can shop for us, so while you have final approval you are freed from gift giving obligations."

She underlines the final resolution

"sound good?"

Sheldon nods and sighs "indeed, it seems a very acceptable compromise"

Another Hour later

Penny's working on Christmas entertainment and present ideas "So, for Favourite Christmas films we have Die Hard 1, Gremlins, Home alone and Star Trek 4."

Sheldon gives a noncommittal grunt and carries on working

Penny takes that as assent "agreed then." and ticks off the list

"Now, for Howard and Bernadette I've found a Set of adult body crayons, they're like coloured soaps you can use in the shower to draw on each other that wash off. kind of sexy fun"

Sheldon bristles and slams shut his laptop "Penny, It's a stupid pseudo pagan wish fulfilment fantasy and not worthy of so much of your time or mine!"

She has been trying very hard to not let his mood get to her but she finally explodes "Oh For fucks sake, Sheldon. what do you have against Christmas? So Santa didn't bring you a titanium centrifuge, so what?. Get over it."

Sheldon looks pained. He takes a deep breath and motions to the couch. "Incorrect, that was my birthday. Now, Sit down. Position and Listen to me".

Penny looks surprised, she sets her magazine down and sits as directed, back straight, hands in her lap, focused on him. Something is wrong with him, he's actually upset.

"You need more context. You see, My Grandfather, Mee Maw's husband, whom I call Pop Pop, died when I was five. This was my first real experience of death in the family and it caused a lot of sadness and confusion in my young life, as you can appreciate. "

He helped my first experiments at electromagnetic accelerators, if fact he was the only one to believe in me enough to plug it in. He knew it would work, and it did! To this day Mee maws fireplace has a 2" nail embedded in it. He even covered for me when it blew all the fuses and melted my legos, he said they had been left too close to the fire .

Sheldon starts to pace up and down the room, agitated and clearly upset.

"That Christmas I was dressed up in my Sunday best and taken to see Santa at the Baybrook Mall in Galveston, Texas. There I was confronted by a brightly coloured whiskey scented jovial fraud who asked what I wanted most in the world for Christmas."

Penny's face goes pale and she covers her mouth with both hands, silently mouthing No.

He snarls, enunciating each word harshly " What I Wanted Most In The World, you understand?"

Sheldon hangs his head "So I asked for my Pop Pop back."

Penny looks at him, tears in her eyes "Oh Sheldon, I'm so sorry, I didn't know"

"I remember clearly the confusion on that overweight liars face, how his jolly red face went pale as I explained, the look of panic and horror as he tried to fob me off with a toy car, frantically waving for his helper elves in the short skirts to get me out of there. "

he slumps down next to her, accepts her caring arm around his shoulders

"You see, at first I thought he was denying me. Later I realised he couldn't do it. It was all a lie."

He hangs his head. "Once my screaming fit abated I swore to destroy Christmas and all who believed in it"

They kept taking away my "Santa Claus is a fraud" placards so I started attacking him intellectually

Tears are starting to stream down his face, but he carries on.

"You have to understand i was only 5 and my genius was still developing, I knew how science worked but still had a childish trust in my parents and the things they said. I believed in magic and Santa and Jesus and all that illogical mess because my parents said so.

From then on there was no more magic. No more outlandish hopes to be crushed. From that day forward I always needed evidence, proof and reason before I'd trust anyone ."

He curls up on the sofa, long gangly arms wrapped around his legs.

"That was when I stopped believing in Santa. And magic. And my parents."

"It's a terrible thing to realise your parents lie to you. I had to test it empirically to realise they actually believed some of the irrationality themselves. But other parts they knew to be lies but told me anyway and actually thought it kind to lie to children. So I started testing everything as nothing could be trusted."

She holds him tight as his sobs wrack his chest.

"I have come to terms with much of the original anger and upset, but the sight of Santa Claus still pains me."

"No more Santa then, Sheldon. I promise"

To paraphrase a misquote of Epicirious

Is Santa willing to give presents but not able? Then he is not magic

Able but not willing?. Then he is not jolly

Willing and able? Then why is Pop pop dead?

Neither willing or able? Then why call him Santa?

This is a big emotional swing that I think they really underused in the show, it explains so much about why Sheldon is the way he is, it's a pity they played it for laughs.

S6/E11