A People’s Guide to Santa Claus: The Secret History of Christmas, from Saint Nick to Krampus and Yule

It began as a simple question: why are kids around the world taught to believe that a mythical figure in a red coat is real and breaking into their home on Christmas Eve? The truth turns out to be complicated, contentious, sometimes silly, often gruesome, and far, far weirder than you ever guessed. Take a humorous, critical deep dive into the competing histories behind Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Saint Nick, or his many other names. Boggle your mind with nerdy 4th-century arguments about the true date of Jesus’s birth, the grisly miracles of St. Nicholaus of Myra, the kidnapping of Krampus by Austrian fascists, the racial politics of Civil Rights era mall Santas, and the age-old debate over whether Christmas was really a pagan holiday that got co-opted by the church. There’s even a cameo by the Easter Bunny. A family holiday dinner conversation starter for the mischievous skeptic, the real value of this zine is its glimpse into the messy, inconsistent, contested ways that humans create truly weird traditions and how they evolve over centuries to get even weirder.

Joe Biel is a self-made autistic publisher who draws origins, inspiration, and methods from punk rock to sell millions of books. Biel is the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing, Publishers Weekly’s #1 fastest-growing publisher of 2022 and #3 in 2023/2024, and WorkingLit, the software responsible for Microcosm’s aforementioned success--now available for other publishers. Biel has been featured in Time, Esquire, Art of Autism, Reading Glasses, Bulletproof Radio, Spectator (Japan), G33K (Korea), and Maximum Rocknroll, as well as NPR and PBS. Biel is the author of A People’s Guide to Publishing, Autism Relationships Handbook, Unfuck Your Business, Enduring Legacy of Portland’s Black Panthers, and dozens more. Biel is the director of five feature films, including Aftermass: Bicycling in a Post-Critical Mass Portland, ＄100 & a T-Shirt, and hundreds of short films. Biel lives in Portland, OR. Elly Blue is a co-owner and the vice president of Microcosm Publishing, and the co-host of the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast. Her books include Everyday Bicycling and Bikenomics, and she is the editor of the annual Bikes in Space anthology of feminist bicycle science fiction. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner, their dog, and a small fleet of cargo bicycles.