And you know what the Sumerians were passing down through the ages how?
Here’s an interesting exerpt:
One of the oddest falsehoods is that Christmas colors come from red and white mushrooms. For starters, the Christmas colors are red and green. Santa Claus wears red and white, because those are the colors worn by archbishops, like Saint Nicolas.
What’s odd about this suggestion is that mushrooms are several steps removed from anything to do with Christmas. Apparently, reindeer eat mushrooms, and one mushroom, which is red and white, happens to be psychedelic. And the mushrooms and reindeer both exist in Scandinavia. So, if reindeer were to think they could fly, psychedelic mushrooms would be helpful. Of course, it’s unexplained how anyone got inside the head of a reindeer to find out it thought it could fly. Now, maybe people eating the mushroom might think anything could fly, but why would they single out reindeer? And if the mushroom is so central to Christmas, how come there’s no trace of it besides the color?
It’s not the Scandinavian reindeer-herders who take special note of these mushrooms; it’s the Koryak. And that’s why we don’t hear much of them today: The Koryak live seven thousand miles away from the Sami, across from Alaska, as far away as the bushmen of the Kalahari or the Aztecs.
It turns out that the Scandinavian legends of Santa Claus’ reindeer don’t involve flying at all. The people in the Southern Mediterranean are the ones who thought Father Christmas flew… but they depict him as riding a white horse, not a reindeer. It’s only in America, when these legends of Santa combined, that we first find the notion of Santa’s reindeer flying.
Another misunderstanding regards the labeling of Santa’s helpers as elves. It’s supposed that they are said to be elves because the Sami reindeer herders have a tendency to dwarfism. Well, the problem is that the Sami aren’t particularly short. But then, neither are elves. In Nordic lands, elves were always held to be as tall, or taller, as humans. Think J.R.R. Tolkein’s elves from “Lord of the Rings.” Only in Elizabethan England, where they were falsely supposed to be related to nymphs, sprites or faeries did the notion that they were small emerge. Santa is said to be an elf because elves have achieved immortality through their virtue. The notion of Santa’s helpers being short only emerged in North America, although even this is possibly the result of merging traditions: Saint Nicolas was said to have rescued three children who now accompany him around the world.
It's the drug that keeps on drugging!.
For a variety of reasons this particular mushroom doesn't produce much of an effect if raised in America. At the same time it seems to do pretty well in modern day Fenno Scandia and in mountainous areas.
Red and Green are the colors for the Japanese Good Luck Cat ~ that's the ancient god of Good Luck ~ Ho Tai manifest as a cat. dressed up like a Shinto priest. Red and White are the colors selected for the head-dress on the head of the Sphinx. It looks like a mushroom from the rear.
Regarding the precise beliefs of the Lapplanders, they were essentially eradicated during the period of Christianization, but fortunately many Sa'ami escaped to America before all the old knowledge was gone.
At the same time ethnologists presume the Sa'ami beliefs pretty well reflect those of the other Polar Peoples with whom they had contact to the East ~ what you dug up regarding traditionalists in East Asia is simply an example of a fairly intact culture where the old ways are remembered. That does not mean those ideas originate in that are, or that they were isolated to that area. You find fairly similar beliefs among the Yakuts and the Ainu (two genetically distinct ethnic groups in East Asia), and the Yakuts (also known as the Sakha) are ancestral to the Eskimo as well as the group that conquered Korea and Japan in the 6th century AD. The Ainu, although closely related to the earlier Jomon population in Japan (known in the Middle Ages as the Emishi), follow a bear cult, but the Emishi followed a badger cult. Most other Siberian and North Asian people had their own animal cults, with some focused on Polar bears, Brown bears, Black Bears, Reindeer, Muskox and so on. Just depends on where you were what kind of cult they had ~ which is entirely similar to American Indian tribes living in the Northern regions of North America.
It must also be noted that ALL the Polar Peoples, irrespective of their "race", whether white, ainu, yakuts, eskimo or indian, had at their disposal draft animals (reindeer, , sleds/sleighs, mucklucks, snowshoes, and in the FAR WEST the Sa'ami also had SKIs available. Archaeologists inform us that they invented the things. Plus, all of 'em had boats, there are rivers, lakes and all sorts of things. Cultural contact from East to West was not only possible in the Far North, it happened.
Once the Sa'ami areas were opened up to permanent contact with Indo-Eyuropean cultures (circa 900 AD), the dwarf court jester became highly popular. Was there a connection? Who knows. Supposedly a few centuries later Ghengis Khan, a dwarf himself, visited Scandinavia personally to visit a nation of dwarves ~ as I said, "supposedly" ~ most likely he only made it to Finland.