WHAT: “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” an illustrated Dery lecture, brought to you by Morbid Anatomy at The Observatory in Brooklyn. Come share the Christmas jeer, followed by a Krampus/Solstice-themed party with music and unique cocktails. Fire the first flaming shot in your own dirty little War on Christmas!

WHEN:

Tuesday, December 21 (Winter Solstice), 8:00 P.M.

WHERE:

543 Union Street, Brooklyn, New York 11215, buzzer 1E.

Better to enter via the Proteus Gowanus gallery, however.

To enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery:

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

Click here to view map.

ADMISSION:

$10

DETAILS FOR THE DETAIL-ORIENTED:

Canceled, last year, by an act of Cthulhu—the Mother of All Blizzards, which dumped 20 inches of snow across the Northeast—Dery’s wickedly witty lecture, “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” comes, at last, to the Observatory.

In “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” Dery, a cultural critic and book author, takes a look at the Jolly Old Elf’s little-known role as poster boy for officially sanctioned eruptions of social chaos, as well as his current status as a flashpoint in “the Christmas Wars”–cultural battles between evangelicals, atheists, conservatives, and anti-consumerists over the “true” meaning of Christmas. Along the way, Dery considers New Age theories that Santa is a repressed memory of an ancient Celtic cult revolving around red-capped psychedelic mushrooms; Nazi attempts to re-imagine Christmas–a holiday consecrated to a Jewish baby, for Christ’s sake–as a pre-Christian invention of tree-worshipping German tribes, in some misty, Wagnerian past; and the suspicious similarities between Satan and Santa, connections that have fueled a cottage industry of conspiracy theories on the religious right.