Four things Teal'c doesn't understand about Christmas, and one he does.
1) Christmas trees. He doesn’t understand them or why he’s supposed to have one in his quarters. Teal’c doesn’t mind them at the mall. Some ornaments can be quite artistic in their own right, and coordinated with the holiday window dressing he realizes the intended if not always successful visual appeal. But most of those trees are artificial. Somehow, every year he’s been on earth, one member of SG-1 decides Teal’c needs a real pine tree.
Given that humans otherwise have remarkably strict rules about allowing things they consider to be ‘nature’ into their homes, Teal’c doesn’t get the Christmas exception. The dying pine, placed in his quarters, releases thousands upon thousands of pointy needles which he then finds in the sheets of his bed, sticking down the letters on his computer keyboard, and inevitably embedded in his feet.
The needles are considerably less painful than the bits of shattered glass, however. He doesn’t understand how the ornament hooks are supposed to stay on the thin, spiny branches. The ornaments fall and break, or fall and don’t break, but then he walks around, and they end up broken anyway and he’s bleeding.
He’s expressed his disaffection for Christmas tress before, and it only resulted in O’Neill getting him a 6 foot artificial tree made of silver tinsel. This was not better.
This year, it’s Cameron who thinks Teal’c needs some “Christmas spirit”. He brings another damn tree, and he and the rest of SG-1 gleefully decorate it while Teal’c watches and frowns a lot. He remembers the day when that would have sent Daniel Jackson skittering out of the room awkwardly, but now it just makes the archaeologist smirk.
When they are done choking the tree with glittery blue tinsel, everyone but Vala leaves. She stands there, flicking a silver ball with one fingernail.
“So very shiny,” she says, looking at her reflection in the ball and smiling.
Teal’c gives her an eyebrow. Vala waits approximately five seconds - slowly but surely Daniel is teaching her patience and politeness. Sort of.
“I want it,” she says, closing both fists around branches and sending a shiver through the whole tree.
Teal’c’s smile nearly cracks his face. “Indeed,” he intones, forcing a blank expression.
Vala seizes the tree in what amounts to a bear hug, and takes off with it towards the door. She’s not stealing it, of course, but she has a really hard time not acting like a thief. For a second, she releases her prize by the door, and Teal’c flinches as the ornaments tremble in place and nearly come loose. Then, Vala is peering up at him, and her lips are planting a big kiss right on his forehead.
“Thank you,” she says, “Mary Ex Mass.”
2) Santa. Given the paranoia with which humans guard their children, Teal’c doesn’t understand the practices of A) encouraging the acceptance of an unknown male intruder into one’s home at night while all the adults are sleeping and B) physically delivering one’s child into the arms of an actual stranger wearing a massive disguise for a photograph every year until the child is old enough to actually flee.
That said, Teal’c actually played Santa once. Cassandra Frasier’s first Christmas on earth required the personal appearance of the mythical figure. Teal’c was volunteered by O’Neill. Where they got a suit that fit, he didn’t know, but then he was wearing the furry red thing and the big white beard, and climbing up the side of Dr. Frasier’s house.
It ended with Teal’c falling off the roof shortly after the hat slipped down over his eyes. Cassie, for her part, was terrified and spent the entire encounter shrieking for her mother while Santa shoved gifts at her and then turned tail and ran with surprising speed for such an old man.
Later, after Daniel Jackson explained the mythology to her and she opened the presents SG-1 had brought, Cassie abruptly changed her opinion of Santa. For years after that, she was telling people just how tall, fast, and black Santa was the day he’d visited her.
Teal’c doesn’t think of it at the time, but later he remembers a fairly minor Goa’uld named Noel, and a bit of internet research quickly brings up just where that particular snake got his backstory. He never mentions it to anyone; the Goa’uld are all but gone and he doesn’t think his friends really need to here about that one this time of year. He never tells Cassie, even after she stops believing in Santa.
3)The War on Christmas. At first, he’d taken the phrase far too literally and inquired of Daniel Jackson what role the SGC was to have in defending the holiday.
Daniel laughed, awkwardly, and then rolled his eyes.
“I told you to stop watching FOX news,” he said. “It’s not a war. It’s just a dumb political thing you really don’t need to care about.”
Teal’c persisted, and Daniel tried to explain.
“Um, it involves substituting phrases like “Happy Holidays” or “Greetings of the Season” instead of saying Merry Christmas.”
“Why does that constitute a war?” asked Teal’c.
Daniel made another face. “It doesn’t, but some people say that it’s secularizing the holiday. And the other side says that it’s offensive to assume that everyone celebrates Christmas. It’s more inclusive to just say happy holidays because there are multiple religious celebrations this time of year.”
“Oh.” Teal’c frowned.
“I told you it was dumb.”
“If they knew of the Ori,” Teal’c said, “they would not consider this to be any kind of war on Christmas.”
Daniel laughed, grimly this time. “Yeah,” he agreed, “that’s for sure.”
4) Christmas ‘delicacies’ which taste like poison. Specifically, eggnog and fruit cake. Teal’c has gotten used to a lot of very strange human food. But these, and their annual stubborn reoccurrence, he doesn’t get.
Cameron explains eggnog exactly the same way O’Neill did; he pours half a bottle of rum into a glass with a thumb of the yellow milky stuff.
The fruitcake seems to stump Cameron, as well. “Your Gramma makes it,” he said, “so you can’t chuck it. But God help you if you eat it.”
Sam and Daniel agreed, shrugging helplessly. Vala had a different story. She poked the rum bottle with her thumb.
“If you drink too much of this,” she said, “and eat that, your vomit will be red and green.”
“Vala,” Daniel snapped, while Sam crumpled into very quiet hysterics. “What did I tell you about gastrointestinal stories?”
She ignored him. “Red and green,” Vala repeated.
“Christmas colors,” Teal’c said.
Cameron joined Sam in uncontrollable laughter, and Daniel just shook his head while Vala smiled widely.
) Christmas lights, Teal’c understands. On Chulak, it was candles and campfires, torches and flames.
He doesn’t think it has anything to do with Santa, because in one of those first years, Daniel Jackson arranged for him to see some non-Christian rituals. He watched Sgt. Goldmann light the Hannukah candles and sing, and he knew it meant something very similar.
In the coldest, darkest time of year, everyone lights the night in some way. To hold off the chill and mark places in the darkness where there is warmth, safety, and light. The mountain has few windows, of course, and he is explicitly told by Hammond, O’Neill, and then Landry that he cannot put up Christmas lights visible from outside anywhere on the property.
They never say anything about the Gateroom the first time he asks each of them, though. He does it only a few times in ten years, assisted the first year by Daniel. Hammond and O’Neill don’t understand why. He gets a direct order not to do it again from Hammond, which he promptly disregards. Once, O’Neill catches him preparing supplies and warns against it with a side of ridicule. Daniel is missing, that year. Sam talks disarmingly about the slight rise in temperature caused by the increase in electrical energy and the attraction of such an environment to ascending beings. Saying nothing, O’Neill joins them in taping strands of Christmas lights to the Gateroom walls.
Most recently, Vala’s precocious set of skills assists him in disabling the security cameras and suitably distracts the night shift while Cameron and Sam help him get to work. The next morning, Landry stands in the center of the Gateroom, staring at the mass of Christmas lights strung from wall to wall.
“What?” is all the general can say.
Cameron looks around. “Weird,” he says. “Pretty, but weird.”
Sam nods, and pretends like this has never happened before.
“I like it,” Daniel says. He wiggles his fingers in front of his face, and then abruptly drops his hand when he notices people staring at him. “It’s festive.”
“Can we put up an Ex Mass tree in here?” Vala asks.
“No, we cannot,” says Teal’c, before she even finishes her question.