Christmas Every Day

In 1809 a young New York writer named Washington Irving published to great acclaim a satirical history of his city entitled A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Poking good-natured fun at the expense of the Dutch colonial families, Irving introduced his readers to Saint Nicholas as the local patron and guardian. It was St Nicholas whose image was carved on the prow of the vessel which brought the colonists to the New World, a ship which Irving claimed was built “by the ablest ship carpenters of Amsterdam, who, it is well known, always model their ships after the fair forms of their country-women. Accordingly, it had one hundred feet in the beam, one hundred feet in the keel, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the sternpost to the tafferel … full in the bows, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, a copper bottom, and withal a most prodigious poop!”

Like many Latin American countries Panama celebrates its Christmas with a mixture of traditions from its Spanish Catholic heritage and the influence of the United States; the latter is particularly acute because of the long American occupation of the Panama Canal Zone which ended only in 1999.

In Panamanian homes, for example, the family Nativity scene, always important to Catholic families, will share space with that northern import the Christmas tree. For many years the country had to import tens of thousands of evergreens from the United States — they would arrive in mi-December on ships — but now Panama has its own tree-farming industry and they are much more wide spread. The mix of cultures can also be heard in the Christmas music broadcast by radio and television: traditional songs, the Spanish-influenced “villancicos” and  “gaitas”, coexist with American English-language carols.

 The approach of Christmas is marked by novenas, nine days of religious services involving special Christmas prayers, songs and devotions which take place both in churches and homes, and posadas (above) which reenact the search of the Holy Family for lodgings. It is also a time of parties, little treats from godparents to godchildren, Christmas markets, home decoration and parades. The climax is Christmas Eve with its family dinner: on the menu is sure to be tamales —  cornmeal stuffed with chicken, onions and sauce and wrapped in plantain — beans, Arroz con Pollo — chicken and rice — and seafood, especially shrimp. To drink there is rum punch, piña colada, wine and beer with soft drinks for the kids. For Catholic families the Misa de Gallo, the midnight “rooster” mass, is not to be missed.

 Influenced by the American example many Panamanian children now expect to find presents under the tree on Christmas, brought either by Santa Claus or the Christ Child. In other families children will have to wait until the more traditional Epiphany date. Then on Dia de los Reyes, Kings’ Day, the Magi will bring gifts and the Christmas season will come to an end with another round of parties.

One of the creepier programs of the Nazi state was the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) project. Originally a maternity service for wives of SS men, it turned into a means to encourage the birth of racially-pure babies by every means possible. It took in unwed mothers who could pass a racial-conformity test; it encouraged young German women to be impregnated by SS officers or physically-correct strangers; it kidnapped children in conquered lands; and it sheltered women from conquered countries who had become pregnant by German soldiers.

After the end of World War II officials of the program were put on trial and attempts were made to recover kidnapped children from the Aryan families with whom they had been placed.

The image below is from a paper bag full full of goodies distributed to expectant mothers for Christmas (or in SS parlance, “Julfest”) at the Bad Polzin Lebensborn home in Pomerania.

There are a number of different types of thrashings connected with the Christmas season in many countries over the centuries. The first is a threat of chastisement and is connected with the switches and rods carried by gift-bringers and their helpers. St Nicholas was equally adept at thrashing bad children as he was in rewarding good behaviour.  German families kept a Klausholz – a Nicholas stick – on which to keep track of the number of Our Fathers said by the child, both to impress the saint when he arrived and to remind the child of the conditional nature of the anticipated gifts. In England a 1483 book of saints’ legends printed by William Caxton noted that while Nicholas was humble and joyous, he was also “cruel in correctyng”.

In the sixteenth-century Germany the Christmas bundle of presents included: “things that belong to teaching, obedience, chastisement and discipline, as A.B.C tablets, Bibles and handsome books, writing materials, paper, etc. and the Christ-rod”. The first book in the United States to include a picture of Santa Claus, the 1821 Children’s Friend, has the gift-giver state that he was happy to reward good girls and boys but

 December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorates the murder of the male babies of Bethlehem by King Herod. In England the day was known as Childermas (or Dyzemas) and was considered an ill-omened time; few would want, for example, to be married on that date. Not only was no business conducted on that day, but the day of the week on which it fell was deemed unlucky for the rest of the year. In Ireland it was the “cross day of the year” when no new enterprise was begun. Many sailors would not sail on that day; on the Aran isles no one was buried on Childermas (or the day of the week on which it occurred); and in Cornwall to wash on that day was to doom one of your relatives to death. On Childermas it was once customary in England to beat children. The explanation given in the seventeenth century was that that the memory of Herod’s crime “might stick the closer; and, in a moderate proportion, to act over the crueltie again in kind” but anthropologists have noted that ritual beatings are more likely descended from pagan rituals of good luck than punishment. An old German custom called “peppering” saw children beating their parents and servants beating their masters with sticks while asking in verse form for a treat. An equally venerable tradition in Normandy allowed children to give a thrashing to those who stayed too long in bed on December 28. In Wales on St Stephen’s Day, the practice was called “holming” or “holly-beating” — the last person to get out of bed was hit with holly sprigs and made to act as servant to the rest of the family. Sometimes the purpose of the holming was to draw blood. In parts of Scotland on New Year’s Eve boys beat each other with holly branches in the belief that for every drop of blood shed a year of life was saved for the victim. In Sweden it was once customary for the first-riser on Christmas Eve to give other family members small bundles of twigs which they would use to beat each other in the spirit of imparting vitality. In France children who let themselves be caught in bed on the morning of Holy Innocents’ came in for a whipping from their parents; while in one province, Normandy, the early risers among the young people themselves gave the sluggards a beating. The practice even gave birth to a verb—innocenter.

Four years ago I posted the following, with the caveat that I had only seen it in one source. Later, I had the source confirmed, so, in the hope that this is all true, I wish a Happy Buzzlewit Day to you all. Buzzlewit seems to me to be a more congenial creature than the creepy Elf on the Shelf.

Altoona, Pennsylvania, and a growing number of communities in the Boston area celebrate Buzzlewitz Day on November 11. According to the Lowther tradition, Buzzlewitz is the elf that is sent by Santa to collect children’s Christmas lists. On 11 November of each year at 11 pm, children leave their Christmas lists and a snickerdoodle cookie on the mantle or in the kitchen. Buzzlewitz comes in the night to collect the lists. In return, he leaves a mint and an acorn.

Here is a Santa Claus figure featured in an advertisement from the Canadian Illustrated News of 1883.

Being Canadian he is, of course, equipped with snowshoes and sled.

Here is a Santa from the same magazine in 1885.

You will note how distinctive this version of the Gift Bringer is. He is clean-shaven and wears no furs; instead he had a voyageur’s ceinture flechée sash, a floppy voyageur toque, and he is pulled by six reindeer. His sleigh has no runners (which would be useful on snowy roads) but is flat-bottomed like dog-powered sleds, good for deeper snow. Among the gifts he carries are a sword and a musket.

In 1819 the English town of Paignton produced a 900 lb. Christmas pudding in honour of the anniversary of their town charter. Despite being boiled in a brewer’s furnace for four days it remained uncooked, with the inside still raw. The townsfolk attempted an even more massive pudding in 1859 as part of a celebration of the arrival of the railway. This time it was cooked to perfection; made of 500 lbs of flour, 190 lbs of bread, 400 lbs of raisins, 184 lbs of currants, 400 lbs of suet, 96 lbs of sugar, 320 lemons, 150 nutmegs and 360 quarts of milk. The Monster Pudding (as newspapers referred to it) was over 13’ feet in circumference and rested on a wagon pulled by 8 horses. It was meant to feed 850 poor of the parish as well as 300 railway labourers but before that could happen a crowd of 18,000 sight-seers, well-lubricated by the local cider, rushed the pudding, swept aside its police escort and demolished the dessert in scenes of riotous disorder.

To this day residents of Paignton are called “Pudden Eaters” and pudding festivities are still observed with pride. In 1986 a giant casket containing 900 individual puddings on little pots was mounted on a wagon and pulled through the town by a steam-powered tractor. Mercifully, no rioting took place.

As monstrous as the Paington Pudding was, it would have been dwarfed by that giant Christmas pudding of over 3 tons made in Aughton, Lancashire in 1992. This confection was verified by the Guinness Book of World Records but there are stories of a 10-ton pudding created in 1931 in London.