Christmas Every Day

The first, and most enduring, addition to the Santa Claus canon in the 20th century was the product of a Chicago department store. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” first appeared in 1939 in an promotional give-away for Chicago’s Montgomery Ward department store. His creator was advertising editor Robert Lewis May (1905-1976) who conceived of an illustrated booklet with a Christmas poem that families could read every year. The story was to be about a rejected reindeer with few friends (like May in his own childhood) to whom Santa Claus would turn for assistance. Denver Gillen did the artwork for the booklet based on sketches made visiting the city zoo and May wrote the poem about the reindeer named Rollo. Or perhaps Reginald. Both these names and others were rejected in favour of Rudolph, the choice of May’s four-year-old daughter. The company loved the project and gave away millions of the books throughout the 1940s.

In 1947 song writer Johnny Marks (the brother-in-law of May) penned the lyrics which summarized the Rudolph story:

You know Dasher and Dancer and
Prancer and Vixen
Comet and Cupid and
Donner and Blitzen
But do you recall…
The most famous reindeer of all?

Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And, if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows

All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say,
“Rudolph, with your nose so bright,
Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”

Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee,
“Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer
You’ll go down in history!”

Marks couldn’t interest any music publishers in his work so he had to found his own St. Nicholas music company; nor could he find a singer willing to take a chance with a song about an advertising character. He was turned down by Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore and Perry Como before Gene Autry “the Singing Cowboy” recorded it in 1949, selling 2,000,000 copies in the first year alone and launching Rudolph to further success. The reindeer went on to appear in movie form, books with translations in dozens of languages and a host of marketing devices and toys.

Herod (73-04 B.C.) was  king of Judaea at the time of the birth of Christ and rebuilder of the Temple in Jerusalem. His murderousness was legendary: he killed many of his children and wives — the Romans joked that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than a family member.  The Massacre of the Innocents which the Bible ascribes to him is very much in keeping with what we know of personality. He is the subject of a number of Christmas carols and ballads, such as the Coventry Carol, The Carnel and the Crane, and St. Stephen and Herod, and appears in seasonal drama as a raging tyrant. In Christmas art, he was portrayed as a rather big, old man, crowned and sitting on a throne.  He is always bearded with long dark hair and wearing royal garments.

The twelfth-century abbey of Fleury in France staged a dramatic presentation that has come to be known as The Play of Herod. It describes the Nativity with its attendant angels, midwives and shepherds, the encounter between King Herod and the Magi and the Massacre of the Innocents which the king orders. Of the surviving medieval plays with these themes the Fleury Herod is considered to be the most artistically satisfying.

The tradition of Christmas stamps was started in Canada in 1898 when Canadian postal officials decided to mark a reduction in the price of Imperial postage by issuing a commemorative stamp — a map of the world with the British empire in red and the inscription “XMAS 1898”.

 Canada did not follow this up and there were no more stamps with Christmas themes until Austria in 1937 produced a stamp depicting Christmas roses and Brazil issued one in 1939 featuring the Three Wise Men and the Star. Neither of these stamps was issued specifically for Christmas and so, to philatelic purists, the honour of the first stamps issued for the holiday season with a Christmas theme is Hungary’s 1943 set of three depicting the Shepherds and Angels, the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. It was not until the late 1950s however that the use of special Christmas sets became widespread with Spain, Australia and the Vatican leading the way.

 The first American Christmas stamp was issued in 1962, a 4-cent stamp showing a Christmas wreath. Given the touchy question of the separation of church and state in American political life it is not surprising that some criticized the post office for marking a religious observance but postal authorities were undeterred and have continued to issue Christmas stamps with both secular and religious themes. (Since 1993 political correctness has mandated that this distinction is one of “Holiday Contemporary” versus “Holiday Traditional” themes and the stamps’ only text is the inoffensive greeting: “Greetings”.)

It was customary in many countries to issue stamps at Christmas time with a surcharge that would direct money toward various charities and, in fact, in some places it was compulsory to use these stamps when sending seasonal mail. Cuba financed an anti-tuberculosis campaign in this way and Costa Rico funded a childrens’ home.

When the Soviet Union occupied eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989, its Marxist ideology mitigated against religious celebrations. Great effort was expended in trying to secularize Christmas and its magical gift-bringers. Out went the Christ Child, Saint Nicholas and angels and in came Grandfather Frost, known in Russian as Ded Moroz. In the image above from 1963, he is hailing the Soviet space program.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Communism receded, Ded Moroz vanished and was joyfully replaced by the traditional Christmas figures.  He lingers in Russia where he serves as the local Santa.

Snegurochka, or the Snow Maiden, is a figure from Russian fairy tale lore who was pressed into service as a companion to Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, during the Soviet years. She survived the fall of Communism and still remains at the side of the Russian version of Santa Claus.

Debate about the authorship of this carol continues even today but the name most frequently attached to it is that of John Francis Wade, an Englishman at the Catholic college at Douai. Written as “Adeste Fideles” about 1742, the carol was brought back to England by returning Catholics and was often sung at the Portuguese embassy in London — thus it came to be known for a time as “The Portuguese Hymn”. It was translated in 1841 by a Church of England clergyman Frederick Oakeley (1802-80) as “Ye Faithful, Approach Ye”. After his conversion to Catholicism he made another translation in 1852, the now familiar “O Come All Ye Faithful”. Additional verses have been added by W.T. Brooke (1848-1917) but these are seldom sung.

O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels!

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

God of God,
Light of Light,
Lo! He abhors not the Virgin’s womb;
Very God,
Begotten, not created.

O come, let us adore Him, etc.

Sing choirs of angels;
Sing in exultation
Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above:
Glory to God –
In the highest.

O come, let us adore Him, etc.

Yea, Lord, we greet Thee,
Born this happy morning;
Jesus, to Thee be the glory giv’n;
Word of the Father,
Now in the flesh appearing.

Recently it has been suggested (without much proof) that the carol was really a coded Jacobite song of praise for the claim of the deposed Stuart dynasty to the throne of England. Oakley was a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie and had fled England when the uprising of 1745 was crushed.

 

Brand’s Popular Antiquities written in 1777 says:

On Christmas Eve, it was customary customary with young people in the North of England to dive for apples, or catch at them, when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, their hands being tied behind their backs. Nuts and apples chiefly compose the entertainment, and from the custom of flinging the former into the fire, or cracking them with their teeth, it has doubtless had its vulgar name of Nutcrack Night. In Goldsmith’s time, the country folks religiously observed this nutcracking festival, as he tells us in his ” Vicar of Wakefield.” Stafford says, they (certain deluded men) ” make me call to mind an old Christmas gambole, contrived with a thred which being fastened to some beame, hath at the nether end of it a sticke, at the one end of which is tied a candle, and at the other end an apple; so that when a man comes to bite at the apple, the candle burnes his nose.  The catching at the apple and candle may be called playing at something like the ancient English game of the quintain, which is now almost totally forgotten. Hutchinson, somewhat fancifully perhaps, identified this Christian usage with the rites anciently observed in honour of Pomona [the Roman goddess of trees and fruits].

Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was the German-born American cartoonist whose depictions of Santa Claus helped to popularize a standard image of the North American Gift-Bringer and who added interesting details to Santa’s biography. As an illustrator for Harper’s Illustrated Weekly he would become famous as a political cartoonist inventing both the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey that are still used to represent the main American political parties. His zeal for reform helped bring down the corrupt rule of Boss Tweed in New York and elect Ulysses Grant as President.

But it is his drawings of Santa Claus that have made his reputation endure. Nast combined his memories of Christmas in Germany with an American sensibility to produce the prototype for the developing image of Santa, one that was to endure when rival images had long since been forgotten. For Nast the Gift-Bringer was kindly, fat and jolly, clothed (as “A Visit From St Nicholas” demanded) in furs from his head to his foot with a broad belt about his middle. Though Santa’s clothes have changed over the years the face and personality of all later depictions are ultimately derived from Nast. To Nast we also owe the notion of a North Pole workshop and the earliest depiction of children leaving out a snack for St. Nick. Many of the notions children in much of the world entertain about Santa were given expression by Nast: the book that recorded the deeds of good and bad kids, Santa’s spying on their activities, the working conditions in his polar operation, and the piles of letters from around the globe.

During the American Civil War Nast illustrated Santa in the Stars and Stripes of the Union cause and showed him bringing Christmas cheer to Federal troops at the front. This helped to spread the celebration of Christmas in the United States, to link it with the idea of family reunion and to associate it forever with Santa Claus. It also prompted reaction from the South where Santa’s apparent partisanship had to be explained to the children.

Christmas has always had two powerful forces contending with it: the religious celebration of the Nativity of Jesus and the festivities of midwinter. At times one or the other has been dominant. In the late-18th and early-19th centuries in the English-speaking world, the religious aspect had been neglected – many Protestant denominations refused to mark Christmas at all. The emphasis was on hospitality, consumption of alcohol and food, and social gatherings.

The image above is from an 1847 London Illustrated News. The central figure is that of bearded Old Christmas, wreathed in holly, and holding a tankard of strong drink. Though the caption reads “Heaven bless merry gentlefolks, let nothing you dismay”, there is nothing to suggest Christmas has anything to do with the divine. The rest of the illustration is full of alcohol, dancing, blind man’s buff, and banqueting. The season had yet to be fully reformed by Charles Dickens, Santa Claus, and the Oxford Movement.

In many parts of the world Christmas is associated with gunpowder: fireworks and firearms have been “shooting in” the holiday for centuries.

One reason for this is the belief that demonic forces can be driven away with loud noises. The ringing of bells, snapping of whips and shouting are all very well but for for real devil-dispersing noise many Germans rely on rifles. In southern Germany marksmen’s clubs in traditional costume gather on Christmas Eve to fire off antique rifles at midnight. In Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps before midnight mass, 60,000 shots are fired in the space of one hour. In the southwestern United States the parishioners of the Church of San Geronimo at Taos Pueblo carry the statue of the Virgin in a procession accompanied by an honour guard of men in ceremonial dress who periodically fire into the air in order to protect the Virgin and chase away evil spirits. [See photo above] In rural areas of Norway shooting in Christmas takes the form of young men sneaking up to farm houses and discharging their guns to give the inhabitants a shock before being invited in for a drink. Every December 8 in Torrejoncillo, Caceres, Spain the youth of the town wrap themselves in sheets, carry the banner of the Virgin and ride through the streets shooting off shotguns to the cheers of the populace. In Ireland it was once the custom to fire a salute from a shotgun at noon on Christmas Eve.

An account of Labrador in 1770 reads: “At sunset the people ushered in Christmas, according to the Newfoundland custom. In the first place, they built up a prodigious large fire in their house; all hands then assembled before the door, and one of them fired a gun, loaded with powder; afterwards, each of them drank a dram of rum; concluding the ceremony with three cheers. These formalities being performed with great solemnity, they retired into their house, got drunk as fast as they could, and spent the whole night in drinking, quarrelling, and fighting.” A similar Newfoundland custom was Blowing the Pudding.

Christmas in the southern United States is a more popular time for fireworks than July 4 as can be seen from the numerous displays south of the Mason-Dixon line. The most spectacular are probably in Louisiana where the feux de joie(fires of joy) are a traditional part of Cajun Christmas Eve. Huge wooden structures in the form of riverboats, houses and teepees are set on fire, ostensibly to light Papa Noël’s way to the bayous. During the days of slave-owning, slaves would inflate a pig bladder and then explode it in lieu of fire-crackers.

Fireworks are a part of Christmas celebrations all through Latin America but who would have thought they were once a part of the holiday in Switzerland? One worshipper complained in the nineteenth century about a church service where the Christmas tree was decorated with “serpent squibs” and where it was “difficult for the minister to conduct the service, for at all times, except during the prayers, the people were letting off fireworks.”

A popular English Christmas game in which a blind-folded player must catch someone and indentify him or her. The fun lies in coming tantalizingly close to the player without getting caught. In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens the guests of Scrooge’s nephew Fred play the game in such a way as to further the possibilities of romance:

There was first a game at blind-man’s buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous. No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.

An eighteenth-century comment on a darker side of the game reveals: “[T]hen it is lawful to set any thing in the way for Folks to tumble over, whether it be to break Arms, Legs, or Heads, ’tis no matter, for Neck‑or nothing, the Devil loves no Cripples.—This Play, I am told, was first set on foot by the Country Bone‑setters.”

 A less boiterous variation was called Shadow-Buff. A “blind man” would sit on one side of a white sheet or tablecloth with a bright light shining on the other side. He would attempt to guess the identity of other players as they walked past the sheet casting shadows.