Christmas Every Day

Last year I posted the following notice with the caveat that I had found little to back it up, but another source has confirmed its truth (thank you).  So here you go:

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.

A large fortress-like church complex on Manger Square in Bethlehem centred on the site where Jesus was said to have been born.

As early as the second century local tradition claimed that the Nativity of Christ had taken place in a stable-cave, the location of which was sufficiently well-known that the Roman emperor Hadrian established a pagan grove there dedicated to Adonis in order to discourage Christian worship on the site. In the third century Origen and other visitors were still being directed to the spot. The theologian reported: “In Bethlehem the cave is pointed out where He was born, and the manger in the cave where He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and the rumor is in those places and among foreigners of the Faith that indeed Jesus was born in this cave.”

The first Church of the Nativity was built over the cave by Saint Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine. This church was later damaged in an uprising and was rebuilt in the sixth century at the command of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. When the area was overrun by Persian invaders in 614 legend claims that the Church of the Nativity was spared because of depictions in a mosaic of Magi in Persian dress.

The cross-shaped Church of St Mary of the Nativity, 170 feet long and 80 feet wide, stands above the small grotto where a silver star marks the spot where Jesus was born; the inscription reads Hic De Virgine Maria Jesus Christus Natus Est — “Here Jesus Christ was Born of the Virgin Mary.”  Nearby is a chapel where the manger stood in which the infant was placed. Surrounding the Church of the Nativity are other chapels and convents of the Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian churches; these three denominations share the administration of various parts of the complex. Quarrels between them in the nineteenth century took on dangerous overtones. The Russian government supported the Orthodox claims while the Catholics were backed by the French government; these hard feelings were one of the reasons for the outbreak of the Crimean War in the 1850s. In May 2002, Israeli Defence Force troops besieged the church when Palestinian activists took refuge inside it.

The photo above was taken in late 1944 by my father who was serving with the Royal Air Force in Palestine.

After World War II, the Communist governments which the Red Army had imposed on eastern Europe tried to come to terms with Christmas. The Communist state apparatus, with its monopoly of the news media, publishing houses, educational system and the police, attempted to muscle religion out of the winter holiday by moving festivities to New Year, renaming events, making December 25 and 26 work days and replacing any magical gift-bringer who had religious connections (e.g., Saint Nicholas or the Christ Child) with Grandfather Frost. In the German Democratic Republic Christmas angels were renamed “end-of-year winged figures.” There were even attempts to divert the holiday to Joseph Stalin’s birthday on December 21. In Hungary the festival was called the “Feast of Father Winter” or “Feast of the Fir Tree”; December 26, St. Stephen’s Day, a traditional part of the Christmas season, became “Constitution Day.” In Czechoslovakia 1952 President Antonín Zapotcky told children that the traditional gift-bringer Jezisek (baby Jesus) had grown up and turned into Deda Mráz (Grandfather Frost). In Yugoslavia, translators of foreign books removed references to Christmas and changed them to New Year or omitted them altogether. The Christmas carol scene in The Wind in the Willows, for example, was excised but references to the pagan god Pan were left in.

The lameness and artificiality of these efforts can be seen in this 1952 New York Times quote from the Czech Communist newspaper Rude Pravo:

Dado Moros (Russian term for Little Father Frost) will arrive in Prague Dec. 1. He brings young Czech Communists a message of greeting from the Soviet young pioneers and will tell Prague children about the happy life of young builders of communism in the Soviet Union. That’s why adults as well as children await his arrival with great excitement and joy.

 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.

 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.

Animal crackers were in the news recently when PETA (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals) took credit for convincing the manufacturers to change the cover illustration to one that did not depict the critters behind bars as in a circus or zoo. Readers may have been unaware of the connection between the treat and Christmas.

The National Biscuit Company in 1902 introduced “Barnum’s Animal Crackers” as a seasonal promotion. The box’s carrying string was designed for hanging on a Christmas tree at a time when candy and treats were still a typical decoration. Shirley Temple later celebrated the snack with the song “Animal Crackers in My Soup”.

This is another page from the set of gospels made in the 1350s for the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Alexander. Here, at the top, the wicked King Herod consults his advisers as to the location of the “King of the Jews” whom the Magi have come to worship. At the bottom, the Wise Men are told to seek the child in Bethlehem and then return to report to Herod.

As the handful of loyal readers of this blog will know, I am a sucker for medieval illuminated manuscripts. The illustration below is from a mid-14th century set of gospels made for the Bulgarian tsar Ivan.

Note that the treatment of the figures in many ways imitates Byzantine ideas of the Nativity. You will see on the bottom left a disconsolate and bewildered Joseph sitting apart, to indicate that he is not the true father of Jesus. In the centre bottom is the midwife bathing the baby. Mary is depicted reclining while ox and ass look on; and the Magi are seen coming on the left and departing on the right. Note that the Wise Men represent the three ages of man: a beardless youth, a mature man with a black beard, and an elderly greybeard. An angel addresses two shepherds, one of whom seems to be holding a microphone.

Unlike Hitler who was happy to use the traditional “Weihnacht” to denote the winter holiday period, the SS elite preferred the more pagan “Julfest” and “Jahreswende” (solstice). They didn’t care for Christmas carols either.

Who’s that coming down the stairs? Why it’s Der Fuehrer! Come, fellow members of the Hitlerjugend, let’s wish our dictator a Merry Christmas.

Santa has been used to advertise every thing from weapons to condoms to alcohol to power tools to Turkish tobacco. I can’t say I would take smoking advice from anyone who looked like the dude in these 1915 and 1919 ads.