Christmas Every Day

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.

I always wanted a more exciting name than Gerry Bowler. For years, I wished I had been baptised something like “Lance Sterling”.  I would have settled for “Frank Manley”, the name attached to this turn-of-the-centry boy’s own hero.

Look at the short length of those hockey sticks; playing with them must have caused plenty of back ache.

C

The Stalin regime wished to abolish Christmas and to shift festivities to a secular New Year celebration. Here is a seasonal greeting featuring partisans blowing up a German troop truck. It reads “Happy New Year”.

Here is another SS Christmas oddity: a picture of a clay candle-holder, a Jullichte. The original was found in an archaeological dig and was supposed to represent the pagan Teutonic past before the Christian conversion of Germany. Replicas were given out as gifts and features in Nazi bonfire lighting ceremonies.

Hitler’s SS was generally hostile to Christmas as a Christian festival. They preferred to honour the pagan Winter Solstice and to term the season “Julfest” rather that “Weihnacht”.

It’s from from the German “putzen”, to decorate; it refers to the Moravian crèche scene, a central part of the Christmas season to those religious immigrants who were so influential in the shaping of the holiday in the United States. Like the Latin American and Italian Nativity scenes they can be quite ornate, often occupying a whole room and taking weeks to build; most however are small enough to place under a single Christmas tree. They can portray not only the Holy Family in the stable at Bethlehem but also a whole landscaped area with fences, buildings, foliage and tiny characters.

  A similar custom of an under-the-tree crèche is found in northwestern Nova Scotia, Canada where folk artists were famous for the miniature towns, farms and churches that once were placed at the base of the Christmas tree.

“In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it “Christmas” and went to church; the Jews called it “Hanukka” and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say “Merry Christmas!” or “Happy Hanukka!” or (to the atheists) “Look out for the wall!” 

Dave Barry