Christmas Every Day

The Atheist Critique

Not everyone likes Christmas. Aggressive atheists are particularly vexed by the season in which the claims of Christianity are most publicly on display and held in good repute. The most famous infidel of the late 19th century was Robert Ingersoll (1833-99) who lectured frequently on the virtues of unbelief. Here is his “Christmas Sermon” of December 19, 1891. His notion that Christmas was borrowed from pagan sun worship is no longer taken seriously by historians but it still lives on the internet.

The good part of Christmas is not always Christian — it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.

Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.

It taught some good things — the beauty of love and kindness in man. But as a torch-bearer, as a bringer of joy, it has been a failure. It has given infinite consequences to the acts of finite beings, crushing the soul with a responsibility too great for mortals to bear. It has filled the future with fear and flame, and made God the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, destined to be the home of nearly all the sons of men. Not satisfied with that, it has deprived God of the pardoning power.

And yet it may have done some good by borrowing from the Pagan world the old festival called Christmas.

Long before Christ was born the Sun-God triumphed over the powers of Darkness. About the time that we call Christmas the days begin perceptibly to lengthen. Our barbarian ancestors were worshipers of the sun, and they celebrated his victory over the hosts of night. Such a festival was natural and beautiful. The most natural of all religions is the worship of the sun. Christianity adopted this festival. It borrowed from the Pagans the best it has.

I believe in Christmas and in every day that has been set apart for joy. We in America have too much work and not enough play. We are too much like the English.

I think it was Heinrich Heine who said that he thought a blaspheming Frenchman was a more pleasing object to God than a praying Englishman. We take our joys too sadly. I am in favor of all the good free days — the more the better.

Christmas is a good day to forgive and forget — a good day to throw away prejudices and hatreds — a good day to fill your heart and your house, and the hearts and houses of others, with sunshine.

Christmas Baking

Baking has become an essential part of the celebration of Christmas for a number of reasons. Historically it relates to the midwinter veneration of grain and grain products in hopes that the next year’s harvest will be bountiful. We can see this in the eastern European custom of placing wheat and hay about the house, even under the table-cloth, on Christmas Eve and in the widespread practice of preparing a grain porridge, such as kutya or frumenty, at Christmastime. This notion carries over to baked goods, especially bread. In the nineteenth century German peasants believed there was particular power in bread baked at Christmas: thrown into a fire, it would quench the flames; given to cattle, it would keep them healthy. Similar beliefs attached to the oplatek wafer in Slavic Europe and Christmas cake in Flanders. As a result special breads and other baked goods became identified with Christmas in many countries: the German Christstollen which was said to represent the swaddling clothes of the baby Jesus; the Greek christopsomo which is often decorated with a cross; the medieval English mince pies which were made in the shape of a crib and adorned with a dough figure of the Holy Child; the Belgian cougnou or pain de Jesus in the shape of the baby Jesus; the Ukrainian kolach, which is sometimes stacked in threes as a reminder of the Trinity. Many cakes are baked in the shape of wreaths and circles to symbolize everlasting life.

 Christmas-tide is a feast and a feast means food and abundance. Christmas baking is therefore an expression of indulgence and the celebration of a full pantry after a year’s hard work. This is a time when the richest ingredients and most costly spices can be employed with a guilt-free conscience: the effort and expense lavished on Christmas baking is unmatched by food preparation at any other time of year. The weeks of Advent are scarcely time enough for the marshalling of resources — flour, fruit, nuts, butter, cream, chocolate, alcohol, sugar, etc., etc. — and the preparation of the cakes, cookies, breads and pies that are consumed in such quantities. It is little wonder than an Irish term for Christmas Eve is Oidhche na ceapairi, “Night of Cakes.” In Norway no less than seven kinds of cookies must be prepared.

Baking at Christmas is also a community activity. Most families will prepare at least some goodies together, as in the custom of the Stir-Up Sunday pudding, and on many occasions members of a whole village, church or other group will be involved. Eating Christmas baking is, of course, a communal activity as well, binding the family together in present enjoyment and often linking them to those who are dead or absent. The oplatek wafers of Poland are shared ritually with those around the table but some are reserved for those away from the home; in many countries families leave bread out for the spirits of those departed or for the Holy Family. Sharing with those less fortunate is often part of the Christmas tradition: either by setting a place for the unexpected visitor or by giving baked goods away — the “soul cakes” of England and the French pain calendeau are examples of charity foods.

Countless made-for-TV movies and newspaper editorials have pondered the question “What is the real meaning of Christmas?” For Christians, the answer is an easy one. Its most important purpose is the celebration of the arrival in the form of a human baby of the Emperor of the Universe. But Christmas has many meanings which have shifted over time.

Here are the words of Nicholas Breton, (c. 1555-1626) English poet and satirist. We see in this quote how Elizabethans viewed Christmas and a clear sense of the connection between the merry and the sacred:

 It is now Christmas, and not a cup of drink must pass without a carol; the beasts, fowl, and fish come to a general execution, and the corn is ground to dust for the bakehouse and the pastry: cards and dice purge many a purse, and the youth show their agility in shoeing of the wild mare: now, good cheer, and welcome, and God be with you, and I thank you:—and against the New Year provide for the presents:—The Lord of Misrule is no mean man for his time, and the guests of the high table must lack no wine: the lusty bloods must look about them like men, and piping and dancing puts away much melancholy: stolen venison is sweet, and a fat coney is worth money: pit-falls are now set for small birds, and a woodcock hangs himself in a gin: a good fire heats all the house, and a full alms-basket makes the beggar’s prayers:—the maskers and the mummers make the merry sport, but if they lose their money their drum goes dead: swearers and swaggerers are sent away to the ale-house, and unruly wenches go in danger of judgment; musicians now make their instruments speak out, and a good song is worth the hearing. In sum it is a holy time, a duty in Christians for the remembrance of Christ and custom among friends for the maintenance of good fellowship. In brief I thus conclude it: I hold it a memory of the Heaven’s love and the world’s peace, the mirth of the honest, and the meeting of the friendly. Farewell.

When France surrendered to the German invaders in the summer of 1940, the Third Republic collapsed. The National Assembly, meeting in the resort town of Vichy outside of the Wehrmacht zone of occupation, reconstituted the French government, giving dictatorial powers to the aged hero of the Great War, Marshal Philippe Pétain. His regime, known to its opponents as Vichy France, was authoritarian, paternalistic, ultra-Catholic, and collaborationist. Vichy attempted to portray “le Maréchal” as a grandfatherly figure and built a cult of personality around him. The unofficial national anthem became “Marshal, Here We Are!”

A sacred flame
Rises from the native soil,
And France enraptured
Greets you, Marshal!

All your children who love you
And worship your years,
To your supreme call,
Have responded: Present!

Chorus:
Marshal, here we are!
Before you, France’s saviour,
We swear, we your guys [“nous tes gars”],
To serve and follow your feats

Marshal, here we are!
You regave us hope
The Fatherland will be reborn,
Marshal, Marshal,
Here we are!

You fought unceasingly
For the common salvation
We speak tenderly
About Verdun’s hero…

By giving us your life,
Your genius and your faith,
You save the homeland
A second time.

Vichy France suffered economic hardship from the occupation and faced a bleak Christmas with millions of fathers away in prison of war camps or forced labour. The regime resorted to the same excuse as the Confederacy had given for the lack of presents for children by telling them that Père Noël was concentrating on giving good things to the imprisoned.

At Christmas 1941, children were encouraged to send the Marshal a drawing of the attractions of their region of France. Ten winners were selected to present their work to Pétain.

It is customary in wartime to attempt demoralize the enemy, soften his resolve to fight, and perhaps even convince opposition troops to give themselves up. Germans used sexualized images of American and British womenfolk at home falling prey to seducers while their men risked their lives at the front. In the Korean War, Chinese Communists used pamphlets emphasizing the unfairness of racism and poverty at home, telling G.I.s that they were pawns in a conflict waged to benefit fat capitalists.

Perhaps the most nakedly cynical such attempt was used by the Soviet Union to appeal to German love of Christmas. They bombarded Wehrmacht lines with brochures guaranteeing safe conduct to anyone surrendering and a cozy holiday in Russian captivity. Note the merry prisoners decorating a tree watched over by a grinning Santa figure. Other captives read letters from home and a German chef carves a huge roast for the sumptuous dining that awaited all those who went over to the Red Army.

Alas, the reality for Germans taken prisoner on the Eastern Front was far different. The USSR did not release POWs until the mid-1950s, having employed them for ten years as slave labourers. Of those captured at Stalingard only 5% (mostly officers) survived the camps to return to East Germany.

 

St Lucia’s Day

Saint Lucia or Lucy was a Christian virgin of Catania, Sicily who was martyred in the persecutions of the late third century. After various travels her relics ended up in Venice where the song “Santa Lucia” is part of the repertoire of singing gondoliers to this day. Because her feast day fell on December 13, the date of the winter solstice before calendar reform, her legend became entwined with the midwinter festivals of various parts of Europe. In Sweden the story is told of a terrible famine in the Middle Ages which was relieved by the arrival of a ship bearing food and a beautiful, radiant woman in white at the helm; in Syracuse, Sicily they speak of a famine in the midst of which folk went to the church of St Lucia to pray whereupon a grain ship sailed into the harbour. In both Italy and Sweden she represents light and the promise of the renewal of spring. Some scholars [not me] say that the Swedish version of Lucia is actually a descendant of the Christ Child who was the Protestant Reformation’s replacement for St Nicholas. The Christkindl in Germany, where many of Sweden’s Christmas customs originated, was often depicted as a white-clad young girl and it is said that this figure was adopted by Swedes in the west part of the country to personify the celebrations that traditionally began on December 13. By the early twentieth century  Lucia was a popular figure all across the country.

 In Sweden on December 13 a “Lucy Bride”, a girl dressed in white with a red sash and a crown of candles and lingon berries, has ceremonial responsibilities. In the home she will bring coffeee and cakes to her parents. In schools or public institutions she leads a parade of similarly-clad young women and Star Boys. Across Europe December 13 will be a time of bonfires and torchlit parades. In the Tyrol Lucia is a gift-bringer who delivers presents to girls while St Nicholas attends to the boys.

 There is a dark side as well to the Lucia figure. Because the depths of midwinter are believed to be a time of increased demonic activity Lucia is sometimes identified with witches or monsters. In parts of Germany she is the Lutzelfrau, a witch who rides the winds and has to be bribed with gifts; in some parts of central Europe Lucy takes the form of a nanny goat rewarding good children and threatening to disembowl the bad. In Iceland she is identified as an ogre. The night before her feast day is therefore held to be a good time for ceremonies to drive away evil spirits with lights, noise and incense. At midnight, Austrians believed that a special light, the Luzieschein, appeared outdoors and would reveal the future to those brave enough to seek it out. In Norway she is quick to punish those who dare work on her day.

Yesterday I wrote about the time that Brazil tried to replace Santa Claus with a home-grown gift-bringer named Vovo Indio. Today, you will learn about a similar attempt in Mexico.

 About the same time as Brazil’s  experiment, Mexico too was in a revolutionary mood, anxious to cast off old ways. In a similar ill-starred move, to boost nationalism and assert Mexican independence of American and Spanish cultural figures, the Minister of Education proposed replacing Santa Claus and the Three Kings with a pre-Columbian pagan deity. Children were urged to direct their Christmas hopes to the Aztec god Quetzalcóatl; merchants used the god in advertising – G.E. ran an ad boasting that whether it came from the Magi, Santa or Quetzalcóatl, there could be no gift like a General Electric refrigerator –and on 23 December 1930 the government constructed a replica of an Aztec temple in the national stadium where the Plumed Serpent himself delivered presents to a crowd of children, watched by an approving President Pascual Ortiz Rubio. Like Vovo Indio, Quetzalcóatl proved to have no popular appeal. Critics pointed out to the ruling regime that an Aztec god, half-bird, half-snake,  was as foreign to contemporary Mexican culture as Santa Claus or the Reyes Magos.

Sometimes defenders of local culture have attempted to introduce well-meaning synthetic replacements for Santa Claus, with humorous and short-lived results. In the 1930s the Brazilian government, rocked by the impact of the Great Depression and impressed by the seeming success of Mussolini’s Italian fascism, turned inward and instituted policies that emphasized national self-sufficiency. Foreign goods and foreign ideas were rejected and replaced with local production and ideology. This encouraged an abortive move to replace Papai Noel, the local version of Santa, with Vovo Indio, or “Grandfather Indian”, meant to be an alternative to Euro-American gift-bringers and thus inflate Brazilian patriotic sentiments. Instead of a fat, fur-clad saint from the chilly north, Vovo Indio was the child of a black slave and an aboriginal mother, raised by a white family, and wearing only a feather head-dress and loin-cloth. Despite political backing by the President and fascist ultra-nationalists, Vovo Indio never caught on with the children of Brazil (in fact, he was perceived as rather frightening) and he soon returned to the jungle.

In ancient Rome, ivy, Hedra helix, was a symbol of wine and merriment but was adopted by Christians as a sign of the human weakness that needs to cling to divine strength. In England it was frequently used as a greenery with which to decorate churches at Christmas, particularly in company with holly, with whom it is celebrated in song. In Scotland it was useful in divination. Young women would pluck an ivy life, hold it to their hearts and say: “Ivy, Ivy, I love you;/ In my bosom I put you,/ The first young man who speaks to me/ My future husband shall be.”

The plant, when hung in milksheds, was said to prevent souring and was also a preventative for baldness and corns. Its other medicinal uses can be read in this early-modern account:

The juice of the berries or leaves snuffed up into the nose, purges the head and brain of thin rheum that makes defluxions into the eyes and nose, and curing the ulcers and stench therein; the same dropped into the ears helps the old and running sores of them; those that are troubled with the spleen shall find much ease by continual drinking out of a cup made of Ivy, so as the drink may stand some small time therein before it be drank.

And as for ivy’s Christmas companion, holly, an English legend proclaims: “Whosoever against holly doth cry,/ In a rope shall be hung full high.” For, when the oak and ash trees babbled to the wind, and betrayed the Saviour’s hiding-place, the holly, the ivy, and the pine kept the secret hidden in their silent hearts; and for this good deed they stand green and living under winter’s icy breath, while their companions shiver naked in the blast. Not till the risen sun has danced on Easter morn shall the oak adorn a Christian household and prove itself forgiven. 

Two sorts of divination, or telling the future, were popular at Christmas: predicting the weather and discerning one’s intended spouse.

 One way of determining the weather in the year to come was based on the day of the week on which Christmas fell. Should it fall on a Sunday it meant a year of peace and good weather, a good year for sheep and beans, and the speedy capture of thieves.  Christmas Day on Monday produces a stormy and windy year; the sick will survive, although many beasts will die, and thieves be taken. Bad luck when Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday: women, sheep, lords, kings and thieves will die, yet the sick will recover. Wednesday presages a harsh winter with danger to the young and sailors. Thursday gives mixed predictions, but when when Christmas falls on a Friday, “you may sow in ashes”: i.e., crops will be so good they will spring up anywhere. Saturday’s indications are dire: “What woman that day of childe travaille / They shall bothe be in gret peraile”. Another means of weather prediction was to assign the Twelve Days of Christmas to a particular month; whatever the conditions on that day would prevail in the corresponding month. In New Zealand the Maoris say that if the pohutukawa flowers before Christmas, it will be a long hot summer; if it doesn’t, then a sultry, wet Christmas season is in store. A Scottish proverb that a “black Christmas makes a fat kirkyard” means that a snowless Christmas will result in may people dying in the coming year — a common saying all across Europe. The Romanian proverbs: “Christmas in mud, Easter in snow”; “Green Christmas brings white Easter” are similarly widespread. German farmers say: “If the crow is standing in clover at Christmas, she’ll be sitting in snow at Easter.”  A windy Christmas, however, and a calm Candlemas are signs of a good year.

There are countless ways for a young woman to determine the identity or character of her future husband. The girl might tap on the henhouse door on Christmas Eve: if a hen cackles her marital prospects are bad; cock crows are good. She might place her name and those of her friends on the bands of the ashen faggot; the first to burn through will be the first to marry. In Germany it was the custom to form a circle of girls and trust in the powers of a blinfolded goose —  the first to be touched by the bird will be the tnext to be wed. In Denmark young women could induce dreams of their future mates by reciting just before bedtime on St Lucia’s Eve:

Sweet St. Lucy, let me know

Whose cloth I shall lay,

Whose bed I shall make,

Whose child I shall bear,

Whose darling I shall be,

Whose arms I shall lie in.