Christmas Mishmash

Just the other day I saw a huge billboard, “Put Christ Back Into Christmas,” it read. St. Gregory would have loved it. St. Gregory of Nazianzus - who died in 389 A.D. - warned his flock even in those days against “feasting to excess, dancing and crowning the doors.” He urged them to celebrate Christmas “after a heavenly and not after an earthly manner.”

Medieval documents abound with warnings to remember the religious purpose of Christmas and to avoid excessive merriment.

The Puritans were so outraged by the whole thing that they banned Christmas altogether. Celebrating Christmas - even in the church - was against the law in England from 1649 to 1660. In the Puritan colonies, Christmas was an ordinary working day’ no Christmas celebrations of any kind were allowed for a large part of the 1600's.

Alabama was the first state to declare Christmas a legal holiday - in 1836. In Boston, public schools were open on Christmas Day as late as 1870.

How did it come about that this particular day was chosen for Christmas? You have to go back to the person who started it all - Julius I, who was pope from 337 to 352 A.D.

The thing to remember is that nobody really knows exactly what day Christ was born. Nobody wrote down the date.

There is some evidence that the early Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas at all. In 245 A.D. a church official declared that it was a sin even to think of celebrating the Savior’s birthday “as though He were some King Pharaoh”. To the early Christians, the date of Christ’s birth was unimportant; all that mattered was His imminent return as judge of a wicked world.

Be that as it may, by the fourth century Christians were celebrating Christmas, and there was pressure on the church to establish an official date. Among the leading contenders were Jan. 6 (the “Christmas” of that time, and also said to be the date of Christ’s baptism), April 20, March 21 - and Dec. 25.

Pope Julius I picked Dec. 25.

In so doing, he plopped Christ into a great stew of customs and rituals centering on the winter solstice - customs and rituals that were hoary with age long before the birth of the Savior in Bethlehem.

December was a frightening time for primitive people in the northern hemisphere. Quite simply, they thought the sun was dying. It no longer had strength enough to rise very high in the sky. Its rays could not warm the earth. Plants withered and died. The world became cold and barren and desolate.

Here was the ultimate battle between light and darkness, life and death - and death was winning.

Somewhere in the dim, dead past, our ancestors decided to help the sun - and themselves - with a little sympathetic magic.

Now, the church fathers were not dumb. They knew that pagans would not willingly part with their old ways and superstitions. The early missionaries were instructed not to abolish local customs and rituals, but to transform them, to imbue them with Christian significance whenever possible.

Well, some solstice customs “Christianized” easily and others didn’t. The result is the glorious mishmash - that truly wonderful conglomeration of holly and holy, revelry and reverence, Christ and Santa Claus - that we call Christmas.

Here, then, is a primer on the origins of some of our favorite Christmas customs.

Our Santa Claus is a fat, fuzzy version of St. Nicholas, the fourth century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor who gave away his fortune to the needy. The story is told of the night he threw three bags of gold through the window of a poor peasant’s home. The peasant had three daughters. The bags landed in the girl’s stockings, which had been hung near the chimney to dry...

But the idea of a bearer of gifts predates St. Nicholas by many centuries. In fact, Santa’s prototype may have been the Norse god Odin. Odin, father of all the gods, was wise and kindly. On his shoulders were two ravens; every so often they would be ordered to fly to the ends of the earth to find out who was naughty and who was nice. Odin gave gifts to the good and punished the bad.

Sometime during the fourth century the Greek scholar Libanius wrote a description of the Kalends of January. The Kalends was part of a late autumn festival that also included Saturnalia (Dec. 17-24) and the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” (Dec. 25).

“The festival is celebrated everywhere as far as the limits of the Roman Empire extend,” Libanius wrote. “Better food than usual is put upon the table. The impulse to spend seizes everyone. He who erstwhile was accustomed and preferred to live poorly, now at this feast enjoys himself as much as his means will allow ...People are not only generous toward themselves, but also toward their fellow men. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides...”. Friends visited one another, homes were decked with boughs of laurel and bay, lighted candles and lamps were placed in the windows, masters and slaves sat together in a spirit of friendship and equality. The schools were closed, too.

The custom of exchanging gifts during the solstice - which also was the beginning of the new year in many cultures - is very ancient. More than 4,000 years ago, the Babylonians exchanged gifts during a solstice festival that celebrated the annual victory of the sun god over the forces of chaos.

Originally, Romans exchanged twigs from the sacred grove of the goddess Strenia at Kalends. These twigs were hung around the house to bring good luck and happiness in the coming year. Gradually, the gifts became more elaborate - sweets for a sweet year; lamps for a year of light and warmth; gold and silver baubles or money for a year of prosperity. Too bad they didn’t have Master Charge.

Christian tradition has it that we exchange gifts because the shepherds and Magi brought gifts to the infant Jesus.

The Celts and Teutons believed that witches, werewolves, demons, spirits, hobgoblins and the like were especially active during the Reign of the Frost King - the Time of the Longest Nights. You could hear the spirits in the howl of the wind, and in the flight of birds.

These spirits were frightening, but they were afraid of a few things themselves - light, loud noises - and evergreens. Evergreen were sacred: they were never deserted by the sun, they remained full of life and even bore fruit in the face of winter’s death.

It was said that the spines of holly could catch and hold witches; juniper smoke chased demons. People placed evergreen boughs on their doors and windows to scare away evil spirits. They brought branches into their homes and used them in solstice rituals designed to insure the return of vegetation.

There is an interesting story about how one of these evergreens - holly - was “Christianized”. According to the legend, Christ was crucified on a cross of holly wood (several other trees, including the dogwood, also are accorded this dubious distinction?). Because of this, the tree became a stunted bush. The leaves curled to resemble the crown of thorns. The berries, once yellow, turned red with Christ’s blood.

And green of course, is the color of everlasting life.

It could be argued that the early missionaries missed a bet in not taking full advantage of the story of mistletoe.

Mistletoe was sacred to many northern peoples, particularly to the Celtic Druids and the Norsemen. This semiparasitic plant was believed to appear on its host tree, usually an oak, in a flash of lightning. Sprigs of mistletoe were collected at the solstice and distributed with blessings for happiness..

The mother of the Norse god Baldur gave him a charm that protected him against injury from fire, water, air and earth, and anything that grew “therein or thereon”. Sounds foolproof, but the evil Loki, and enemy of the gods, found a way around it. He made an arrow of mistletoe, which doesn’t grow from any of those, and successfully plotted to have Baldur killed with it.

Baldur’s mother was beside herself with grief. The mistletoe’s white berries are her tears. But the gods took pity on her and brought her son back to life. She declared that mistletoe would never again be used for evil, and in gratitude for Baldur’s return she bestowed a kiss upon anyone who passed under her sacred plant.

Mistletoe became a symbol of peace and friendship. Enemies who accidentally met under mistletoe had to kiss and make up Sprigs of mistletoe were hung over doorways as a pledge of friendship to all who entered.

Mistletoe could have become the supreme symbol of Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men. Instead, everything was ignored except the kissing part.

Decorated trees are nothing new. In early Roman days it was common to hang little masks of Bacchua on th fruit trees in winter. This was supposed to insure their fertility come spring. Decorated trees were central to any number of celebrations in many parts of the world - the Maypole, for instance, originally was a tree decked with streamers. But an entire decorated tree in the house?

Nobody really knows where the Christmas tree came from. Here’s the most bizarre theory I’ve come across; Dec. 24 was Adam and Eve’s Day in the medieval church calendar. The day was celebrated with the presentation of skits recounting Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A fir tree decorated with apples stood for Eden’s Tree of Knowledge. The tree was ringed with lighted candles.

People sometimes placed likenesses of Adam and Eve and of snakes under their decorated trees. The tie-in with Christmas was neat: the promise of salvation after the fall. Before long, sacramental wagers were added to the apples on the trees. At some point the apples turned to oranges and glass balls, and decorated cookies and toys replaced the wafers. Candles were placed on the tree instead of under it, and the whole thing was moved indoors.

Come December, pastures were snowed under; cattle couldn’t find enough to eat. Herds had to be thinned. A great slaughter ensued, followed by an even greater feast. People often feasted at noon because the days were short and houses were difficult to light.

In the not-too-distant past, boar’s head was traditional Christmas fare. The boar was the animal symbol of the Norse sun god. The heroes of Valhalla were fed from the ever-renewing flesh of a magic boar.

During midwinter, a boar was sacrificed to the sun god; its head, served on a bed of evergreen with an apple in its mouth, was shared with the god in the hope that he would dispel the headless spirits that screamed in the winter storms, and provide courage and plenty in the coming year.

Having ham for Christmas? Think about it.

In most cultures, celebration of the solstice was primarily an agricultural ritual designed to insure the return of fertility to the land. Among the Celts and Teutons, a week or so in December was set aside for a festival centering on the worship of wheat. Cakes and breads were baked in an effort to gain favor with the field gods. Today we bake cookies. That’s progress.