Related terms: Christmas
around the world, How Christmas began, how Christmas started, who was Santa Claus
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English: Merry Christmas
Afrikaans: Gesëende Kersfees
Afrikander: Een Plesierige Kerfees
African/ Eritrean/ Tigrinja: Rehus-Beal-Ledeats
Albanian:Gezur Krislinjden
Arabic: Milad Majid
Argentine: Feliz Navidad
Armenian: Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Pari Gaghand
Azeri: Tezze Iliniz Yahsi Olsun
Bahasa Malaysia: Selamat Hari Natal
Basque: Zorionak eta Urte Berri On!
Bengali: Shuvo Naba Barsha
Bohemian: Vesele Vanoce
Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo
Breton: Nedeleg laouen na bloavezh mat
Bulgarian: Tchestita Koleda; Tchestito Rojdestvo Hristovo
Catalan: Bon Nadal i un Bon Any Nou!
Chile: Feliz Navidad
Chinese: (Cantonese) Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun
Chinese: (Mandarin) Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan
(Catonese) Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun
Choctaw: Yukpa, Nitak Hollo Chito
Columbia: Feliz Navidad y Próspero Ańo Nuevo
Cornish: Nadelik looan na looan blethen noweth
Corsian: Pace e salute
Crazanian: Rot Yikji Dol La Roo
Cree: Mitho Makosi Kesikansi
Croatian: Sretan Bozic
Czech: Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce a stastny Novy Rok
Danish: Glćdelig Jul
Duri: Christmas-e- Shoma Mobarak
Dutch: Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!
Folklore and
origins of Christmas, and Christmas around the world
So this
is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young
A very Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so this is Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fights
A very Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
While the big shops put up enormous wreaths and the little shops spray on the Santa-Sno window stencils, churches iron out the creases on the Put Christ Back Into Christmas posters for the glass cases on the street front.
Their struggle is not new. The Church, or at least Cromwell’s puritan Commonwealth, tried to stamp out Christmas, all feast days and anything fun more than three centuries ago. A tract author with the central casting-puritan name of Hezekiah Woodward wrote, in 1656:
The old heathens’ Feasting Day, in honour of Saturn, their Idol-God, the Papists’ Massing Day, the Profane Man’s Ranting Day, the Superstitious Man’s Idol Day, the Multitudes’ Idle Day, Satan’s
– that Adversary’s
– Working Day, the True Christian Man’s Fasting
Day ...
Picture that on the notice board outside St Chad’s.
The fact is, old Hezekiah Woodward, in part, made a pretty fair point. Christmas was, indeed, in its origins a heathen day of feasting for
Saturn. And Baal. And
Mithras.
Christmas, ironically, antedates
the Nativity of
Jesus Christ, and December 25 is a fudge. In the third century
CE the Church fathers chose that day as Jesus Christ’s birthday, with good
reason. It happens to fall approximately on the Northern Hemisphere’s
Winter Solstice, and December 25 (Midwinter’s
Day/Winter Solstice/Yule) has been from time immemorial a day sacred
to the rebirth of the light of the sun in the depths of winter.
This day was the Festival of
Natalis Sol Invictus (the Birth of the Undefeated Sun) in ancient Rome.
Ancient peoples also commemorated the Babylonian Queen of Heaven, Osiris
in Egypt, Dionysus,
Helios, Adonis, the Celtic horned god
Cernunnos, the Syrian Baal, Attis, Mithras, Balder and the Norse god Frey – all
celebrated on the ancient Winter Solstice, and mostly solar saviours and
dying gods. Most of these deities were given similar titles: the Light
of the World, Sun of Righteousness, and Saviour. (More on
ancient Gods and saviours similar to Jesus.)
Origins of customs
The Roman Empire gave the world the tradition of gift-giving in late December, with its citizens giving clay dolls (sigillaria) at the festival of the
Saturnalia. Like modern revellers, too, they ate their fill of fruits, nuts, breads, pies and star-shaped cakes. They gave us decorations as well, decorating their temples with greenery for the festive Saturnalia celebrations at this time of year. Later, the Saxons at Winter Solstice time decorated their homes with two of the scarce bits of natural colour in the winter snowscape, the red-berried holly and the evergreen ivy.
Meanwhile, the Celtic Druids gathered mistletoe, a parasitic plant that grows on trees. On the sixth day of the new moon a fasting, white-clad Druidic priest cut the holy parasite from an oak tree with a sacred golden sickle held in his left hand. A virgin had to catch the falling plant, for it was not allowed to touch the ground. Mistletoe was believed by these ancient Britons, and other Europeans, to promote fertility and ward off evil. Today, of course, the fertility connections are clearly seen when a kiss is snatched under the mistletoe; the modern quest is to find a virgin to catch it should it fall. Mistletoe
figured prominently in Celtic
and Norse
mythology – the Viking god Baldur was killed with a weapon made of mistletoe.
Unable to stamp out the widespread pagan 'Yule' (Midwinter) customs, early Church leaders pragmatically put a Christian spin on them. Throughout Europe, the celebration of Christ’s birth grew in stature and became, with
Easter, one of the two great festivals of the calendar. Gradually, traditions grew up, growing and changing over the centuries, even until today, layer upon layer like sedimentary levels in an archaeological dig.
Yule drool
For example, for about 300 years in Britain it was customary to eat a goose at Christmas, though eventually the turkey took that honour
–
Henry VIII is the first person on record to have had a turkey Christmas dinner. Today the steaming turkey in Australia is still a hot property, but because of our climate, Australians are increasingly turning to mixed cold meats as well as fish and vegetarian main courses for Christmas luncheon. The plum pudding (introduced to England in the seventeenth century by
George I, it is said), still appears on Australian tables as a matter of course, though few families still have silver pre-decimal coins to bake in them.
In early Christian Rome, sweetmeats were presented to the fathers at the Vatican on
Christmas Eve; no doubt from that custom we derive such seasonal standards as plum puddings and mince pies. (The latter were once called
shrid pies and were coffin shaped, to represent the manger of Jesus.) In olden days the
hackin, a large sausage, had to be baked by dawn on Christmas day, or else two young men would frogmarch the cook around the marketplace to shame her for her idleness.
Today’s
yule log in Australia is generally a pastry or ice cream concoction, or else a chintzy plastic thing with a little
Santa sleighing along the top on the end of a cord, to the tinny tune of
O Little Town of Bethlehem. The original, ancient, Celtic version was a large log brought indoors symbolising the purifying radiance of the sun god and bringing his blessing into the home. Centuries later, in medieval times, the custom was still to light this year’s log with a piece of last year’s. In Cornwall they chalked a man on the log, perhaps a forgotten reference to the human sacrifices that took place on the old bonfires (bone-fires) of the Solstice. The yule candle had a similar role to the log, and we see it everywhere today onChristmas cards and decorations.
Deck the halls and other culture
The old Saturnalian greening of the temple soon led to church decorations at Christmas (in old church calendars, Christmas eve is marked
'Templa exornantur': churches are decked) and eventually the Christmas wreath and
tree emerged. The latter had an interesting path down the centuries to modern homes. Tradition has it that St
Boniface in the eighth century substituted a fir tree for the pagan oak, as a symbol of the faith. While Church reformers often turned their zeal and malice towards “idolatrous” practices,
Martin Luther fostered the ancient Christmas tree cult by using a candlelit tree as a representation of Christ’s home, the starlit heavens. Fir trees decorated with candles, apples, fruits and paper flowers were introduced by German immigrants into Britain, and popularised later in the nineteenth century by Prince
Albert, the German-born consort of Queen
Victoria.
However, the British royals had been enjoying Christmas trees since the
1790s.
Another Victorian addition to Christmas which is now an indispensable part of the cult, is the Christmas card. Englishman WCT Dobson is usually regarded as the blameworthy one for sending the first such greeting, and in 1846 Henry Cole, the first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum produced the first commercial Christmas cards. They initially flopped but by the end of the century the Postmaster was already urging the good folk of Britain to “Post Early for Christmas”.
Carols
Christmas carols also endure as integral parts of
Yuletide. We hear them in shops and lifts, in commercials and on the radio. For a few weeks each year they are a ubiquitous feature of the Christmas landscape. The reason is simple: millions of people love them. Carols are touchstones of our lives, unchanging reminders of who we are and where we have been. The carol we hear today is the same as the one many Australians sang in childhood, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty years ago. And we can be reasonably sure they were sung centuries ago by those ancient folk whose blood still runs in the veins of many Australians. They, however, were fortunate in not having to hear them endlessly from a million PA systems.
English carols go back to early medieval times, but the first printed collection of carols in English was published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1521. Not all of the inhabitants of the British Isles enjoyed carols with equal fervour
– until recently the custom was virtually unknown in Scotland where religious feasts were discouraged by the austere sixteenth century reformer
John Knox. Throughout much of the Western world, however, carols are an
ineradicable part of Christmas. Even Oliver Cromwell in his puritan fervour to ban Christmas and carols, did not succeed for long, though many carols were lost for centuries until rediscovered by Victorian antiquaries
(The Holly and the Ivy and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen are examples).
We keep adding to the ancient song list: Silent Night was first performed in Austria on
Christmas Eve 1818;
Jingle Bells was written by JF Pierpont in 1857 for his Sunday School class;
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer appeared in 1939; Irving Berlin gave us
White Christmas in 1942 and John and
Yoko’s Happy
Xmas (War is
Over), is now almost an old standard.
Unfortunately, like the excellent animated tableaux in department store windows that delighted children a generation ago, carol singing from door to door seems to have been lost to “progress”. If only Carols by Candlelight organisers could let their imaginations loose a little, and reintroduce the strolling group. In Igls, an Austrian village, about 250 children parade by lamplight every
December 23 in a tradition loved by villagers and tourists alike.
Christmas reflects change. Today all over the planet the Christmas theme of redemption is often subordinated to commercial and secular themes, and the baby Jesus is lost behind the jolly fat man in red (it might only be an urban myth that a Japanese department store put a crucified Santa in the window). I
have noticed that in Australia, there are many many more kitsch tableaux
of Christmas carolling scenes in people's front yards than there are
actual carollers. Similarly, department stores and bargain centres sell
models of carollers by the millions, it seems, quite possibly to people
who, for the most part, have never had a visit from a group of
house-to-house carollers, as was relatively common in Australia until
about the 1970s.
"Hangover cure" in the news
Saint Nick
Santa Claus is derived from St Nicholas, fourth century Archbishop of Myra, one of Christendom’s most popular saints. Secretly at night he gave bags of gold to the three daughters of a poor man so they would not have to sell their bodies: this deed eventually gave pawnbrokers their
'three gold balls' guild sign and 'Santa Claus' the reputation as a gift-giver.
Pagan attributes from the Norse god Woden, who rides through the sky with reindeer and forty-two ghostly huntsmen, blended with the saint. He became one, as it were, with the old Yuletide Father Christmas during the Reformation, and was given a nudge along by
Clement
C Moore’s famous 1822 poem A Visit from St Nicholas (“Twas the night before Christmas...”). Moore, however, had a gnome-like St Nick “dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot”. The Santa we know is a late-nineteenth century creation of Coca-Cola’s ad department.
(Moore, by the way, might not be the poem's author. Read more)
Did Charles Dickens invent Christmas?
The modern Christmas owes as much to Charles Dickens as to
Clement C Moore, the Church and all the pagan tribes combined. The English author published
A Christmas Carol in 1843, idealising and some will say sentimentalising the festival. He used the theme in other stories and had a huge impact on the English-speaking world’s conception of Christmas. Dickens is one reason that our Christmas symbols today are so very often those of nineteenth-century London.
From ancient Rome and Celtic Europe to Madison Avenue and the Chinese sweat shops that churn out our less expensive baubles, Christmas is an international affair that spreads like a mist, altering
– and itself being changed by
– all that it touches. It was ever thus. Perhaps mist is not the word. A spirit. Forever there have been changes to the
'Christmas of old' that have riled the conservative side of we humans. Every innovation to Yule, from the Christ-child himself to the plastic Christmas tree, has brought disturbance and discomfort. This, surely, is how culture happens and how traditions, bless
'em, are made. There are middle aged people now who look back as nostalgically upon plastic trees and the
Australian Christmassy smell of mangoes as their forefathers did upon sleigh rides, and as their forefathers did upon a jolly good human sacrifice. And there are those who will brook no talk at all of Christmas in
our times.
Happy New Year
'Merry Christmas', of course, goes with Happy New Year like hollyberry goes with jollymerry.
These days, on January
1, New Year’s celebrations take place in the great majority of places in the world. Even places like Japan have dropped their lunar calendar and accepted the
West’s, helping to make commemorations like New Year a part of world culture.
The Japanese like to see the New Year in with a good blast from Beethoven’s
Ninth, while on Rio’s Copacabana Beach on New Year’s Eve, one might chance to see locals surging into the ocean bearing flowers and gifts for the goddess. The Danes love to make a racket, even more than most nationalities do, and they will be found smashing pottery and bashing on front doors.
All over the world, people love to make a noise on the last midnight of the year. Church bells ring out in England (fitted with muffles until midnight, then allowed their full voice), and in Thailand the temple bells peal at midnight as people call out
Kwam Suk Pee Mai (Happy New Year!).
An old Icelandic custom has it that if the pantry window is left open on New Year’s Eve, the
pantry drift (a frost which is fine-grained and sweet to the taste), will come in and, when gathered and saved in a pot marked with a cross, will bring prosperity to the home. Icelanders used to believe that elves moved house on this night, and could be coerced into giving treasure to those who intercepted them at crossroads.
The People of Nigeria allowed their Ndok ceremony, held biennially in December, to merge with Western New Year customs, as Ndok was a rite of renewal. Only the men engage in Ndok, which sees, as everywhere on New Year’s Eve, much noisy, rowdy behaviour and, as in Iceland, people meeting at crossroads which are believed to be places of assembly for spirits.
In Russia, Grandfather Frost (D’yed Moroz), who looks suspiciously like Santa Claus, and his assistant the Snow Maiden (Snegourka), will pay a New Year’s visit to children, bringing with them gifts. In Greece, however, children will have left out sweets, cakes and drink for St Basil, another Santa-like character, for it is his feast day. They’ll even put a log in the fireplace so he can step easily down the chimney. In Armenia on
December 31, goodies are lowered down the chimney on a rope.
New Year’s revelling, however, has been most shaped by the otherwise generally sensible Scots, who really know how to kick up their heels to say “good riddance!” to the Old year and “welcome!” to the new. The singing of
Auld Lang Syne, is, of course as Scotch as whisky, and was recorded from the oral tradition by the Scottish national poet, Robbie Burns. Now, all over the world, people mouth the words like football players pretending the national anthem before a game. Despite its difficult words, it is one of the world’s best known songs.
The Scots call this season the “daft days” or Hogmanay, a word which might derive from practically anything if you listen to the experts, such as the Greek for
'holy month' and the French for 'man is born'.
While some New Year’s customs go back to ancient Europe and even the Middle East
– we know, for example, that 4,000 years ago the Babylonians made New Year’s resolutions
– the Scots put their stamp on it, for they always thought it was a bigger deal than Christmas. They have yet to convince the rest of the world, however, to indulge in the Hogmanay sport of “first-footing”, in which it is thought to be good luck if the first person over one’s threshold in the New Year comes in the front door, is male, without eye trouble, not splay- or flat-footed, fair haired, carrying a lump of coal and a bottle of Scotch, and leaves by the back door. (In 1966, 19-year-old first-footer Alex Cleghorn was walking on Govan Rd, Glasgow with his two brothers, when suddenly he disappeared and was not seen again. Daft days indeed!)
According to
one source, "It was traditional for men to dress in animal skins ,wear horns or antlers, and smoke sticks called Hogmanays to ward off evil spirits." Over on the Greek island of Carpathos it is a white dog they have to rush inside at the stroke of midnight.
Australians, with their keen sense of culture and modernity, tend not to bother with the lumps of coal, white dogs, elves and crossroads, tending instead to get blithering drunk (like the wassailers of old England, the door-to-door drinkers whose name came from the cry
Wass hael!, which approximates to Cheers!) and to pretend to have an ab-fab time. A few, however, will see the
New Year in at Watch Night services in churches, a custom started by the abstemious John Wesley.
Perhaps this year we could all spare a thought for poor young Alex Cleghorn as well as all the victims of alcoholic poisoning and Watch Night services. And while we’re at it, for all the one-eyed, red-headed, splay-footed females of Scotland
– if only for this one special night of the year.
Put the X back in Xmas
From
time to time over the years, I've drawn criticism for my
occasional use of 'Xmas' rather than 'Christmas',
at times being told that it is some new marketing shorthand.
In fact, the term 'Xmas' is centuries old. The 'X' stands for
'Christ' (which is why many Neopagans use the expression 'Xians'
for Christians'). The ancient Greek letter 'Chi', the first letter
in the Greek word 'Christ' ('Anointed one'), was represented by an
'X' -- hence the 'Ichthus'
bumper stickers displayed by some Christians, which is an acronym
(cristoV,
CRISTOS) for the Greek words Iesous Christos Theou Huios Sotir
('Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'). That famous fish symbol, by
the way, was supposedly scratched on walls by early Christians to
point the way to their illegal meetings, and it was revived by
hippie Jesus Freaks in the early 1970s, then gradually adopted by
conservative Christians. Webster’s Dictionary affirms that the
word 'Xmas' was in common use by the middle of the 16th Century.
Another use of the 'X' in Christian tradition is explained at November
25 in the Book of Days – how it pertains to St Andrew and
the 'XXX' we put at the end of letters to represent kisses.
Merry Xmas!
Six white boomers and
other Aussie carols
Click for
the movingamation
Six white boomers, snow white boomers
Racing Santa Claus through the blazing sun
Six white boomers, snow white boomers
... On his Australian run
Almaniac Kayla from
California writes: "I heard on the radio that there is a
myth that Santa uses 8 white kangaroos instead of reindeer".
My reply: In 1960 the Australian singer/songwriter
Rolf
Harris wrote a hit novelty Xmas song called 'Six
White Boomers', about Santa having white boomers (buck
kangaroos) pulling his sleigh –
read lyrics/listen to midi. There are some
graphic depictions
here, but none are particularly good ones. Artists, we
need some good pix of Santa's six white boomers.
There's no old folklore about it, but after four decades it
is folklore now, I suppose.
My favourite Australian carol, however, is 'Carol of the
Birds' (Wheeler/James) which has beautiful words and a
charming melody. ('Orana' is an Australian Aboriginal
word for 'welcome'):
Out on the plains
the brolgas are dancing
Lifting their feet
like war horses prancing
Up to the sun
the woodlarks go winging
Faint in the dawn light
echoes their singing
Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.
Down where the tree-ferns
grow by the river,
There where the waters
sparkle and quiver,
Deep in the gullies
Bell-birds are chiming,
Softly and sweetly their
lyric notes rhyming
Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.
Friar-birds sip the
nectar of flowers,
Currawongs chant in
wattle-tree bowers
In the blue ranges
Lorikeets calling
Carols of bushlands
rising and falling
Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.
Jesus, Odin, Mithras, Bacchus ...
Virgin birth, cross, Lamb of God
... How are the ancient gods similar? Read all about it
here
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Dr David Hughes,
of Sheffield University, argued that September 15 is the real
Christmas for the following reasons:
In the Gospel of
St Luke we read that
Joseph took Mary to
Bethlehem because “... there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus
that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made
when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, every
one in his own city” (Luke 2:1,2). Such a decree occurred about 8 BCE.
King Herod was so
infuriated that a rival had been born (the ‘King of the Jews’)
that he ordered the massacre of all
baby boys in Israel, but Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt. They
stayed there for two years until Herod’s death, said to have closely
followed a lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses occurred in 4 BCE
and 1 BCE.
The distinctive
astronomical phenomenon that happened between 8 BCE and 1 BCE, that
could be equated with the Star of Bethlehem, is the conjunction of the
giant Jupiter with Saturn in the constellation of Pisces (considered
the Zodiacal sign of the Jews). This began on May 27, 7 BCE
and continued for some months – long enough for the three wise men
(astrologers) to follow the phenomenon across country. On September
15, the Magi (three wise men) would have seen a striking phenomenon,
the conjoined rising of this celestial light on the eastern horizon,
at sunset.
If Dr Hughes is right, the Magi would have
arrived at the inn at Bethlehem with their presents for the Christ
child, on the day the star stopped over that town – December 1, 7
BCE.
Early in the 19th Century, a
young London baker, Tom Smith, while holidaying in France, came
across a confectionery with the brand name ‘Bon-Bon’. The sweet was
a sugared almond wrapped in coloured paper with twisted ends.
The entrepreneurial baker brought some of the sweets home, and
sold them with an added bonus to the customer. First he included
love sayings with the sugared almonds, then substituted a toy or
novelty for the
lolly.
He then thought of the idea of introducing a bang to the ‘bon bon’,
and contrived the cracker much as we know it today. By the early
1900s Smith was selling millions of bon-bons all over the world, and
today they are an almost indispensable accompaniment to a good
Australian Christmas dinner. In Britain, bon-bons are known as
Christmas crackers.
Yule drool
From
time to time over the years, I've drawn criticism for my
occasional use of 'Xmas' rather than 'Christmas',
at times being told that it is some new marketing shorthand.
