to Santa or not to Santa part 2
I know some people don’t ‘do’ Santa. I know some who don’t think we should ‘lie’ to our kids (as if Santa was a lie). And I know some who worry that he detracts from the true meaning of Christmas (hey I used to be one of those). And I even know some who think we should get back to the way Christmas was before Santa became ‘the thing‘. But before anyone jumps all over Santa Claus for being the antichrist of Christmas, we should take a little history lesson. Before Clement C. Moore brought St. Nick and children together in 1822, Christmas was hardly even recognized in North America, let alone celebrated.
Here are 10 facts that provide clarity into Santa’s real role in the way western society celebrates Christmas, and why that is a GOOD thing. A surprisingly good thing.
fact 1: December 25 is not the date of Christ’s birth and never pretended to be. It is the date set aside to celebrate His birth – not the same thing. Probably the biggest misunderstood fact of Christmas. It’s alright. Nothing wrong with it not being the actual date, lets just accept it and get on with our celebrations anyway.
fact 2: For centuries pagan religions all over the northern hemisphere celebrated the last half of December because …… , well, …. after the winter equinox, sunlight hours begin to increase. As agricultural cultures, the ‘return of the sun’ was full of hope and promise, effectively putting the dark days of winter behind them. I’m all for that too.
fact 3: In early days of the Christian Church, Rome was already entrenched in the week long celebration of an annual festival dedicated to Saturnaelia (December 17-24). Public places were decorated, gifts were exchanged and the revelry was . . . . W.I.L.D. New Roman Christian converts easily fell back into old pagan habits and customs – when they were as all encompassing as this one. The church didn’t approve of course, but it was a hard tradition to break.
fact 4: In or around the year 125, in an effort to replace the wild celebrations associated with Saturnaelia the second Bishop of Rome declared that the church should set aside a time to recognize the “nativity of our Lord and Saviour”, but as no one knew the actual date, acknowledgement of His birth began on arbitrary ‘guess-dates’, and even then, only half heartedly. It was intended to be a day for quiet reflection. Quiet reflection is a little boring when compared to the celebrations of Saturnalia, so it wasn’t a successful substitution.
fact 5: Approximately two centuries later, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, (recently converted himself, and no doubt under pressure from early church leaders to cancel-out the pagan midwinter celebrations), introduced December 25 as an immovable celebration of the “nativity of our Lord”. The timing was deliberate – another attempt to redirect the festivities, and although it might have been a step in the right direction, the nature of the celebration was pretty much the same merrymaking already associated with the winter equinox for so long. No quiet reflection – back to wild abandon. You cannot rule out centuries of established tradition so easily.
fact 6: Midwinter celebrations of one sort or another were everywhere in Europe. Apparently we all like the idea of the days getting longer. In the 1500 and 1600’s of Great Britain for instance, while the name had evolved into a “Christmas” celebration, the pattern was the same drunken week of partying it had been in pre-Christian times. Serious attempts were made to ban – even outlaw the festivities, but in the long run – the tradition was ‘of the people’ and though they had little say in any other affairs of their lives, this particular tradition prevailed – against the best attempts of the church and state to end it.
fact 7: Caroling in the streets was common, but not the way that we practice it today. Old English folk tunes like “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” celebrated the revelry with veiled threats. Large groups of drunken men would go to homes of the wealthy demanding hospitality in the form of food, drink and even money. If homeowners did not comply their residences were looted.
We wish you a merry Christmas, We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year
Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year
Oh, bring us some figgy pudding. Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
Oh, bring us some figgy pudding
And bring it right here!
. . . . .
We won’t go until we get some. We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
So bring it right here!
Good tidings we bring to you and your kin
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year . . . (wink wink)
Notwithstanding the apparent cheer of “good tidings we bring to you and your kin“, homeowners fully understood the threat of “we won’t go until we get some“.
fact 8: When the Puritans left England and established themselves in the new world, it is no wonder that outlawing Christmas celebrations was one of the first things they did. Who could blame them? Controlling it had proved impossible. Forbidding it from being established in their “New England” society was the only way to stay on top of it. Or so they thought . . . . but with boatloads of immigrants pouring in from Europe over the next century, the laws were eventually ignored and the drunken riots of Christmas Day became an American thing – as well as a British thing.
fact 9: In Germany, acknowledging Christmas Day had evolved very differently than it had in England. It had become a time for gathering family and friends in celebrating the birth of our Saviour. Why did it work there and not in England? Well its anyone’s guess I suppose, but my guess is that since Germany had already separated itself from the Catholic Church, they weren’t involved in the Church’s attempts to make it a sober day of reflection. Instead, it evolved naturally under the influence of Martin Luther’s theological teachings. The facts that Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1517, and that the New Testament was published in the German language in 1522 meant that the German people could access the scriptures in their own language earlier than English speaking people could. In any case, they eventually came to mark Christmas Day as a time to acknowledge the nativity of Jesus Christ by sharing food and fellowship with those they loved. It became the second most important religious holy day – following Easter.
fact 10: When Queen Victoria married her German cousin Albert in 1840, he brought with him a German way of celebrating Christmas with family oriented traditions including the Christmas tree and a creche. After centuries of change being forced upon them, the British people began to willingly adopt it through the peaceful, patient and reverent example of the royal family.
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Backing up to sometime in the 10th century, the Byzantine author “Simon of Metaphrastes”, collected and compiled scores of stories about various Catholic saints – including one named Nicholas of Myra, an Archbishop who had lived in the southern part of present day Turkey, sometime during the 4th century. It was Saint Nicholas’ kindness, generosity and love of children that endeared him to the people. The day of his death – December 6, became known as St Nicholas Day, a time when children were often visited and given gifts. As time went on, the reputation of St Nicholas’ Christlike qualities inspired many – one such, being a young man living in what is now the present day Czech Republic. The Bohemian Duke of Borivoy was a devout Christian who put into practice the spirit of Christian charity. Though he lived at a time we now call the dark ages, he wished to reflect God in all that he did. He was murdered at a young age but the legend of his goodness and generosity lived on. 800 years later, an Anglican Priest (and linguist) – John Mason Neale, wrote (or may have translated from Czech) a beautiful Christmas Carol – “Good King Wenceslas” which extends the legend of the Bohemian Duke into our time. It was a song well known when I was a child, and it was a personal favourite of mine. I always hoped there really was such a person as the good king.
Almost every European country eventually came up with their own version of St Nicholas, visiting children and leaving gifts, including the English Father Christmas.
Where actual truth and legend intersect in each account of a benevolent Christmas ‘man’, is impossible to know. Such is the nature of time and legends. But collectively they help us understand the extraordinary character of the being who eventually morphed into our present day Santa Claus. In 1808 American author Washington Irving, wrote about the Dutch Sinterklaas, who dressed in typical Dutch clothes with knee britches and a broad brimmed hat. He travelled in a flying horse drawn wagon, dropping gifts down chimneys.
No doubt knowing the legend of Sinterklass, another American author from New York wrote a fanciful poem for his children about what happened one Christmas Eve while they were sleeping (dreaming about sugar plums). He wrote it in 1822, calling it “A Visit from St Nicholas“. One year later a friend released it to a newspaper for others to enjoy, but Clement C. Moore declined to have his name published with it, worried how it would be received with his academic and religious credentials. He didn’t publicly ‘own’ authorship till 1844, but in those twenty plus years, his description of what happened during the night before Christmas had affected the way Americans celebrated the holiday. With hardly even mentioning ‘children’, he made Christmas all about them, and from him, we learned what St Nicholas looked like and dressed like. We learned that he smoked a pipe. We learned that he gained entry into the house through the chimney (clever). We learned that he arrived in a flying sleigh, powered by eight magical reindeer. We even learned all of their names. Suddenly, Moore created a physical persona based on a little known old-world saint who, folklore taught, was kind and charitable, and gave gifts to children. And, he brought him to New York! The rest – as they say, became the stuff of legends. The time was right. Over the following decades, Christmas evolved from a holiday characterized by drinking and riots into a day of family and giving.
And while all this revelatory information was taking root in America, Victoria’s England was finally ready for a Christmas revelation of their own, through another beloved author – Charles Dickens. In December of 1843, A Christmas Carol was published. Though it wasn’t a financial success, it literally changed the way Great Britain celebrated Christmas. Between Queen Victoria’s example of reverence for the season, and the transformatory story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, the ground was ripe and ready to harvest. Almost two centuries later, neither story has ever left publication, and during that time – the spirit of love, kindness and charity has ruled over the previous drunken parties of yesteryear.
Though Mrs. Cratchit’s Christmas goose and pudding suggest those dishes were the typical Christmas menu for Londoners, it only became so because Dickens implied it already was.
Through Fred’s veneration of Christmas we might believe he spoke for all Londoners when he testified “I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time when it has come round, …. as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” This is the perfect example of how ‘art’ made the world a better place. After 1843, Londoners began celebrating Christmas the way Dickens said they already did.
It was upon this fertile ground that Scrooge and Santa literally changed the way we celebrate Christmas. They may have stood on the shoulders of German Lutherans and St Nicholas to do so, but it is to them that we owe the charitable, increased Christlike love we feel this time of year. Rather than wanting to go back to a ‘simpler time’ before Santa squeezed in, I hope we give him the credit he’s due. He in fact, is the emissary of the REAL meaning of Christmas in North America. Throughout all those dark centuries of apostasy, the light of Christ lived on – a spark here and a spark there, that made the world they lived in a better place, not only while they lived, but through the stories that were told about them long after they died. It was a slow revelation to me as a young mother. I was suspicious of Santa’s motives at first, and I worried he’d harm my children’s outlook, but I’ve since learned to appreciate his unique role, and be grateful for him. I see him now as an instrument, used to flame the light of Christ that had never disappeared, but had previously grown dim from time to time. The pairing of the nativity of Jesus Christ with the ungodly midwinter festivities of days gone by, may have been a mean joke of the adversary in the beginning, but as always – God is in the details, and He prevails.
With the commercialization of Christmas those living in North America and England got a chance to experience the real meaning of Christmas. Santa put an end to the drunken Christmas riots of pre-Victorian England and America. He started appearing everywhere: stores, street corners, displays, etc. Presents and decorating trees became important traditions, and Christmas slowly became an official holiday in many American states. Churches began to open their doors for believers to worship, sing about Christ’s birth, and to celebrate. Ironically, with the introduction of Santa and Scrooge, Christ was finally welcomed to Christmas. So lets give Santa a break. We owe him a LOT. He did more to bring the Savior BACK into Christmas than he ever did to discourage our remembrance of Him. Santa Claus rocks!
Coming from “a long line of believers” I hope I imparted some of that to my kids growing up. He is real. Yes, there comes a time when Santa changes. Just a little. Not in the way he looks, or in those things that people most commonly say about him. But in the twinkling of an eye, he literally transforms from the Santa you thought he was, to the Santa he’s been all along – which much to your surprise, may be better than you even dreamed. And then you can spend the rest of your life believing in him – as I have. And wanting those you love to believe in him too.
Merry Christmas Friends!
Cindy Suelzle
ps – it warms my heart to know that a few of our best loved European Christmas hymns were written in the 1700’s, evidence that though the masses had not embraced a more Christ-centered Christmas, there were some who did – according to the dictates of their own conscience. Further evidence that though dim, the light of Christ shone through it all.
