Pagan Christmas (15 page)

Exotic Christmas Flowers

From cultures around the world come still more flowers with important roles in the ethnobotany of Christmas. Even cacti from the deserts of North, Central, and South America have been incorporated into Christmas rituals by local peoples.

The characteristic blossoms of Brunfelsia (Brunfelsia pauciflora var. calycina), the Brazilian Christmas flower. Because of their beauty, most species enjoy widespread use as ornamental plants in tropical areas. Brunfelsia is also cultivated successfully in frost-free areas of the Mediterranean.

Brunfelsia: A Brazilian “Christmas Flower”

Brunfelsia spp., Solanaceae

Brunfelsia hopeana (Hook.) Benthe.

Brunfelsia uniflora Pohl. D. Don

OTHER NAMES

Blossom of Lent, borracheras (Spanish, “drunkmaker”), Christmas flower, flor de Natal (Portuguese, “Christmas flower”), good night, lady of the night, manaca, manacá jeratacaca, raintree, Santa Maria, white tree

Brunfelsia, a member of the nightshade family (Solanceae) is well known to plant lovers as a decorative plant from tropical South America and the Caribbean. The genus contains forty to forty-five species. Some species have applications as healing remedies, some are known as ornamental plants, and some are used as ingredients in psychoactive preparations (Plowman 1977, 290ff). In Germany, Brunfelsia is a folk remedy called manaca, long valued for the healing properties of its root. In the vernacular, many species are called borracheras (drunkmaker) and serve as ingredients for the shamanic intoxicant known as ayahuasca.

The Brunfelsia genus was named after Otto Brunfels (1489–1543), a German doctor, botanist, and theologist. When the Portuguese came to north Brazil, they observed how the Indians used Brunfelsia uniflora. The inhabitants of the Amazon region made poison for arrows from extracts of the plant’s roots. The payés, or shamans, used the root for healing and for performing magic (Plowman 1977, 290f). The variety known as manaca sometimes is recommended as an aphrodisiac in Brazil.

In Brazil, Brunfelsia is part of both urban and rural Christmas ethnobotany. Its flower blossoms, which may be both white and violet on the same plant, symbolize the blossom miracle—creation beginning anew. Brazilians not only call the plant manacá jeratacaca (snakebite medicine) and umburapuama (medicine tree), but also flor de Natal (Christmas flower). In English, it is called Christmas flower, Santa Maria, white tree, good night, and blossom of Lent.

The Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera spp.) develops its fiery red blossoms in time for the feast. (Photo by Bruno Vornarburg)

Christmas Cacti

Schlumbergera spp., Cactaceae

Schlumbergera x buckleyi (T. Moore) Tjaden (Christmas cactus) Schlumbergera truncata (Haw.) Moran (false Christmas cactus)

OTHER NAMES

Cacti are considered a lucky charm because they can only survive with luck in the deserts where they originate.

HILLER 1989, 148

Christ cactus, holiday cactus, limb cactus, lobster claw, false Christmas cactus Cacti are strange, fleshy, spiky beings from the deserts of North, Central, and South America. They are popular collectibles with plant growers. Their spikes are treated with respect, their flower blossoms with joy. The hybrid most widely known as Christmas cactus, Schlumbergera x buckleyi, is a popular indoor ornamental that puts forth vivid red blossoms in winter. Other cacti provide food and medicine, and some are worshipped in shamanic cultures as entheogens. These are psychoactive plants celebrated as incarnations of the gods and eaten in the search for visions. The psychoactive substances in peyote (Lophophora williamsii), called phenethlyamines, are also found in other cacti—for example, bishop’s cap or hat of St. Nicholas (Astrophytum myriostigma), which the native people call wild peyote.

In pre-Spanish times, psychoactive cacti were especially popular for rituals. The Mexican Huichol Indians gave peyote—known in Germany only as “drug cactus”—a central role in their lives and their universe. This little nodule, a desert inhabitant with no spines, is a shamanic being that provides insight into paradisiacal worlds, gives humans mystical vision, and reveals to them something of the great mystery of being. In South America, the huge Trichocereus pachanoi, originally called achuma, is widely known today by its Christianized name, San Pedro cactus. The San Pedro cactus is named after St. Peter—the saint who holds the key to heaven—and contains, like peyote, the vision-inducing substance mescaline.

Because of their bloom times, certain cacti are associated with ritual dates and family feasts. In addition to Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera spp.), we are familiar with Mother’s Day cactus (Mammillaria spp.) and Easter cactus (Rhipsalidopsis gaertneri). The so-called true Christmas cactus found in flower shops is a hybrid: Schlumbergera x buckleyi, a cross between S. russelliana and S. truncata. The limb cactus (S. truncata) is originally from the Organ Mountains near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where it grows on tree crowns up to 50 meters (about 165 feet) above ground. Here, in the tropical Yucatán, the region of South America where the Mayans settled, this cactus finds an arid climate that suits its needs. This plant is an epiphyte—one that absorbs moisture and nutrients directly from the air—and in South America is pollinated by hummingbirds. If properly cared for, the Christmas cactus will overflow with bright, carmine-red flowers year after year.

The giant saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) is known in Europe through “Western” movies. It is native to Arizona and northern Mexico. (Tucson, Arizona, February 1992)

The giant saguaro, another cactus from the New World, is widely known by its characteristic silhouette. The saguaro plays a role in the Christmas festivities for some local people: “In some parts of Mexico, the huge Carnegiea gigantea serves as a Christmas tree. It is decorated festively and presents are put underneath it. But the cactus is not transferred into the house; it stays outside” (Berger 2002b, 51).

This cactus can grow up to 12 meters (about 40 feet) and has a main stem and eight to twelve secondary branches. The white blossoms, which have bright yellow stamens and pistils, emerge from green, scaly buds at the tips of the stem and branches. The cactus blooms for the first time at fifty to seventy-five years of age (Bruhn 1971, 323). Its fruit can be as large 6 to 9 centimeters (about 2½ to 3½ inches) around and produces more than two thousand seeds. The saguaro can live 150 to 175 years and weigh 6 to 10 tons at maturity. The Indians of the southwest made a wine from its fruit that was drunk for the purpose of ritual intoxication and as an aphrodisiac.

The Tohono O’odham (=Papago), an Indian tribe of Arizona, worship the saguaro cactus as a holy tree. They say that it grew from sweat drops condensed into pearls that fell from the eyebrows of I’itoi, the older brother in the family of gods of the tribe. In another myth of origin, the cactus is an enchanted boy. When his mother was not paying attention, he got lost in the desert and fell into a tarantula’s hole. He came back up again as a cactus. This may explain the folk custom of burying the placenta next to a saguaro so the newborn child will have a long life. At the time of the spring equinox, the O’odham sang special songs all night long to insure that the saguaro cacti would bear fruit (Hodge 1991, 47). The Serí Indians, who live in the Sonoran desert of Mexico, also believe that the saugaro was originally a human being. They share the O’odham custom of burying the placenta next to the root so that the newborn will rejoice in a long life.

CHRISTMAS GREENS

Green is the sacred color of the plant cults.

GOLOWIN 1985, 139

Not only is there a meteorological white Christmas, there is also a botanical green Christmas. “If there is no snow on Christmas, then expect snow on Easter, according to the saying ‘green Christmas, white Easter’” (Hiller 1989, 322). We are accustomed to the fact that, in our climate, the plant world reflects the course of the year. Nevertheless, in the northern European evergreen forests, some green is always evident in the bare, snowed-in woods. This hope-inspiring winter green is also expressed by other plants all over the world, especially such seasonally important greens as mistletoe, holly, laurel, and ivy.

Wintergreen (Pyrola spp.). “The kinds of species of Pyrola that can be found in the sorry shadows of our deepest pine forests, in humid and mossy places that a plant lover really likes, are low shrubs with tender white and open flowers. They do no harm to us, and exist only for our appreciation” (von Chamisso 1987, 172). (Woodcut from Brunfels 1532, 188)

Even city people, living in comfort and far removed from nature, feel depressed when leaves begin falling off the trees in autumn, when the flowers and greenery wither and the days grow shorter, colder, and misty-gray. Our ancestors felt the same way. They feared that when winter set in, nature might die forever, that the sun might never rise above the horizon again after the bow of its arc flattened and the temperature fell.

The evergreen box tree (Buxus sempervirens L., Buxaceae), one of the evergreens of Christmas, also has a connection with Barbara’s boughs. It “stops craziness or anger of the brain. To sleep or rest underneath the box tree diminishes the reason because the smell of it is repugnant to nature.” (Woodcut from Lonicerus 1679, 72)

Of course, our experience shows us that autumn does not result in a great death of trees, but is only a natural event in the course the year. Year after year, nature withdraws in November and December, and we envy the bears—the early shamanic gods of our ancestors—their winter sleep. With the last falling leaves, we begin already to anticipate spring, the time when the trees wake up to “new life,” herbs start growing again, and flowers bloom. Spring is the great flower blossom miracle. Like the legendary plants that blossom in the winter, most needle-bearing trees survive on the “dying Earth” as carriers of hope, and they send their green shimmering through the fog and the snowy forests. This winter green gives comfort and inspires belief in the reawakening of nature that sustains us through the dark time. This belief runs like a green thread through the period of ice and cold. No wonder our ancestors saw evergreens as mysterious, holy plants. No wonder either that we take this eternal green into our homes during the darkest time to remind us of the greening power of nature.

The pagans saw divinity in the world of plants. Green was the divine juice of life. This is why evergreen plants were especially holy, divinely full of soul. In the first century CE, the Roman naturalist Pliny wrote, “Yes, we believe that even down below the heavens, the forests also have their deity, their sylvans, fauns, and (various) kinds of goddesses” (Pliny the Elder XII, 3).

Red and white gnome children bring Christmas greens: mistletoe and holly. (Picture from Mistletoe by Mili Weber, 1891–1978)

Our ancestors took evergreen branches in pre-Christian times into their houses and huts… . The faithful green was supposed to give shelter to the friendly forest spirits during winter time, and as a symbol of the eternal life force, it was supposed to keep away bad spirits (Kluge 1988, 123).

Christmas has always served as a reminder of the cycle of nature, of our obvious connection to the natural order. This is why there are European sayings such as “green is hope” or “to have a little house in the green.” The calming and relaxing effect of the color green is familiar to practically everyone. What’s more, green is the complement of red, its direct opposite on the color wheel. Those who are color-blind cannot see the red and green colors of Christmas, only dead gray.

The Old Ones of the Woods

“Old one of the woods” is a name for female plant spirits or souls. These beings teach humans about the powers of plants. “The old one” is the pagan winter goddess. Her lover is the “green man,” the winter god. They are Frau Holle and Wotan. To them holly, ivy, mistletoe, and green winter palms were holy. “At one time the decorating of evergreen plants for Christmas was forbidden as ‘heathen’ but it is again ‘en vogue’” (Storl 2000b, 330).

Whoever makes a place in the garden for plants of the genus Vinca will become well acquainted with an “old one of the woods.” In the vernacular and in fairy tales, Vinca is called by many different names, including forest woman, wild woman, moss woman, Frau Holle, and grandmother evergreen (Golowin 1985, 81). These common names are also applied to other forest plants. For example, musk yarrow (Achillea sochata) is also called forest miss and wild miss; elder (Sambucus nigra) is called Frau Holler or simply Holler; false mandrake or victory onion (Allium victorialis) goes by fräulein (miss); and black horehound (Ballota nigra) is known as old woman.

We know Frau Holle from the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale “Goldmary and Pitchmary.” In old Germanic times, she was worshipped as the Earth and fertility goddess Hludana (Hlodyn, Hlödin), and as the mythical mother of Thor (Donar), the thunder god. Frau Holle and her son Donar are associated with virtually all the evergreen plants important in the ethnobotany of Christmas, especially holly and mistletoe.

Frau Holle led the Hollen or Hulden, a demonic flock of spirits that were counted among the members of Wotan’s wild hunt. In the legend, she and her son Donar lived within the plants known as wintergreen, periwinkle, and everlasting. Holle was a being from the other world, and her nature was perceived as ambivalent, both friendly and punishing. In her underworld empire down below, she received the souls of the dead and released the souls of the newborn. Around 1000 CE, Bishop Burchard of Worms identified Frau Holle with the Latin goddess of the forest and the hunt, Diana. Both were witch goddesses, as far as the Catholics were concerned.

The thick-leaved plant called hens and chicks or houseleek (Sempervivum tectorum L., Crassulaceae) in English is known in Europe not only as wintergreen, but also by the folk names thunder beard, thunder flower, thunder herb, Jovis barba or Jupiter’s beard (Jupiter=Donar, the thunder god). “The old one” is also encountered in various species of the genus Pyrola (Pyrolaceae), widely known in English as wintergreen. Wintergrün is the German name for Pyrola media as well as Pyrola rotundifolia, which is also called winterpflanze (winter plant). In the German vernacular, the related plant Chimaphila umbellata (pipsissewa or prince’s pine, formerly Pyrola umbellata) is called winterlieb (winter dear), wintergrün (winter green), and waldmangold (forest-man gold). Polygala paucifolia (Polygalaceae) is called flowering wintergreen.