Pagan Christmas (3 page)

Spamer is also on the right track when he takes old calendrical divisions into consideration. The Anglo-Saxons called the months we know as December and January giuli—similar to the Icelandic ylir. However, Spamer limits himself to vague declarations concerning the transformation of the once-pagan winter solstice celebration into the Christian Christmas feast. He delivers hard facts. He talks specifically about Hakon the Good (934–960), the third king of Norway, who situated Christmas during the time of the normal Jul festivities and is ultimately historically responsible for the merging of the two names, jul (=yule) and fest (=feast). In other sources, the Roman Emperor Justinian, who had converted to Christianity, is credited with changing the date of the feast from January 6 to December 25 in 542 CE, to honor the birth of Christ.

The German word for Christmas—Weihnachten, meaning “holy night”—first emerged in 1170. Spamer sees it as a translation of the Catholic liturgical word nox sancta (holy night), and believes it referred to the sacred nights of pre-Christian rituals. The ancient Germans started the new year with Moraneht, “mothers’ night.” So it was easy for early Christian missionaries to associate that day with the day mother Mary gave birth to the Christ child. In addition, until Spamer’s lifetime, the term mothers’ night was interchangeable with twelve nights in some areas of Germany. The folklorist also discovered the last remaining practice of a pre-Christian custom in Carinthia, which involved laying a table for the deceased on the holy night. This custom is the origin of the big Christmas meals of our time.

Everyone celebrates Christmas in his or her own way. For Christian believers, the night between December 24 and December 25 is holy, a symbolic return of the birth of Christ. Pagan and Earth-centered people continue to celebrate the winter solstice. To many, Christmas represents a traditional family feast day, a time of contemplation, a welcome respite from the yoke of work. For some, the meaning of Christmas is obscure, seemingly celebrated simply because it is customary. Others dislike the Christmas season because it can be a terrifying example of excessive consumerism. Others ignore it out of disinterest or spiritual conviction. For example, a Jehovah’s Witness does not celebrate Christmas because it is considered a “heathen feast” in that faith. And some people have no associations with the Christmas season. Orthodox Jews still hope for the return of the Messiah; for them, the birth of the founder of a new Jewish sect has no meaning. The same is true for Muslims, who do not regard Jesus as a prophet of God.

The Easter rabbit with a cap reminiscent of the Christmas fly agaric mushroom. (Sticker book, Münster: Coppenrath Verlag, 1998)

In old Rome, December 25 was the day of dies natalis invicti solis—the birthday of the invincible sun. This day served as a time not only for worshipping the sun, but also for worshipping Saturn, the god of seed sowing and wealth. Far from the borders of the Roman Empire, another age-old pagan feast was celebrated—winter solstice, marking the rebirth of the sun, the return of light and life. This ritual—celebrated with intoxicating drinks and roasted meat from animal sacrifices—held a central meaning to many Germanic peoples.

Spirits in the forest: fly agaric mushroom wights, fairies, Easter rabbits, a toad, and a full moon. (Children’s book illustration from Elsa Beskow, De Sma Skovnisser, 1919, Carlsen reissue, 1996)

Strangely enough, it never occurs to most people to ask why the birth of Christ is always celebrated on the same date each year, while the dates for his death and resurrection—Easter—change from year to year. The answer to this riddle is that there are two different calendar systems. The recurring date for Christmas is related to the course of the sun; the dates for Easter change each year because of the cycles of the moon. Easter is always the first Sunday after the first spring full moon.

Red and White: Colors of Christmas

The mystery of the recurrent and omnipresent red and white color symbolism at Christmastime—in the Christmas tree, with its red balls and candles, or in the dress of Father Christmas—has many possible interpretations.

One explanation has roots in very ancient symbolism representing the cosmic connection between man and woman. White, like the snow, represents light, pure spirit, the realm of the sky. White is also the color of a man’s semen. Thus, in an intercultural sense, the color white symbolizes the male principle. Only later was white associated with innocence, celibacy, and pureness. The color red2 symbolizes, like menstrual blood, the universal female life force and principles of love, passion, and magic.

White and red are the colors of shamanic clothing in Nepal.

The red and white guard from cartoon land.

In pagan times, ladybugs were holy to the love goddess Freia (Freia=Mary). But why does this one—like the fly agaric mushroom—have white dots instead of the usual black ones? (Chocolate ladybug)

More clues to the symbolic meaning of red as a Christmas color can be found in a study of ancient runes. In old Germanic times, one entered the runes in stone with one’s very blood. Runes were not ordinary, everyday letters for inscribing banal or mundane written content. They were magic signs that “came to life” through ritualistic cutting and blood-letting. They were zauber,3 meaning that they were magic and had the power of enchantment (Krause 1970). Whoever had power over the runes could do magic spells.

The word zauber itself has to do with the act of consecrating the rune wand with one’s own blood. The word rune means “secret” or “secret knowledge,” but it also means “magic.” Female Germanic prophets were called alruna, “the all knowing,” because they could see truthfully. They were believed to have the gift of prophesy by nature and were highly esteemed because of that. In his work Germania, the great Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus4 wrote: “The runes were originally conjuring formulas that were put together in a certain way and became a poetic song. The magician is a medicine man who has a way of seeing the medicine that makes it work or conjures it with a mighty spell” (Jordans 1933, 16f).

There is yet more to the meaningful connection between red and white. In the pervasive linkage of the two colors can be seen a kind of alchemy, a melding of two very different substances that are united in an alchemical wedding to become the Philosopher’s Stone. The Rosarium Philosophorum, an alchemists’ text, says about Mercury: “He is the whole elixir, whiteness and redness, the permanent water, and the water of life and death, and the virgin’s milk, the cleansing herb of the purification” (Heinrich 1998, 234).

The Darkness of Midwinter

In the drunkenness of ecstasy we have climbed the winds.

RIG VEDA X, 126

Autumn brings darkness. The season ends with the shortest day of the year, the day of the winter solstice. Winter begins with the longest night of the year and leads us from the darkness back to the light. Winter ends when day and night are of equal length, on the day of the spring equinox. “Every year, on winter solstice, a temporal nativity is accompanied by the rejuvenation and renewal of the whole cosmos: The world tumbles back to the time of origin; chaos returns” (Giani 1994, 40). This is why the Christmas “feast of light” takes place in darkness. The dark carries the seed of light and vice versa, almost a European equivalent of the symbolic unity of yin and yang.

Shamanic Elements in Christmas

Astronomical date

Solstice, midwinter

Mythology

Wotan and the Wild Hunt

Christmas wights (creatures of the woods)

Sol invictus; the rebirth of the sun

Saturnalia

Symbols

Fir tree, world tree, tree of knowledge

Evergreens: mistletoe, holly, wintergreen, and others

Straw stars

Opium poppy seedpods

Fly agaric mushroom

Angels

Red and white

Green and white

Ritual Activities

Incense burning or smudging with herbs

Animal sacrifice, symbolic human sacrifice

Drinking rituals, Jul libations

Christmas presents

Potlatch exchange, gift-giving ritual in Siberian shamanism

Julklapp (Swedish gift-giving ritual)

Plant Rituals

Tree cults and the cutting of winter greens

Blossom miracles (plants that bloom in midwinter)

Oracle plants

Sowing the Barbara wheat

In midwinter, the snow arrives. The days become longer, and the snow reflects and enhances the light. Midwinter means renewal of life and holds the promise of new life force, the return of viriditas, the greening power. The Romans associated this cosmological state of affairs with the flower blossom miracle, in which plants bloom in the dead of winter: “On the day of the winter solstice, pennyroyal [herba pulei] blossoms are hanging underneath the roof to dry, and the bubbles they produce—that are filled with air—burst” (Pliny the Elder II, 108). All of this hints at the important role of evergreen and blooming plants in the time of the winter solstice, the ritual use of fire and candle, and a deeper meaning to the name “mothers’ night.”

The darkest night of the year was called mothers’ night, because now the sun god, lover of the goddess, is reborn in the lap of the Earth. With him, the light of life is renewed. It is the moment of quietness, of contemplation. The cosmic tree (shamanic tree, ladder to heaven) sparkles in the starry brightness under which the child of light is born, reveals itself in an inner vision. Fir greens decorate the rooms. They are smudged with mugwort, juniper, and other aromatic, cleansing herbs (Storl 1996a, 73f).

In this night the goddess gives birth in the darkest place on Earth, during the quietest hour, to the reborn sun-child. Human beings acknowledge the wonder of this sacred night in their meditations: They light candles, they burn oak or birch and let it smoke, they let the burning Julblock bonfire smolder; and they hang up the wintermaien—the original Christmas tree. The British Celts decorated their house with holly, mistletoe, and ivy; and on the continent, fir or spruce was used. The ashes of the Julfire were believed to be healing and were put on the fields to bring fertility (Storl 2000b, 150).

Incense for the Winter Solstice

Cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum)

Frankincense, olibanum (Boswellia sacra)

Juniper berries (Juniperus communis)

Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus)

Myrrh, opopanax (Commiphora molmol, C. myrrha)

Prickly juniper (Juniperus oxycedrus)

Sacred Nights, Smudging Nights, and Incense

The dream whirls around the times, the rooms, the periods of time, it chases them like a storm chases the fog. Through glimpses of dream and fog, reality is shining.

SCHENK 1960, 25

Our ancestors called the twelve days between December 25 and January 6—the time between the first day of Christmas and epiphany (the day of the holy kings)—the “raw nights.”5 They are now more generally known as the twelve nights of Christmas. They also recognized four “smudging nights” during which the people smudged their homes and stables with herbs to protect against evil influences.

Old tradition has it that during these nights—especially the nights before St. Thomas Day, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and epiphany—the spirits are out, haunting. In these dark times, ruled by elemental powers, the spectral army of Wotan’s wild hunt hurried through the clouds, uncanny spirit beings fighting the battle between light and darkness. In his unfinished epic, Pharsalia (also known as The Civil War), Lucan (39–65 CE) describes the emotions of people of a remote past:

Nature’s rhythm stops. The night becomes longer and the day keeps waiting. The ether does not obey its law; and the whirling firmament becomes motionless, as soon as it hears the magic spell. Jupiter—who drives the celestial vault that turns on its fast axis—is surprised by the fact that it does not want to turn. All at once, witches drench everything with rain, hide the warm sun behind clouds, and there’s thunder in the sky without Jupiter realizing it (Lucan, VI).

Rituals were in order to ward off the demonic influences and to conjure a rebirth of the sun after the dark days. At nightfall, “house and stable were smudged with healing herbs: mugwort, juniper, milk thistle, fir resin” (Storl 2000b, 150). Because of these smudging rituals (originally pagan and later performed by Catholic priests), these nights were known as “smudging nights.” People burned juniper and many other aromatic substances to drive out demons. The smoke transformed the aromatic woods and herbs into scent that was supposed to implore the gods to take mercy on human beings and to keep away all evil. They also placed various combinations of magical herbs (called “nine herbs”) in their beds for protection and mixed them into their animals’ food.

The smudging nights are still taken seriously in Scandinavia. This is apparent in a newspaper clipping from January 6, 2003, from Nuuk, Greenland:

Father Christmas with his pipe, his rod, and some presents, brings the fir tree from the woods, just like a wild man. (Postcard after an English Christmas decoration of the nineteenth century)

The new government of Greenland had cleansed all the governmental buildings in Nuuk from evil spirits, by an exorcist, during the time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. According to the press agency Ritzau, the exorcist Manguak Berthelsen said about the whole procedure: “My inner ear has nearly exploded from all the noise in there” (Frankfurter Rundschau, January 7, 2003).

Unfortunately, the author did not explain how the neo-völva (the exorcist, a sort of Greenlandian ghost buster) had driven out the ghosts!

Wotan and the wild hunt. (Sculpture by Johann Bossard, Bossard-Haus, Heide)

A Mexican depiction of the last supper: Skeletons dine on Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. (Mexican postcard)

Wotan and the Wild Hunt

Wodan id est furor

ADAM OF BREMEN 1595 IV, 26

Wotan (also known as Wodan or Odin), the furious, the raving, wanderer and wild man, ancestor of the old Silesian wood-and hill-spirit Rübezahl, is the archetypical ancient German god of gods. From his name comes the Old High German words watan and wuot, from which come German words for impetuousness, wildness, and anger—but also “wishfulness” and “to wish.” If we consolidate all the attributes of this god, we see he is an omnipresent force of creation and building who gives beauty to human beings as well as inanimate objects. He is the source of the art of poetry, as well as the drive for war and victory. Yet he is also a force that works for the fertility of the fields and helps people strive for the highest good and material fortune (Grimm 1968 I, VII). In his role as a mythical fulfiller of wishes, one might very well see Wotan as an ancestor of that famous bringer of presents, Santa Claus himself.