Christmas curiosities

If your family is anything like mine, you've a host of traditions that have been in play for years, making them seem like everyone does them. The fact is that our Christmas traditions are more curiosity than doctrine, rising out of familial wants and desires rather than religious or cultural practices. 

Don't believe me? A little sustained use of the Interwebs (as my daughter is prone to call it) uncovers a host of Christmas curiosities.

Chances are if you grew up in Canada or the US, your immediate mental image of Santa is a portly, rosy cheeked, cookie munching, baritone belly-laughing, benevolent elf-like grandpa and not of an austere, angular, sallow cheeked elderly gentleman dressed in a monk's cossack. What naysayers need to understand is that North America is the great melting pot of cultural dogma, born out of the mish-mash of traditional observances thanks to a wide assortment of immigrational influences attributable to large populations of new citizens from all over the globe bringing their vision of holiday celebrations with them. Plainly put, we are very much a mixture of snippets taken from this place and that, creating a whole that is often greater than the parts, and very much influenced by the mass media juggernaut.

According to the site History.com, the real life inspiration behind Santa was a Christian monk who lived in what is now Turkey, around the 3rd century AD. 

"We know very few historical details about St. Nicholas’s life. Even the year of his death is uncertain, although both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have celebrated December 6—the date of his passing—for more than 1,000 years. Within a century of his death, the much-admired Nicholas had become the center of a series of folk legends. He was credited with stopping a violent storm to save doomed sailors, donating money to a father forced to sell his daughters into prostitution, and even restoring to life a trio of boys who had been dismembered by an unscrupulous butcher. Today, Nicholas is considered the patron saint of sailors, children, wolves and pawnbrokers, among others."

"Over the course of many years, Nicholas’s popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors. His feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death, December 6. This was traditionally considered a lucky day to make large purchases or to get married. By the Renaissance, St. Nicholas was the most popular saint in Europe. Even after the Protestant Reformation, when the veneration of saints began to be discouraged, St. Nicholas maintained a positive reputation, especially in Holland."

Speaking of Holland, the name Santa Claus can be traced back to Dutch roots where St Nicholas was nicknamed "Sinter Klaas", Our present-day mental image is thanks to 1809 "A History of New York" author, Washington Irving, who referred to St Nicholas as the patron saint of New York and described him as a “rascal” with a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, yellow stockings, and a “huge pair of Flemish trunk hose.” Eventually, the recognizable image of the Americanized Sinter Klaas morphed thanks to Clement Clark Moore's "T'was the Night Before Christmas" description, enhanced by political cartoonist Thomas Nast in his rendition published in Harper's Weekly depicting what we now accept as the "true" Santa as a rotund, cheerful man with a full, white beard, holding a sack laden with toys for lucky children.

North America’s Santa Claus was not the only St. Nicholas-inspired gift-giver to make an appearance at Christmastime, and the previously mentioned melting pot of immigrant traditions from around the globe resulted in morsels handpicked for appeal by North American culture.

There are similar figures and Christmas traditions around the world. In Switzerland and Germany, Christkind was believed to deliver presents to well-behaved children. Meaning “Christ child,” Christkind is an angel-like figure often accompanied by St. Nicholas on his holiday missions and the Americanization of it led to Santa's other name, Kris Kringle. In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats. English legend explains that Father Christmas visits each home on Christmas Eve to fill children’s stockings with holiday treats. Père Noël is responsible for filling the shoes of French children. In Italy, there is a story of a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch who rides a broomstick down the chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into the stockings of lucky children.

For centuries, Christmas has been celebrated on December 25th, the justification entrenched in Christian doctrine that the date commemorates the birth of Jesus. While there has been much debate on the actual date of Christ's birth, there is no biblical proof of its validity. 

According to Encyclopædia Britannica (CLICK), 

Christmas, the holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, is celebrated by a majority of Christians on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar. But early Christians did not celebrate his birth, and no one knows on which date Jesus was actually born (some scholars believe that the actual date was in the early spring, placing it closer to Easter, the holiday commemorating his Resurrection). The origins of the holiday and its December date lie in the ancient Greco-Roman world, as commemorations probably began sometime in the 2nd century. There are at least three possible origins for the December date. The Roman Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus dated Jesus’ conception to March 25 (the same date upon which he held that the world was created), which, after nine months in his mother’s womb, would result in a December 25 birth. In the 3rd century, the Roman Empire, which at the time had not adopted Christianity, celebrated the rebirth of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus) on December 25th. This holiday not only marked the return of longer days after the winter solstice but also followed the popular Roman festival called the Saturnalia (during which people feasted and exchanged gifts). It was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, a god of light and loyalty whose cult was at the time growing popular among Roman soldiers.

Well, there you have it.

One of the more popular characters of our North American Christmases is Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, but many have no idea that he was "born" out of the tragedy of cancer. According to the CBC.ca site (CLICK), Rudolph was the product of Robert L May's childhood experiences combined with his desire to comfort his 5 year old daughter's sadness from losing her mother, May's wife, to cancer. It turns out that May was a struggling writer who worked as a copywriter for the Ads department of Montgomery Ward, a huge chain of stores second only to Sears. Montgomery Ward had a policy of giving away free children's books during the holiday season, and May had a dream of being published. His daughter Barbara's favourite animals were the deer at Lincoln Park Zoo, and spurred by the tragedy of his wife's passing, he dreamed up the story of a little misfit reindeer with talents that weren't immediately visible, perhaps echoing his own life. His daughter loved the slowly evolving story so much, begging for retelling night after night, that May eventually persevered through initial publishing disappointments to realize his dream in 1939. The tale was an instant hit with those who received a copy. In a stroke of Christmas magic, the head of Montgomery Ward, Sewell Avery, recognized the injustice that stemmed from May only receiving his salary for his writing genius, and in 1947 returned all rights of the piece to the author, a HUGE financial windfall. 

As awesome a story this is, the REAL Christmas miracle, and the reason billions of children around the world know about Rudolph, was thanks to the marriage of May's sister, Margaret, to Johnny Marks, a struggling songwriter from Mt Vernon, NY. After learning of the cute tale his brother-in-law had created, Marks was inspired to write the famous song, and in a stroke of sheer luck, convinced country superstar Gene Autry to record it. Actually, the song so enamoured Autry's wife, she convinced Autry of its value, and convinced him that his initial distaste for the song was unfounded. Autry's B side recording became the 2nd all-time recorded single behind only White Christmas.

"... but do you recall, the most famous reindeer of all?"

Regardless of what your family does to observe the holiday season, the universal truth of good will to your fellow man, embracing the love of those dear, and being present in the wonders around us are the foundations of all holiday celebrations across the planet, regardless of what its called.

I'm going to make sure I exercise those universal truths ... how about you?