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The arrival of Santa
By Carl Muller
In Europe today, a revolt is being staged against the "Americanization" of Christmas. The trouble is that there is still a lot of to-and-fro natter about the true origins of the festival ever since the Puritans emphasised that there is no true date. In their efforts to deny the legitimacy of the celebration, they insisted that no one could pinpoint the exact day of Christ's birth!

We are told that the shepherds were staying in their fields overnight when Jesus was born (Luke 2:8) - but this makes a December birth unlikely, since it is far too cold to sleep out at night at that time of the year. Scholars think it likely that Christ was born in the spring, but the first Christmas of the Church was officially celebrated in 356 AD, when Pope Julius I fixed Jesus' birthday at December 25, calling it the Feast of the Nativity.

The custom spread to Egypt by 432 AD and to England by the 6th century. Gradually, the date was accepted by all Christian Churches except that of the Armenians who still celebrate Christmas on January 6!

Pope Julius I chose December 25 in an attempt to harness the vigour of "pagan" festivals to the cause of Christianity. In those days, among rural farming communities, midwinter was always a time for festivals and merry-making. After all, there was little farming to do.

The winter solstice signified the beginning of the end of the cold and darkness and the return of longer, warmer days. It was a time when cattle were slaughtered so that they would not have to be fed during the winter and when wine and beer were at last fermented and ready for drinking.

Many "pagan" festivals were celebrated on this date. In Scandinavia, there was yuletide, in which a special feast was celebrated around a fire burning with the Yule log... any spark from which, the Norsemen believed, foretold the birth of a pig or a calf in the coming year. The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, festival of Saturn, the god of the harvest, from December 17 to January 1.

Yet the Church was successful. Educated upper clergy strove to bring in a "spiritual uplift". They banned certain "pagan" customs and instituted new Christian holidays (Holy Days) such as Advent. The last Sunday before Christmas was designated "Dirty Sunday" - the day when Christians were required to clean their homes and take their annual bath!

St. Francis of Assisi is said to have erected the first manger in 1223; the first Christmas Carols were composed by Franciscan monks in 1225. Yet, throughout the Middle Ages, Christmas remained a predominantly "pagan" celebration. Believers would attend church for the day, then go out and get blind drunk in raucous revels. Each year, in a tradition going back to the Roman Saturnalia, a student or beggar would be crowned "Lord of Misrule". The poor would go to the houses of the rich and demand the best food and drink. Rich homes were terrorised if they did not oblige! History tells us that the rich did not stint themselves either. For his Christmas celebration in 1252, King Henry III of England had 6000 oxen slain in addition to salmon pies and roasted peacocks!

Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans were scandalised by these excesses. Cromwell called it "an extreme forgetfulness of Christ, giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights". The observance of Christmas was banned by an Act of Parliament in 1644. The House of Commons was made to sit on Christmas Day and sheriffs were sent out to insist that merchants open for business.

In the New World, the Pilgrim Fathers also shared the Puritans’ hatred for Christmas. The master of the Mayflower, Thomas Jones, banned Christmas on December 25, 1620 and for 200 years thereafter, Christmas was given a hard time in America. Massachusetts banned the celebration in 1659, making it a crime, and anyone found attending a Christmas service was fined five shillings!

The Act was repealed in 1681, but the State Governor of Massachusetts still needed two soldiers to escort him to Christmas services in 1686. In 1706, mobs smashed the windows of a church holding Christmas services in Boston.

Christmas regained its popularity in Britain at the Restoration, but it was only in the Victorian era that it became a family holiday with some of the old "pagan" customs such as holly and mistletoe. In 1846, the Illustrated London News carried a picture of Queen Victoria and her German consort, Prince Albert standing with their children around a Christmas tree. The royal couple were immensely popular, and soon Christmas trees, a German custom, became a fashion.

In France, however, it has never been very popular. It was at about that time that Charles Dickens also wrote "A Christmas Carol". In America, the Puritan legacy was undermined with the influx of Irish and German immigrants. In 1819, Washington Irving wrote "A Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent" - a series of stories about the celebration of Christmas in an English manor house. By 1890, Christmas ornaments for the tree were flooding in from Germany. The Americans wanted their trees to reach from floor to ceiling while Europe kept them at four feet. Today America puts up large trees in city squares across the country.

This brings me to the modern version of Santa Claus and the American version of the 1930s. Let's go back once more, shall we? The direct ancestor of "Father Christmas" is probably Druidic - a "pagan" spirit who regularly appeared in medieval mummers' plays wearing long robes and with holly sprigs in his long, white hair.

These "pagan" origins were sanitised with the introduction of the cult of St. Nicholas (270-310AD), a bishop of Myrna in Turkey who was renowned for his kindness to children. In the 11th century, the saint's remains were enshrined in a church in Bari, Italy which was visited by the first crusaders. These crusaders carried back stories of St. Nicholas to their homelands and the anniversary of St. Nicholas' death on December 6 became a day to exchange gifts. His legend provided a Christian justification for the essentially "pagan" tradition of gift-giving at Christmas.

The Dutch corrupted the name "St. Nicholas" to "Sinterklaas", and the New World adapted this to "Santa Claus". In his earlier incarnations, Santa Claus was depicted as tall, thin, clad in blue and always accompanied by an angel.

Now let us move to Coca Cola and comfort ourselves in the thought that it is a Coca Cola Santa who keeps coming to town! In 1931, Coca Cola hired a Swedish artist, Haddon Sundblom, to design a Christmas advertising campaign. Sundblom redesigned Santa Claus in Coca Cola's corporate colours - red and white - and chose a plump and white-bearded retired Coca Cola salesman to be his model. The campaign was a huge success and the modern Santa was born and will, I suppose, continue to stay that way.

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