A cultural history of Christmas from the sacred to Santa

Christmas hospitality makes for a joy-filled season, but it also causes many of us to open our homes to a man we have never properly met. At my house, we lay out cookies, a glass of milk and a few carrots for Santa and his reindeer. We do this without judging Santa. We do not resent the way this icon has dominated global Christmas characters, often at the expense of previous local traditions. Instead, we go on feeding him and his enormous ego. But when I started digging beneath the patina of Christmas, I learned what lay just below Santa’s Coca-Cola-coloured veneer.

The battle for the gift-bringing heavyweight championship has already been fought and won. Some old world gift-bringers have gone into hiding or donned Santa’s fur-trimmed robe. Scholars believe these figures are descendants of the European Wild Men; now Christmas has tamed them. It was not a reluctant transformation in most cases. However, a few locations put up a fight for their traditional gift-bringer.

Santa has steamrolled over such characters as the German and Pennsylvania Dutch Belsnickle and the Icelandic Yule Lads. Where the old figures continue, they now usually seem to wear red and bring gifts in a decidedly Santa-esque manner. Some of the old personality traits have been lost in the transformation as well.

At times the authorities have attempted to halt the evolution of Christmas characters. For example, in the Soviet Union, the national gift-bringer Ded Moroz made himself scarce following the revolution. Then, in the 1940s, Stalin invited Ded Moroz to reappear - as long as he swore off the red suit associated with that other gift-bringer and promised always to wear a distinctive blue.

One corner of Irish culture also made a bid against the juggernaut of Santa Claus. While the attempt seems to have failed, it does reveal an interesting moment when cultural purists felt they might be able to infuse Christmas with a specifically Irish identity. A 1917 pantomime titled Finn Varra Maa -The Irish Santa Claus offered a Christmas gift-bringer decked in a fairy costume, hailing from Connemara. Historians have seen this as the work of a nationalist author invested in protecting Ireland’s Christmas from the rolling snowball of the global festival, with its Americanised Wild Man.

I wish I had witnessed what must have been the most visually provocative clash with a gift-bringer. Priests in Dijon in France burned an effigy of Santa Claus in front of a large audience of schoolchildren in 1951. The event was intended to be a protest against the influx of American Christmas culture. No one bothered to record the nightmares the children must have experienced as a result.

After studying Christmas for several years, I have come to see that this merry division is a large part of the festival’s identity. Over the years some Christmas-keepers have contested its evolution. Britain’s Puritan Parliament actually outlawed Christmas decorations in public places in the seventeenth century. The squeamishness about Christmas travelled with the British colonizers. For example, the American Sunday School movement debated the acceptance of Christmas in their programme, even though it was such a popular children’s event. During the late 19th century, in certain American communities, Christmas was largely secular, and bringing Santa into the Church seemed like flirting with heresy.

Of course, it is not just the red-clad gift-bringer who can cause affront. In recent decades South Korea has deployed a 60-foot-tall metal tree to communicate with North Koreans. The illuminated symbol of plentiful electricity and religious freedom shone like a beacon from where it stood on the border of the two Koreas. There it could be interpreted as either a call to Christian redemption or a rude symbol meant to snub an atheist neighbour, and one with a poorly working grid at that. The Korean tree will be dark this Christmas; it is has been dismantled either out of structural concern, or, as is more widely believed, as part of thawing of tensions between the two countries.

When we choose to see them, the conflicts of Christmas are readily apparent. It might seem more festive to ignore these tensions, but recognising the whole of Christmas offers fascinating insights into culture and identity. Modern churches, for example, struggle to find the right balance between being in line with the public celebration and partially resisting the secular portion of Christmas. Many wonder how best to participate in the carnival of Christmas in a way that is authentically Christian.

I once found myself in 18th century costume acting in a Christmas drama about a Presbyterian pastor, a Scots émigré newly arrived in what was then the Wild West of the Pennsylvania colony. As I sat in the candlelight of a stone church building constructed in 1774, I recognised the anachronism of having “Merry Christmas” come from the lips of a Presbyterian from the 18th century.

After all, back in Edinburgh, Presbyterian laypeople had to hide their Christmas feasts from roving teams of church elders intent on quashing Christmas. The play went over well, but only because the audience saw what so many of us want: our own modern Christmas ratified by an undisturbed path mapped through history.

When we look at a Christmas crib, we may feel as though Christmas has not changed at all. The deep traditions of its music and rituals lull us as if we were children finally falling asleep on Christmas Eve, knowing what wonders the next day will bring. Nonetheless, the cultural event of Christmas is, in reality, always affronting, always delighting and always changing.

Christmas: The Sacred to Santa by Tara Moore is published by Reaktion Books