Otus the Head Cat
Christmas traditions move at warp speed
Dear Otus,
The dang turkey wasn’t even cold Thursday before my next-door neighbor had his Christmas tree and decorations up, along with those tacky Star Shower spotlights, 300 feet of icicle lights around his gutters and a stupid lighted, animated snowman quartet singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in his yard. This morning there was tinsel from his trees all over my pristine lawn. I hate tinsel. When did America start Christmas so early?
— Walt Kowalski, Sherwood
Dear Walt,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and to commiserate with your consternation over what has come to be called “Christmas creep.” I saw my first Christmas TV commercial a week before Halloween this year. Why so early? Forget tradition — follow the money.
American Christmas traditions come from a variety of sources, but you can blame tinsel on the English missionary Winfrid (the name means “cold wind”), who was later called St. Boniface (“pretty boy”).
Winfrid was proselytizing throughout northern Europe in A.D. 716 when he stumbled upon a gang of heathens led by Chieftain Gundhar. They were under an oak tree preparing to sacrifice little Prince Asulf to the god Thor, who “lived” in the tree.
Full 0f wrath and fury, Winfrid smote the heathens and chopped down the oak. In its place a young fir tree appeared and Winfrid told the remaining pagans it was the “tree of life,” representing Christ.
The pagans, suitably impressed, were instantly converted and decided to celebrate Christes Masse (Christ’s Mass, or Christmas) on the spot. To simulate icicles, they decorated the fir tree with thin strips of leather. These they called estinceles or, as we know it today, tinsel.
Such is the stuff of Christmas legend.
Most folks do not realize that many current Christmas traditions were adopted straight out of the pagan world. This includes the actual date of Jesus’ birth. But when Emperor Constantine settled on Dec. 25 in 336, it cleverly co-opted several popular midwinter festivals.
They included Hanukkah (the Jewish Festival of Lights), the winter solstice, the Roman Saturnalia and the birth of the pagan sun god Mithra.
Decorating the tree with lights was borrowed from Hanukkah when Martin Luther put candles in the branches of a small tree with a creche beneath so they would appear as the stars above Bethlehem on the night of Christ’s birth.
How about Santa Claus? The name came from St. Nicholas, whom Dutch settlers in New York called Sinterklaas. English ears heard Santa Claus. In Austria and Germany, the gift bringer is called Christkindli (Christchild) and from that we get the Kris Kringle of Miracle on 34th Street.
The American poet Clement Moore standardized Santa’s appearance in 1823 and today American children scream on his lap at the mall.
Mistletoe, a poisonous obligate hemiparasitic plant, was used as a lucky charm by ancient Celtic Druids. During the holidays, people used to hang it over doorways for good fortune. Anyone caught standing under it used to have to give a lucky kiss to the person catching him or her.
This practice has fallen into disfavor lately, and especially following the deluge of sexual harassment accusations that have inundated society since Harvey Weinstein fell from grace.
The yule log, or Juul, is another tradition from the Norse. In ancient days a large oak log was burned to honor Thor, the god of thunder. Today, due in part to the depletion of old-growth forests and Sierra Club protests, modern Americans light the traditional Christmas DuraLog, a long-lasting synthetic composite formed from wood chips, pulp byproducts and a petroleum derivative.
That brings us to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the previously accepted official beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
The term Black Friday has been in use since 1961 when stores in Philadelphia opened at dawn so as to sell enough merchandise to go from being “in the red” to being “in the black.” The hordes lined up around the block.
And now, thanks to the encroachment of the internet and online sales, stores are even opening on Thanksgiving, causing Christmas decorations to spring up on Thanksgiving.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you the record for listening to Burl Ives sing “A Holly Jolly Christmas” before suffering disruptive ethnomusicology disorder is 876 times in a row, held by a Macy’s clerk in Atlanta’s Cumberland Mall in 2004.