Let’s review what is known about a myth associated with Christmas that many people believed in, and were encouraged in that belief, until they grew up somewhat; I refer to Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle and others.

To review a moment: keep in mind that it was not until the Fourth Century AD that the birthday of Jesus was proclaimed to be December 25th, just like most of the other and much older sacrificed gods in the Mediterranean area whose stories were very much the same.

Mithras, Dionysus, Osiris, Attis and many others were all born on the 25th of December, and they were all sacrificed gods who rose again around March 25th, some three days after their apparent death.

Some of them had religions based on the story of their lives and several contained a ceremony in which wine and bread represented the body and blood of the god and after the ceremony the devotees considered themselves to be born again as new men and women. But that’s history, documented beyond doubt and known to anyone who has studied the history of religions. Review over. Now continue.

When Britain was invaded by Anglo Saxons from the east they brought a lot of their ‘pagan’ customs with them. One of them was the celebration of Yule as a mid winter affair.

In 597 Saint Augustine, the woman hater with a daughter born out of wedlock, was sent over to get folks to concentrate on the ceremonies and customs of Mother Church. In Rome, Pope Gregory encouraged his people to use the system…if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. He instructed the Catholics to adapt the heathen/pagan customs to become special meals to the glory of God. Animal sacrifices, common among the pagans, became meals in which the animals were sacrificed, not to a pagan god, but for a Christian meal.

Invaders from Norway brought the idea of All-Father Oðin, a possible progenitor of Father Christmas, and the sacredness of mistletoe, already introduced by the Druids. The integration of pagan rituals into Church feasts, already begun, accelerated over the years. Nowadays practically every important Church occasion comes from an overridden or modified pagan custom.

Midwinter feast was a very important pagan feast. William the Conqueror was crowned king in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066 to take advantage of the popular respect for the day. Remember that in the Julian calendar then used the 25th of December was the day of the winter solstice, when light began to gain the ascendancy over the dark.

It was 500 years after the 4th century adoption of the current pagan Mithras ceremonies into the Church before the word ‘Christmas’ was used by the religion based on the story of Jesus, instead of the popular ‘Midwinter Feast.’ Shortly after that the Santa Claus and Father Christmas legends began their evolution based on the legend of the Fourth Century Saint Nicholas. Nowadays of course it is Santa Claus who may be the only thing some children know about Christmas.

The legend says that Saint Nicholas was once the bishop of Myra in Lycia, now part of Turkey, in the Fourth Century. According to the legend he was only a boy when he became a bishop. Spiritual merit apparently still had some pull over political power then. A church committee, after the requisite amount of prayer and organization, had agreed that the next person to enter the church would become the bishop. Nicholas came to the church every day and happened to be the one chosen, but he must have had a reputation already, or possibly as I already hinted, it was a pre-arranged answer to prayer.

Historical accounts have him persecuted and tortured for his faith by the Emperor Diocletian, and he was not released from prison until the Roman Christians made their deal with Constantine the Great, and developed into the Roman Catholic Church.
Saint Nicholas in works of sacred art is often pictured as standing next to three girl children who are in a tub. The pictures reflect the legend that he secretly presented dowries to the three daughters of a poverty stricken father who was on the point of having to give them up to a life of prostitution.

For the first two children he managed the charitable act by anonymously throwing a bag of gold through the open window of the house. But the third girl’s dowry became due in winter when the doors and windows were sealed against the cold. The story says that Nicholas got up on the roof and threw the bag of gold down the chimney, where it conveniently landed in a stocking hung up to dry across the fireplace. Now you know where the stocking thing came from.

From this story came the custom of giving presents secretly on the Eve of Saint Nicholas, (December 5th) LATER transferred to Christmas Day. It doesn’t have ANYTHING whatever to do with the story of the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus, though the plethora of the three camel riders on Christmas cards could fool you.

I used to wonder why there were always three. The number is never mentioned anywhere in the Christian scriptures, but that’s another story. Associated with this secret gift giving was the custom, very popular during the Middle Ages in Europe, of electing a boy bishop on the day of the feast of Saint Nicholas, (December 6th). The boy’s authority would last until Holy Innocents Day (December 28th), and he and his followers would take over all cathedral duties except the saying of mass. This custom spread through most of the European parishes. Some of my readers will doubtless note that it wasn’t ever a girl who was bishop. I’ll leave it there. I noticed it too.

The link with Saint Nicholas then was not only that he was a boy bishop, but he was also the patron saint of children. When the Protestant Puritans took over in Britain, they attacked the celebration of Christmas feasting on the absolutely genuine grounds that it was really a pagan ritual paying homage to the god Saturn and others.

There was also the unbearable fact that people were enjoying themselves, an absolute No-No to the stern and humorless god of the Puritans, based as he was on the more negative attributes of the god of the Old Testament. And there are many.

All feasting and decoration was forbidden, and in 1644 the 25th of December was proclaimed a fast day! Just how popular would that be nowadays, even to people proud of their descent from those stern and obsessively virtuous Puritans? Don’t say ‘It couldn’t happen here.’ It did. The Puritans’ anti- Christmas attitude came over with them.
It was not until 1690 that Boston authorities initiated Christmas church services—a move strenuously opposed by many civil authorities. Christmas was not a legal holiday anywhere in the USA until 1836, less than 200 years ago; and that was in progressive Alabama.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch Santa Claus was evolving separately, as legends do. In the Netherlands, a person representing Saint Nicholas (Sinterclaus) would ride through the streets on a white horse. Presents day was still December 6th. In Germany, the Saint was disguised as a hairy imp; Pelz Nichol, or Nicholas in Fur. Parents would snitch on their kids and make a report on their behavior throughout the year. Good children would receive presents. The others received bunches of twigs. For those of you into Celtic magick I will just note that they were Birch twigs, the first and noblest tree of the Tree Alphabet of the Celts.

Dutch settlers brought the Saint Nicholas custom here to New Amsterdam, later known as New York, and the English speaking settlers borrowed the custom eagerly. With the unrivalled English genius for mispronouncing foreign words, the Dutch ‘Sinterclaus’ became ‘Santy Claus’ and then ‘Santa Claus.’

Up to that time Saint Nicholas was always considered a tall, thin, and dignified person. Washington Irving destroyed that idea with his Knicker-bocker’s History of New York, published in 1809. Irving described Saint Nicholas as the guardian of New York City, noting that the Saint wore a broad brimmed hat and huge breeches, and smoked a pipe. One of the habits of this Saint Nicholas was to ride over the treetops in a wagon and drop presents down chimneys.

Irving wrote about the Dutch version of the legend. Dutch children were told that Santa came from Spain in a boat and then distributed gifts. A wagon would not be too unreasonable in the circumstances. The association with snow and ice came later.

Then the poet Clement C. Moore took a hand, and in 1822 produced the poem now known as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ describing Saint Nicholas as round and jolly, with a nose like a cherry. He now smoked a short pipe and rode in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. Like Pelz Nichol, he was dressed all over in fur.

A few words about Mr. Moore and the poem. He was the son of a minister and Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature at the Theological Seminary of New York. He was also a student of the folk ways of the immigrants on the East Coast of America. These were generally Dutch, German and Scandinavian. He was said to have written the poem that starts, “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house….”in the year 1822. He read it to his house guests and one of them copied it out and sent it to the Troy Sentinel where it was published anonymously on 12/23/1823. It instantly became a firm favorite and has appeared somewhere every Christmas since.

But note, the original name of the poem was not The Night before Christmas which it is often called in anthologies. The original title was A Visit from Saint Nicholas At that time Santa Claus was just a slangy mispronunciation for Saint Nicholas.

In the poem the poet says, “I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick” The Saint was in a miniature sleigh drawn by eight reindeer and as I mentioned before he was dressed in fur, had a red nose, smoked a pipe and unlike the original Saint Nicholas had a round belly and was a ‘jolly old elf.”

So Moore’s Saint Nicholas was unusual, though his description may have been influenced by Knickerbockers History of New York which also contained an account of the Dutch Santa Claus story. And in 1821 another poem mentioned reindeer as the creatures pulling the sleigh.

However, it does seem strange that the son of a minister and a Professor at a Theological Seminary would not mention the Nativity in his Christmas poem. And recent research gives the credit for the poem to someone called Henry Livingstone Jr., who was of Dutch descent.

After the poem began to come out in some publication or other every Yuletide the Santa in it began to be illustrated by various artists. Robert W.Weir painted Santa in knee boots in 1837. Thomas Nast put Santa into a cartoon in Harper’s Weekly in 1866, nine hundred years after the legend began, with all the paraphernalia that we see today: a workshop, records of children’s behavior, a reindeer drawn sleigh, Christmas stockings and a Christmas tree.

The tree was first introduced into Britain by the Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, whose Germanic ancestry ensured his familiarity with Yule logs and trees. To appease the gods for the stealing of fire the old folks would sacrifice a tree, just as they did animals and people, by burning it. The sacrificial tree gave off light that aided the Sun in its fight against the three very dark days at the Solstice. Nowadays we don’t often burn the tree, we cover it with lights just because other people do. But it’s all connected with something historic.

The Nast pictures crossed the Atlantic to Victorian England where America’s best seller The Christmas Stocking by Susan Warner, helped mask the miseries of the news about the War in the Crimea, in 1854. A little bit of trivia about that for history buffs. The noble British were fighting the Russian hordes. The weather was pretty bleak and the soldiers of Her Majesty Queen Victoria needed boots. With an efficiency worthy of the Pentagon the War Office arranged for three shiploads of boots to be delivered. They arrived. Every boot in the shipments was for the left foot.

Anyway, until the poem and the book hit England it was the custom to give presents at New Year’s Eve. After the poem and the book people began giving presents at Christmas, though the British kept the name of their mummer figure, Father Christmas, until around 1860 when the American Santa figure began to make headway. Children particularly began to expect presents the day after Christmas Eve because of the famous poem. Poets have power. Look at the parking lot of Toys R Us now.

Around that time too, the Christmas card was becoming very popular, and the old Father Christmas in blues and greens, with a cloak and a hood, like Odin, was gradually replaced by the red coated Santa with white fur trimmings.

By the middle of the 20th century Santa’s red outfit was pretty universal and Norman Rockwell helped the matter by always painting Santa in red for the Saturday Evening Post.

But the man who did the most for the current outfit of Santa was the Swedish artist Haddon Sundblom. His first Coca Cola ad with Santa appeared in 1931. Santa was in red and white and holding a Coca Cola instead of a pipe. The background of course was in the Coke colors of red and white. Santa wasn’t wearing the usual hat in these ads because he was saying “My hat’s off to the pause that refreshes.” This and other Sundblom ads encouraged people to drink Coke in the winter. What a concept! His last Santa ad for Coke came out in 1964. Quite a run.

So now, Santa always has a red coat with fur trim, and a broad belt, and a hat. The hooded, cloaked figure of other days has vanished and the American version is everywhere.

Some people say that it is only right for Santa to be dressed in red because he is actually Saint Nicholas whose feast day is December 6th, the beginning of Advent, and the liturgical color of Advent is red. But there may be much, much older reasons for the fur, the reindeer, the red and white connection, and coming down the chimney. We’ll check in on them in the next posting. Right now we’ll finish off with Kris Kringle and a few trifles.

There were two other figures who began as genuine parts of the Christian story, and ended as cartoon commercials. After the Protestants came to power they replaced the Catholic Saint Nicholas in some countries with the Christ Child. In Germany this was Christkindl, and in Switzerland, Christkindli.

With the English genius for mispronouncing foreign names that we mentioned before, these became the Kris Kringle, who brings gifts at Christmas. So even the genuine Christmas connection degenerated into the commercial equivalent of a camel smoking a cigarette. Incidentally, some of my long lived readers may remember advertisements of Santa smoking cigarettes too.

In England Saint Nicholas merged with a minor character in mummer plays called Father Christmas. There were other characters too, who all brought gifts—The Lady of Alsace, in France, Three Kings in Spain, the Knight Rupprecht in Northern Germany, and Befana, the good fairy in Italy.

The story has changed so much over the centuries, getting further and further away from the original legend every time, and bringing in people who have nothing to do with the facts at all, so in 1997 I brought it even more up to date for readers of a newsletter, and designed a Christmas card for them with Darth Vader on a gift laden sled being pulled through a dark, star-filled sky by two jet propelled robot reindeer. The Father bit still resonates because Darth Vader means Dark Father, as Luke Skywalker found out to his amazement.

It is not all that improbable that Santa Claus will continue evolving, and as humanity becomes browner as a result of intermarriage and increasing population maybe he too will become darker. A recent cartoon had him outsourced to Bombay and appearing as a Hindu on the child’s video screen, and talking English with an Indian accent.

And finally, as another little historical tid-bit from Merry Olde England. In 1997 the year was celebrated as the 150 th anniversary of the Christmas Cracker, which has a long and interesting history of its own. The postage stamps of that year had pictures of Father Christmas and crackers. The first class stamp had a picture of a cracker and a child wearing the kind of hats you find in cheap crackers.

That’s an unconscious tribute to the original Saturnalia of the Romans, where wearing strange hats was part of the festivities, which included cross dressing by both sexes.

Folks from my generation will remember the child movie star Shirley Temple. She said she used to believe in Santa Claus until she met him in a department store and he asked for her autograph.

Now, no adults believe in the historical accuracy of the mythology of Santa Claus, even though it was apparently based on someone who may once have been a real human being. Children all over the world are given the opportunity to lose trust in the word of their parents when they are finally jeered at by their peers for believing in Santa Claus like some dumb kid.

No doubt many of you can relate to that. Historically there was no Santa Claus but the legend and the stories have continued, and been embroidered after the fashion of humans for centuries. They just grew, and that happened without any particular agenda by a group of people determined to have their story of Santa Claus supersede all others.

In that light of what can happen even in the absence of historical evidence consider that there isn’t ANY unchallengeable historical evidence that King David and King Solomon ever existed along the lines of the Biblical stories, and that of course relates directly to the story of Jesus.

With David gone from the picture the legend of the descendant of David being the Messiah becomes a little implausible. There isn’t any unchallengeable historical evidence that Jesus existed as a person either. There certainly was no such place as Nazareth in Palestine in the first century.

But stories continually repeated with all opposition lethally crushed, for generations, tend to survive. Even now there are people who believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. And that lie took only a few months to embed because of TV and the modern media.

The teachings attributed to Jesus in his reported words are certainly not unique. It is very probable that Mother Church has deceived us for 1700 years about Jesus, even as we deceive our children about Santa Claus. And we don’t kill everyone who tries to spill the beans, as the Church did for centuries. Consider it. As the Theosophists say, “There is no religion higher than truth,” and truth we haven’t had for centuries.

Next time we’ll deal with Santas’s strange habit of coming down chimneys and using reindeer as pullers of his gift- filled sleigh. Hint: one reason is to do with how Alice in Wonderland is associated with the Christmas reindeer, and the color of Santa’s clothes, his apparent habitat of snow filled countryside and his Ho, Ho. Ho! All connected by something centuries older than Christianity. Oh, and I’m NOT dreaming of a white Christmas.