Pagan Christmas (4 page)

A phallic Germanic “mushroom stone” depicting the ship of the dead for the trip to the other world, showing the mounted Wotan as an escort of souls. (Picture stone from Stenkyrka, Lillbjärs, Gotland, eighth century; from Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1995, 171)

Wotan is the god who is driven to amass knowledge. He wants to know everything; he craves knowledge. For this, he travels all the lands over and—wounded by a spear—hangs himself upside down, for nine nights, on the shamanic world tree, to get to know all nine shamanic worlds and absorb all their knowledge. Then he breaks branches off of the world tree and throws them onto the Earth, where they arrange themselves into runes of beech slivers, forming letters that carry secret knowledge. Because of Wotan’s self-sacrificial shedding of blood, the runes become magic. They give away their own knowledge. Wotan sacrifices one eye so that he can look into both the inner and the outer worlds. He drinks from the well of wisdom to suck up all the knowledge it contains. Every year, during the time of the smudging nights, Wotan’s wild army is on the lookout for the sun, under the leadership of Wotan himself. In honor of his impetuous search in the middle of the darkest time of the year comes the folkloric name of Wotan’s herb (Heliotropium europaeum), as well as the Latin name of a plant known variously as storm hat, Odin’s hat, troll hat, and, in North America, monkshood (Aconitum napellus).

Wotan, a rider on a white horse, was the ghostly rider who led the ghostly army in the storm during the twelve days around New Year’s Day. At this time, midwinter, the fears of the living became focused on the community of the dead. A cultic, ecstatic connection with the dead—in fact, a special kind of honoring of the dead—is also the basis for Wotan’s ability to lead the wild army. As god of the dead and the ecstasy associated with their cult, Wotan is their leader (Simek 1984, 464).

RÜBEZAHL: DESCENDANT OF WOTAN

South Tirolean legends describe a so-called “wild man” (Fink 1983, 144) as a huge and awesome woodsman with a great white beard, a wide hat, and a voice as deep as thunder. This is a legendary character of the Riesengebirge region, the Silesian mountain ghost Rübezahl, who counts beetroots in his mountain home and is often pictured smoking a pipe, just like Father Christmas.

Anyone familiar with Germanic mythology can easily see that Wotan lives on in Rübezahl. Both are described as wild men who rip up trees, determine the weather, and help the meek but harm the proud. In memory of the wild hunt led by Wotan in the southern Tirol, St. Martin can also be seen riding a white horse through the air on the evening of St. Martin’s Day (November 11). On this day, the farmers finish their year of work and make an offering to St. Martin—or perhaps to Wotan? Cheese, wool, bread, and flax are considered venerable sacrificial offerings to St. Martin in the mountain regions (Fink 1983, 238). Even today, people leave hay or oats for a white horse or a donkey in front of the house on St. Martin’s Day. Strangely enough, the Nigglasgehen (Nicholas walk)—a procession of the saint and his dark helpers from house to house—was officially forbidden in the Tirol region, while the cult surrounding Ruprecht (known as Krampus in Alpine regions) remained popular (Fink 1983, 346).

Wotan on his horse with his world spear in his hand, accompanied by his two ravens, Thought and Memory; in front of him, we see a snakelike, shamanic soul. Sky and Earth are interconnected. (Shape or figure-form picture from the time of the Vikings, from Davis 2000, 51)

Rübezahl, ancestor of the smoking Father Christmas. (Woodcut from the Riesengebirge region, photograph by Widmann, before 1942, from Peuckert 1978, 97)

Rübezahl. Painting by Moritz von Schwind (1804– 1871). (Oil on canvas, Bavarian Staatsgemäldesammlung Schack-Galerie, Munich)

Trolls, Nordic wild people, also celebrate the Julfest. Here, on the troll’s hairy, raw head, a spruce tree grows like a spiritual antenna; fly agaric mushrooms also grow there, giving spiritual nourishment. Look closely to see that the walls of the troll’s house are decorated with pictures of reindeer. (Illustration from a children’s book)

A troll under the Christmas tree. The Old Nordic name troll means “giant, fiend, magic being” but is now taken to mean “little people” (huldrefolk) who play a role in stories about changelings. (Photo by Claudia Müller-Ebeling)

FROM THE SHAMANIC WORLD TREE TO THE CHRISTMAS TREE

For a long time her [this means natura] good deeds were hidden; and trees and woods were the highest of all gifts that were given to human beings. From these, food was taken first; their leaves made the cave-dwelling life [of the troglodytes] easier and the phloem, or bast, of the tree, served as clothing.

PLINY THE ELDER XII

Up to the present day, human beings have had a special and nearly magical relationship with trees. In all times, we have realized that there is a very meaningful and multilayered symbolism in the growth of the tree—their tops look toward the heavens and their roots are anchored tightly into the Earth. Trees embody the connection between sky and Earth, especially when they grow high above all other things. There are family trees and life trees, a tree of knowledge, and world trees. World trees are symbolic of the unfolding of creation; they are shamanic staircases to other worlds. They not only provide raw materials for building and food, but in some cases they are also sources of entheogens, aphrodisiacs, and healing medicines. “I am the tree that gives human beings everything that they need for their life” (Anisimov 1991, 57). This is what defines the shamanic world tree of the Evenken, in Siberia. The world tree grows in the cosmic swamp. The sun and moon hang on its branches, and forest people live in it. Later on, the original shamanic world trees became holy trees of pagan religious worship (Caldecott 1993; Cook 1988).

Anyone who looks closely at the threshing floors of old Black Forest houses can often see magic numbers scratched upon them and may also see a tree of life, in the form of a fir or spruce branch. The same symbol can be found in some old churches. Beneath an abstract image of a Christmas tree, there are three horizontal steps, representing a shamanic staircase to the sky and the world tree, that reveal the pagan past (Schilli 1968, 34). This detail from the farming culture can easily be overlooked, yet it shows that the symbolic meaning of the fir tree has its roots deep in the past as a world tree and life tree, and only in recent history as the popular Christmas tree.

A cardboard ornament for hanging on the Christmas tree.

One of the first references to the fir tree in association with the Christmas tree comes from the Alsatian town of Strasbourg in 1604: “On Christmas they put fir trees in the rooms in Strasbourg, they hang red roses cut from manycolored paper, apples, offerings, gold tinsel, sugar. It is the custom to make a four-cornered frame around it” (Kronfeld 1906, 149).

Today, depending on family tradition, the tree that is taken into the house is festively decorated and is called the jultree, the light tree, the Christmas tree, or the Christ tree. How many are aware that this custom was for a long time reviled by the church? In the folk literature, numerous sources refer to the fact that the custom of cutting and putting up fir or spruce branches or even whole trees—maien or meyen—was despised as a heathen practice, and was explicitly forbidden by the church, and specifically because of its shamanic-pagan past: “Because of the pagan origin, and the depletion of the forest, there were numerous regulations that forbid, or put restrictions on, the cutting down of fir greens throughout the Christmas season” (Vossen 1985, 86). The record ledgers of Schlettstadt indicated that since 1521, the unauthorized cutting of maien had been forbidden, and emphasized the protection of the forest in the face of this “forest damage.” The cutting down of Christmas meyen was forbidden in Freiburg, in the Breisgau, and was punishable by a fine of 10 rappen (Spamer 1937, 71). It was only at the beginning of the eighteenth century (one hundred years after the Strasbourg reference from 1604) that Johan David Gehard suggested tolerating the fir tree “to the degree that there was less idolatry connected with it” (Spamer 1937, 72).

Taking all of this into account, the name “Christmas tree” seems ironic. The worship of decorated May branches and May trees is still considered pagan nature-worship—and, from the Christian perspective, idolatry. In the Bible, no connection is drawn between Jesus Christ and the fir tree or any other needle-bearing tree. And it is easy to see why. Except for the pine tree, there are no needle-bearing trees in the Holy Land.

How on Earth did the pagan world tree become christened by the church as a Christmas tree? From Dorothea Forstner, choir woman of the Benedictines in St. Gabriel of Berholdstein, we learn:

… the pagan origin of the May tree and maypole tree and even of the Christmas tree is a not well-known fact. You run into old superstitions having to do with the transferability of natural powers from one being onto another. By bringing branches or trees into contact with human beings, the fresh and blossoming life of nature and its fertility was transferred into them, and evil influences were warded off. Especially during the raw nights between December 25 and January 6, when evil spirits were feared most, green branches were hung, candles lit—and all these things were used as a means of defense. Later on, the trees themselves were used for the same purpose; and candles were hung on them… . The church retained these old customs, and gave them a new meaning as a symbol for Christ: the true tree of life and light of the world.1

Christmas Trees

The Christmas presents are underneath the Christmas tree. Weeks before, the children had written letters to the baby Jesus and slipped them in between the winter windows. The modern custom of giving presents is not so very old. There was a time when the Christmas tree was unknown in the mountainside as well.

FINK 1983, 366

The market offers a Christmas tree suitable for every taste—fir, red fir, spruce—and even plastic imitations. The novelist Klaus Modick presents modern Christmas tree shoptalk concerning the selling points of various fir trees:

The robust Northman fir, for example, originally imported from Scandinavia… . Or a noble spruce from the new German countries? Or something a little more conventional in the structure of the branches, but a very solid piece. The top is pronounced. The blue fir, as well, with decent color grooming in the needle lug, is always in demand… . Or the old and good noble fir from the Black Forest? … Or would you like something more spectacular? We could show you the alp fir, interbred with dwarfpine? (Modick 2002).

The image of a tree brought into a cozy room delighted our ancestors—especially in old-fashioned, romantic times. Moritz von Schwind, Ludwig Richter, and other artists of the nineteenth century implanted in our collective consciousness a picture of the festively lit tree standing in the center of the room surrounded by a family with many children. The custom of bringing a tree into the room and decorating it during the time from December 24 through January 6 was a German invention. The earliest written documentation of the practice may be from the year 1419, from the baker’s guild in Freiburg (Breisgau). Others claim that the oft-cited tree from Strasbourg—dating from the year 1604—was the first decorated fir tree. The first tree was illuminated there in the year 1785. An engraving after a drawing by Johann Martin Usteri (1763–1827) shows the festively lit tree as the focus of a Swiss family from Zurich in 1799. In the year 1807, the first Christmas trees came to Leipzig; in 1810, to Berlin; and in 1815, to Danzig (Fink 1983, 367). In 1848, Prince Albert of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, husband of Queen Victoria, brought the Christmas tree to England. In 1851, the first Christmas tree was admired in Innsbruck. Ironically, the first Christmas tree may have come to France through the German-French war, during the years 1870–1871. However, opinions on this differ. Riemerschmidt (1962, 21) cites 1837 as the date that Princess Helene von Meckleburg (Duchess of Orléans by marriage) brought the Christmas tree to Paris. Others say this occured in the year 1840.

On the afternoon of December 24, the family decorates the Christmas tree. (Drawing by Christian Wilhelm Albers, 1890)

In 1912, the first huge, lighted tree illuminated an official square in New York, on the other side of the ocean from Europe (Fink 1983, 367). Ever since, the presence of the Christmas tree may yield to religious borders, but never geographical ones. It has reached the Mediterranean countries, the New World, and the hot and humid tropics, even if (for lack of a botanical original) only as flimsy, electrically illuminated, plastic imitations. (Such substitutes originated with soldiers in battlefield service during World War I.) But even in the new millennium, the artificial, indestructible, ersatz trees cannot compete with the true wintertime evergreen. Economically speaking, artificial trees only have a fifteen to twenty percent share of the market.

Other Christmas Trees

In the New World, the Chilean evergreen Araucaria, commonly known as the monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) has been called Christmas tree, but was rarely used as such. In southern Chile, Germans living there sometimes decorated the Araucaria for Christmas. Significantly, the huge, impressive tree, with its scaly bark, was worshipped as a shamanic world tree by the natives, the Araucanern or Mapuche.

Some plants are called “Christmas tree” because they are reminiscent of the fir in shape or appearance. Thus, common horsetail (Equisetum arvense) and purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) are sometimes called Christmas tree or little Christmas tree. The pohutukawa from New Zealand (Metrosideros excels, Myrtaceae) is called New Zealand Christmas Tree in the English-speaking world.

The south Chilean monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), a “living fossil,” can grow up to 35 meters (about 115 feet). This tree, known in Germany as Chile fir or Andean fir, can be grown as a winter-resistant ornamental tree and decorated like a Christmas tree. The Mapuche of Chile call this sacred tree pewen or pehuén; they call themselves pewenches, meaning “people of the Araucaria.” The seeds of the tree (pine nuts) are among their most important foods.