Pagan Christmas (7 page)

The legendary charity of the Bishop of Myra did not play any role in artistic representations of the Christmas St. Nicholas for many centuries. The earliest picture of St. Nicholas distributing Christmas presents dates from the fifteenth century. But in the nineteenth century, many of the atmospheric illustrations of German romantics, such as Moritz von Schwind or Ludwig Richter (1803– 1884), made the holy man popular as a harbinger of the Christmas season—and one who gave presents to children. The exotic delicacies that he brought from his far away home in Asia Minor were described in a song lyric: “Ginger nuts, little apples, almonds and currants; this is what he gives to the good child.”

Originally the rod was a symbol of fertility. But as pictured in this comic by the famous northern German “father of cartoons,” Wilhelm Busch, we nowadays understand it as a rod of punishment instead. (Wilhelm Busch, Hänsel and Gretel, 1864)

SINTERKLAAS IN THE NETHERLANDS

In the Netherlands, according to newspaper sources, the eve of December 6 is “the only national folk feast” in honor of Sinterklaas, patron of sailors and merchants. In the second or third week of November he comes in his boat from Spain7 to the Netherlands, accompanied by his black servants, the zwarte pieten, who dance on the boat and make jokes. Sinterklaas is dressed like a bishop. The zwarte pieten are dressed like medieval German mercenary soldiers, landskenechts, in baggy, blue-and-yellow or red-and-black pants, with pointed caps of the same colors, gloves, and shoes. Upon their arrival, the mayor welcomes them, and Sinterklaas is led through the town on a white horse while the zwarte pieten throw sweets and candy on the streets. In the Netherlands, the arrival of Sinterklaas is more important than Christmastime is in Germany. On December 6, Sinterklaas celebrates his birthday and vanishes again on a secret passage over Germany to Spain.

Two weeks before the arrival of Sinterklaas, Dutch children put their shoes in front of the fireplace with a little present for the white horse and sing songs, such as the following:

Sinterklaas, castrated cock8

Throw something in my shoe

Throw something in my boot

Sinterklaas announces his arrival with a knock on the door and leaves a sack of presents and personal poems for each child. If he appears in person, he talks with the children about what they did during the past year. He rewards the good children with presents, the bad ones with the rod. (Most of the handmade presents given to children at this time relate ironically to the idiosyncrasies of the recipients.) On the next morning the children also find a little gift—in return for their gift to the white horse—in their shoes. Sinterklaas brings delicacies from the orient as well. Traditionally, these include marzipan, ginger nuts, oranges, and spiced biscuits (spekulator). The name of this traditional Christmas biscuit derives from the function of the bishop as “speculator,” that is, overseer of the children.

This vignette of a hazelnut bush with a nutcracker is from Franz Pocci.

By 1613, Calvinists were preaching in strict opposition to feasts honoring St. Nicholas, condemning them as heathen idol worship. Jacobus Sceperus (1658) wrote a 229-page indictment against Nicholas and accused him of being a papal seducer. It is interesting to note that the popular name Sinterklaas quite diplomatically does not refer to the Roman saint, who even today is considered taboo in the Protestant Netherlands.

SANTA CLAUS: THE TRANSATLANTIC CHRISTMAS MAN

Only in the year 1931 did the American commercial artist, Harold Sundblom, create the image of the Santa Claus that we see everywhere nowadays. Sundblom painted the Christmas man Santa for the commercials as a happy, rotund, grandfather figure, in the colors of the company that paid him to do so: Coca-Cola

APPLETON 2002, 56

The image of the Christmas man with his white-trimmed red coat and white beard—the one who flies through the air driving his reindeer sleigh, delivering presents down chimneys—was created in North America. Images from Dutch and German immigrants added a rudimentary shamanic influence. The Dutchmen Tony van Rentergehem, who immigrated to the United States in 1948, dedicated a whole book, When Santa Claus Was a Shaman, to the shamanic roots of the Santa Claus image.

St. Nicholas’s Presents

The presents distributed by St. Nicholas are of great significance to our ethnobotanical approach to Christmas. St. Nicholas and his helper Ruprecht not only brought the hazel wood rod, but also left gifts. Typical gifts were nuts, dried fruits, chocolate, spices, biscuits, winter greens, and toys.

The presents from St. Nicholas’s sack are symbolic of fertility, love, and marital good fortune. Today in Nepal, during weddings of the Newari (a people in the valley of Kathmandu who specialize in trade and arts and crafts) guests receive gifts that to a great degree resemble those from the typical European St. Nicholas’s sack. One might see walnuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews, white candy sugar, cassia rinds, green and brown cardamom9 fruits, cloves, chocolate, coffee candy, butter toffees, sherbet powder, popcorn, raisins, dried and salted plums, coconut flesh, betel nuts (traditional fertility symbols and love magic), pan parag (a betel nut snack mixture), hard dried cheese, and dried dates, apricots, and figs.

PLANTS ASSOCIATED WITH NICHOLAS AND RUPRECHT

The most common sort of geranium is dedicated in folklore to the holy Ruprecht, patron of the home. And it is referred to in this manner by the botanist, who very well knows that the old Hruotperaht means “shining glory” and that the name is as much about Ruprecht as it has also become Robert …10

SÖHNS 1920, 159

From Ludwig Richter comes this picture of a simple lit tree and a rod on a chair, which awaited bad children on December 6.

In the German folk tradition, a number of plants are associated with Nicholas. Veronica or bird’s eye speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys) is called by the German folk name niklasl, which translates in English to “eye of Christ.” This plant belongs, like königskerze (king’s candle or mullein, Verbascum spp.) and niklaslbärtchen or niklosbärtchen (Nicholas’s beard, Verbascum spp.) to the group of plants known as wild tobacco—the “baccy” herbs smoked by country folk and even Santa Claus himself, as old illustrations suggest.

The plant genus name Sanicula (known by the German common name sanikel) is a contraction of “St. Nicholas.” Plants in this genus are sometimes called Santa Claas or nickelweed. Nickel also means “goblin.” Thus, in the name sanikel, we find St. Nicholas combined with a goblin—the helper Ruprecht!

Cranesbill (Geranium robertianum) is dedicated to helper Ruprecht or St. Ruprecht, the patron saint of the home. Other names for this plant include herb Robert, Herba Ruperti, Robert’s herb, Ruprecht’s herb, stork’s beak, St. Catherine’s herb, and St. Ruprecht’s weed. St. Ruprecht, a missionary of the Frankish Christians, died in 717: “The saint to whom the Geranium robertianum is dedicated is the guardian spirit of the plant here” (Höfler 1990, 25). It is the “embodiment of the spirits of the river Elbe, who can move on the water and in the air” (Höfler 1990, 24). “It might have had an association with Thor, the god of fertility and matrimony. This is why it is also holy with St. Ruprecht, the patron of the home” (Aigremont 1987 II, 50).

In Nepal, wedding gifts for every guest symbolize long life, much like the contents of St. Nicholas’s sack. (Kathmandu, Nepal, March 2003)

The purple flower cranesbill or herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) is called St. Ruprecht’s weed in the German vernacular.

PLANTS ASSOCIATED WITH ST. NICOLAS IN MEXICO

The Mexican “flowers of Nicholas” remind us of the blossom miracles of the Old World. Flor de San Nicolás, San Nicolás, and estrellita (little star) are all names for Milla biflora (Liliaceae), known in English by the common name Mexican star. It has six-petaled, white or yellow, starlike flowers that bloom at Christmastime. People collect them on rainy days and use them as house decorations during the Christmas season. In Aztec, this petite lily plant was called yolo-patli (heart root) or tlalizqui-xochitl (white rose of the Earth). A colonial Aztec text praises its blossoms: “Tlalizqui-xochitl: It is perfect, outstanding, relaxing, very relaxing. Its flowers glitter, lay there glittering, they shine and glitter when it blossoms. It has a very relaxing perfume; it fills the air …” (Sahagun, Florentine Codex XI, 10).

The Turkish crescent (Thevetia peruviana [Pers.] K. Schum., Apocynaceae), which grows from Mexico to Peru, has a trumpet-like yellow flower and is considered a strong narcotic. In Aztec it was called yoyotl (rattle). Today, this very popular tropical plant goes by the name San Nicolás.

The yellow-flowered damiana (Turnera diffusa) is called hierba de San Nicolás (herb of St. Nicholas) in Mexico.

Yellow-flowering damiana (Turnera diffusa, Willd. ex J. A. Schultes, Turneraceae), treasured as an aphrodisiac herb, is also known as San Nicolás or Hierbas de San Nicolás. Related plants that go by the same name include Turnera diffusa var. aphrodisiaca (G. H. Ward) Urban, Turnera pumilla L. (bruja, witch), Turnera ulmifolia L. (clave de oro, golden clove). The ersatz damiana Chrysactinia mexicana A. Gray (Asteraceae, false damiana) can be included in this group as well.

Mexican Herbs of St. Nicholas

Hierba de San Nicolás was the Mexican name for a long list of plants:

• Thymophylla acerosa (DC.) Strother, Asteraceae (syn. Dyssodia acerosa DC.) is a smoking herb of the North American Indians.

• Gutierrezia sarothrae (Pursh.) Britt. & Rusby, Asteraceae, also called pasmo, hierba del pasmo, or broom snakeweed, is a symbolic plant for December ceremonies. It is also used as a gynecological medicine, an aromatic remedy for new mothers, and a ceremonial medicine for ailing gods. It contains aromatic volatile oils (monoterpenes, diterpenes) and flavonoids.

• Stevia serrata Cav., Asteraceae, is a yellow blossoming mountain plant that is also called raíz de San Nicolás (root of St. Nicholas) or simply Nicolás. The plant contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids (liver toxins) and volatile oils.

• Tecoma stans (L.), Juss. ex Kunth, Bignoniaceae, the trumpet tree plant, is also called ojo de Santa Lucía (eye of St. Lucia) in Spanish and xkanlol (yellow flower) in Mayan. It contains psychoactive alkaloids (indole and tryptamine).

• Hybanthus spp., Violaceae

Damiana has been used since prehistoric times in North America and the Mayan region as a medicine and a love potion. In his Chronica (1699), the Spanish missionary Jesús María de Salvatierra mentioned its use as an aphrodisiac among the North American Indians for the first time. The name damiana comes either from St. Damian, the patron saint of apothecaries, or from the name Peter Damiani, a critic of the Catholic Church who decried the lack of morals among the clerics of the eleventh century. The Austrian botanist Josef August Schultes (1773–1831) described the plant for the first time in 1820. In the nineteenth century, the herb was taken up as a tonic and an aphrodisiac in the United States; it was included in the U.S. National Formulary (1888–1947) and was in the Mexican Pharmacopoeia. In 1880, it was introduced to Europe. At the end of the 1960s, the plant gained a reputation as a legal high—an ersatz marijuana or tobacco. Today, it is the basis of a commercial baccy (herbal smoking) mixture.

Baccy Smoke

“Hemp and opium are among the Old World smoking substances that originally had nothing to do with tobacco… . We find that among the different peoples an amazing number of plants and parts of plants are smoked… . When we hear that the leaves of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) were smoked like tobacco, this could just as well refer to any one or another of many such smoking substances… . It still seems that the custom of smoking things like that were only local; and thus, the old smoking substances vanished with the appearance of the more palatable and more pleasant tobacco—with two exceptions: hemp and opium” (Hartwich 1911, 26).

Baccy Claus: The Smoking Christmas Man

The vision was putting out its wings in ecstatic flight; and there were no earthly laws anymore. With every moment the rapture was growing, and allowed an even more delicious sight in a resolution that was like incense smoke rising up from the surface of an eternal sea.

LUDLOW 2001

Illustrators of the nineteenth century, such as Thomas Nast (1840–1902), painted us a picture of a comfy, pipe-smoking Christmas man. From the jolly expression on his face, one might even be tempted to call him “Baccy Claus,” as baccy is an old word for “strong tobacco.” Where did this image come from? Perhaps from excavations providing clues from prehistoric times? In the area of Limburg, prehistoric pipes are occasionally unearthed. They are called feenpipjes and were once considered smoking tools for giants, fairies, elves, and earth sprites. “They were originally used in the ceremonial smoke offerings of the pagans even though they were used for purposes having to do with intoxication and to put oneself into another state of mind.”11 And this brings us back to thoughts of the shamanic origins of the Christmas man.

Baccy Claus has tobacco use in common with shamans, healers, and medicine people of all times and all worldviews. These shamans handed down to us shaman pipes, peace pipes, and baccy pipes of all kinds. In the Grimm fairy tale The Blue Light, the hero—a soldier—always meets a helpful, mysterious, magic being, a little man, a mandrake sprite, whenever he lights his pipe.

The oldest European pipe used for smoking opium was found in Cyprus, on the island of Aphrodite. In Kítion, an old Phoenician settlement on Cyprus, there was a very important temple in which the great goddess was worshipped under her Phoenician name, Astarte. Inside the sanctuary, a three-thousand-year-old carved ivory opium pipe dating from the Bronze Age was found during excavations (Karageorghis, 1976).

Numerous antique smoking pipes from the time of the Roman Empire have been found in Europe (Golowin 1985, 121). The dairymen pipes of the Alps, the Nordic and Irish fairy pipes, Danish pipes, and baccy pipes were so popular in their day that one cannot imagine the Christmas man without one. “The long pipe is a safeguard of fidelity” says a popular poem of the nineteenth century. The pipe projects a homey, comfy atmosphere that suits the charitable Christmas man well.