Christmas( Christ Mass) was instituted to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the founder of Christianity, but now it is a worldwide secular and religious holiday.
In the good old USA, Saint Nicholas, a 3td Century Greek, Christian bishop, known for his generosity, has morphed into the Santa Claus we know today. Manger scenes compete with Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Christmas carols get eclipsed by“ Jingle Bells” and“ Walking in a Winter Wonderland.” Occasionally, the sacred and the secular combine in minor spectacles like the annual TV presentation of“ A Charlie Brown Christmas”( a holiday viewing tradition in my family).
The Christmas holiday has been successful in absorbing an array of pagan traditions.
Practically every home displays an evergreen Christmas tree. But long before the birth of Jesus, various pagan tribes of Europe would decorate their homes with evergreen boughs at mid-winter. The Romans adorned their temples with evergreen branches during their winter solstice celebration of Saturnalia. The evergreens were likely reminders of
life and fertility in the dark days of winter.
By the 16th Century Germans were bringing whole fir trees into the house and decorating them with cookies, apples, and nuts. The practice spread with emigrating Germans and didn’ t become popular until the Victorian era.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of England both had German ancestry and introduced decorated Christmas trees to Windsor castle in the mid-19 th Century. The practice soon caught on with the populace. America was quick to pick up the idea and improve on it.
In 1843, Charles Dickens published his story“ A Christmas Carol” which fleshed out the trappings of a Victorian Christmas with its description of Ebenezer Scrooge’ s nephew Fred’ s Christmas Eve party and the Cratchit family’ s Christmas feast.
Now, back to Saint Nicholas. In this country the legend comes to us from the Dutch who settled New Amsterdam in the 1600s, now known as New York. They brought with them Sinterklaas, their version of Saint Nicholas. It wasn’ t long before the name became
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Nov./ Dec. 2022 • Our Brown County 33