Father Christmas, Santa Claus and the Ghosts of Christmas

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In a recent Facebook entry in his typical roastbeef-of-old-England growl style, my friend wemyss rehearsed a complaint that is heard from time to time, about the Americanization of native tradition. There was, after all, a Father Christmas in England long before Santa Claus was brought over from Hollywood.

wemyss was entertaining, as usual, but it' not quite so simple as that. Santa Claus, as everybody knows, is a folkloric version of Saint Ncholas of Myra, currently buried in Bari, Italy, a bishop known for his generosity: a folk image taken to America by Dutch colonists after it had already survived the Calvinist assault on the cult of saints in its own native Netherlands. It is amazing that CC Moore, the author of the modest but charming poem which Anglicized and rooted the legend and spread it across America, should be aware that the folk figure he described was in fact the St.Nicholas of Orthodox and Catholic cult; yet, as a matter of fact, he never even refers to him by the deformation "Santa Claus", but always as Saint Nicholas. It was after his poem that the deformed name spread from the old Dutch lands behind New York City to all English-speaking America.

However, the role of Christmas-time gift-giver is not, in spite of his generosity, native to St.Nicholas of Mira and Bari. Giving gifts to children is a natural part of the Christmas holiday, as an imitation of the gifts that the Mages had brought to honour the infant King of the Jews; I would be surprised if it was not traditional in every part of Christendom from Ethiopia to Iceland. It certainly is universal in the Catholic world. Yet - probably on account of scruples that we still feel, about mixing up the unearthly wonder of the incarnation of God with the noise and show of a gift-giving holiday - Catholic nations have tended to shift it to fixed dates before or after Christmas. St. Nicholas' day (December 6) is not the only one; in parts of Italy, it is on St.Lucia's day (December 13) or on the Epiphany (January 6), which at any rate makes more sense, since it is the feast which actually celebrates the Mages' coming and gifts.

The interesting thing is that each of these gift-giving holiays generated its own folkloric figure. Beside this Dutch St.Nicholas, going around on a sledge pulled by reindeer - the only vehicle that would move in a cold Dutch winter, or for that matter in the mountains of upstate New York - there was St.Lucia, for whom a candle had to be left in the window so she would know where to go. According to Wikipedia (I don't come from a St.Lucia region and don't know this of my own knowledge), she brings gifts to good children and coal to bad ones the night between December 12 and 13. She arrives in the company of a donkey and her escort, Castaldo. Children are asked to leave some coffee for Lucia, some flour for the donkey and bread for Castaldo. They must not watch Santa Lucia delivering these gifts, or she will throw ashes in their eyes, temporarily blinding them, (This makes her shyer than Santa, who, in many of his modern stories at least, does not seem to mind being seen.) Even more popular, in my experience, is the ragged, hideously ugly, but benevolent old witch, the Befana, who to this day is a formidable competitor to Babbo Natale - Santa Claus - in Rome and much of Italy. Santa even borrowed her stocking, in which she leaves candy and gifts for good children. The connection of a ragged old stocking with a witch is just as obvious as its connection with big, stout old Santa is incomprehensible. (And the stocking is not the only American Yuletide tradition that has nothing to do with St.Nicholas; I gather, for instance, that St.Lucia's day is sometimes celebrated in states with populations of Scandinavian origin.) Befana, of course, is a mispronunciation of Epifania, Epiphany.

Folklorists and anthropologists know what to make of this. White-haired, grandfatherly Santa and ragged, elderly Befana are figures of the old year as it goes away; and the gifts they leave are the fruit of the old year, what it leaves behind. Even the fact that they have to travel a long way may imaginatively be connected with the long and eventful course of a year.

But that is only the beginning, one might say the seed, of the Santa legend. In point of fact, while CC Moore's poem presents the character already with many of the trappings of the modern Santa Claus - reindeer, sled, white beard, bag of toys, coming down the chimney - nonetheless most of the image is of modern, even contemporary origin. Santa is a remarkable instance of the invention of a whole popular mythos, mythology even, in the eye of history and with all the facts being known. In a world where even children know about industry and the way things are made, Santa had to have a way to make all his toys; so the elves came into being. His residence at the North Pole, like Superman's fortress of solitude, was inevitable for someone who had to be in some ways distant from ordinary humanity, and contemplate them all equally. Then came Rudolf, who is not mentioned in CC Moore's list of named rendeer; and how I wish that dratted song had never been written. Now we sometimes hear of a wife of his, called Mary Christmas; because of course a happy old man will be happily married. All these things tell us things about our culture. Finally people started telling stories not just featuring, but about, Santa, like Raymond Briggs and his famous comic.

The continuous growth and absolute centrality of this character, as well as the way he absorbed features of similar characters such as the Befana, tells us that the act of gift-giving is absolutely central. Santa begins as he who brings gifts to children, and on this act his whole mythology is built. Superficial moralism would speak of greed, but one cannot really describe greed as the central feature of a child's reaction to a gift, much less in the adult's emotions in giving it. Certainly there is showing-off and the possibility of egotism, even of blindness, from the giver, and selfishness and vanity ("and I got a doll and I got a dollhouse and I got a computer and I got..." on for half an hour in the hope of impressing one's schoolfriends) in the receiver, but greed as such is a fairly minor component in the knot of intense emotions that bind themselves in the act of ritualized, but ever-surprising, gift-giving. Its emotional heart is that strange emotional alchemy that Scrooge - until he is converted - will never understand, the turning of cold money into things of warmth and wonder, things that are not only loved in and of themselves, but which make a bond between giver and recipient that means much more than the price of the object. Personally, I never throw away a gift.

This is not in itself specifically Christian, and there is a reason why the mythology of gift-giving, and the act itself, have always tended to become separate from the mythology and the day of the "Mass of Christ". As I said, the gift-giving tended to move to different days, and to develop its own mythology that was, with rare exceptions, not at all related with the mythology of Christmas proper. (I call it mythology because, even though I am convinced that the incarnation of God into Jesus son of Mary is a fact, in this context it is to be treated as a myth - that is, a story connected with a holiday and with certain cultural features - as connected and compared with another myth. But woe betide anyone who dares to suggest that anything I say implies that the Christmas story is a legend, or a lie.) But it is dependent on Christianity, and gains from Christianity all its power and emotional significance; which is shown by the fact that at no other time of year, not even at Easter or at patriotic commemoration, is religious song so prominent. Christmas without Christmas songs would not be imaginable, and even now most of the most beloved Christmas songs are totally, defiantly religious and spiritual. One of the most beloved, O Little Town of Bethlehem, describes with devotion and accuracy a very deep religious experience.

Christianity lends the day of Santa Claus and gift-giving its essential context: it is the feast of the celebration of a child's birth, the feast of the family as centred in having and raising children, and yet also of the family both as a legal entity (St.Joseph is only Jesus' stepfather, and yet it is through him that Jesus gets the legal descent from King David that meant so much to His followers) and as descent through generations (Joseph and Mary go to the city of Joseph's ancestors to be registered, and Joseph's ancestors are carefully numbered - and never mind that two lists disagree, that is not the point). Christian Christmas is a feast when family links, however remote, are strengthened: Joseph visited the city of his ancestors, claimed them, communed with them, just as his legal son and heir was about to be born. And so over Christmas it is specifically families that come together, and specifically children, though not only children, who are honoured with gifts, as the new-born King of Israel, heir of David, once was.

Santa Claus and his mythology of annual gift-giving are not the first of their kind - a sub-Christian, rather than non-Christian, mythology of the day of family togetherness and gift-giving. In fact, the whole modern idea of Christmas is defined around the world by a thunderous, ceaselessly popular masterpiece of English literature, endlessly translated, reprinted, adapted and performed on stage and screen from the North Pole to the South: Dickens' A Christmas Carol - probably the most popular, certainly the most beloved and influential work of art ever written in England. The popularity of this work of genius renews itself year after year, decade after decade, as a new generation of actor, producers, publishers, critics, measure themselves with it again. The Walt Disney studios adapted it not once but twice. Most recently the BBC has picked it up for its Dr.Who franchise.

Now the point of Dickens' masterpiece is that, though its mythology did not replicate itself as the popular invention of Santa Claus did, it was pretty much the same kind of thing and bore the same message. It was not in any obvious way a Christian story, but its strength and its demand on the reader was underlain by Christianity and especially by Christian songs - such as that of the carollers that Scrooge sends away early on. It is about more than gift-giving: it is about generosity of mind as well as of wallet - although the one can't help flowing over into the other, as symbolized by the gift of the giant turkey - and openness to others down the generations, but specifically in a family context. All the good scenes are family scenes, from the master with his family and apprentices in the vision of thae Ghost of Christmas Past to Scrooge's final reunion with Bob Cratchit and his family; all the bad, ill-omened, threatening scenes are about the collapse of the family, from Scrooge going to bed alone in his empty old house to the ugly vision of the children Ignorance and Poverty in the Ghost of Christmas Present's vision, to the whole horror of Scrooge's desolate death and the plundering of his death-bed by an almost demonic cackle of Cockney hags who rip apart his life in the presence of his corpse. But this view of the family, like that of the Christmas story, is not just centred on blood or on immediate kinship: one can become a member of a family by marriage, as Scrooge failed to do with the sweetheart of his youth, or by simple adoption, as he and the Cratchits eventually adopt each other. And it is all good. Dickens had no delusions about the realities of actual families; few writers have written more powerfully about the grief, humiliation and horror of family life gone wrong. But those two words, "gone wrong", are the key here. The family of A Christmas Carol is a myth of the family, a vision of the family as it ought to be, almost a Platonic idea of the family. It is a vision rather than a commentary of fact; and as such, it works as myth, not as sociology. Although it contains a number of pointed and devastating suggestions - such as the Ghost stingingly repeating to Scrooge Scrooge's own heartless question, "Are there no workhouses?" - the whole exists in a context of absolute and timeless moral values, and that is what makes it work.

(Incidentally, although the mythology of the three Ghosts did not, as I said, catch on, the character itself of Scrooge did. Everyone knows what anyone ever means by a Scrooge. And through its adoption by the great cartoonist Carl BArks, Uncle Scrooge McDuck has become himself the centre of another great and humane mythology, not to mention the protagonist of many superb Christmas stories - Barks wrote more and better Christmas stories than anyone else I ever heard of.)

The tale of Scrooge and the tale of Santa are the same kind of thing. They may be a part of the great dossier of end-of-the-year Old Year figures, but they are a most peculiar part, forming a wholly distinct group, different from most others, for instance, in that most folkloric Old Year figures are unpopular and negative, driven out with mock violence and ritual obloquy. The figures of Christmas gift-giving - Befana, Father Christmas, St.Lucy, St.Nicholas - are beneficent and beloved, welcome to the house (in fact, precautions are taken so that they might find the right way) and remembered warmly when they leave. And these things may be said of all of them, whereas they may hardly ever be said of any other Old Year figure. They bear the same message, involve the same kind of values, and the two most universal ones, Santa and Scrooge, are so close to each other that in the average person's mind they are practically joined, part of the same experience. That the one is the creation of a single great genius and the other of a dull, dumb, popular gestation with a thousand names and a thousand faces, does not alter the fact. Everyone feels they are part of the same experience, of the same mood.

And that experience is Christianity. It is not enough to say, the Christian holiday. I have spoken of the centrality of the Gospel image of the family to the Christmas myth; but there is a yet more central fact at the very establishment, at the very foundation, of this experience: children, little children, are given gifts. Children are at the centre of the holiday. It is in a special and specific way their holiday. And if the family is honoured, it is honoured not in its centre of power and respect - parents, grandparents, the pater and mater familias - but in its weakest, most unruly, most helpless members. That is, to begin with, part of that Christian world of values called chivalry, that places the strength of the strongest right arm at the service of the weak and helpless, and makes strong men and great lords take their hats off to women - a sight that astonished visiting Turkish diplomats; but still more basically, that is motivated, that begins with, that most tremendous reversal of all commonplace values that took place in Bethlehem, when the might behind all mights and the power above all powers incarnated Itself in the most helpless and dependent of all things - a new-born baby. That sense of warmth and joy, of quite irrational happiness and hope, that the unconverted Scrooge, dealing only in tangible and concrete things, will never understand, begins there - it is the long soft distant echoing rumble from that far away and long ago earthquake in the very nature of things, that basic change in the relationship of Creator and creature, that the Creed puts so simply in five economical words: "And He was made man".

If you do not believe this, all right, that is your choice. But if you want to understand what happens every 25th of December in your streets and in your shops, among your families and among your friends, you have to understand this. You must understand it even to reject it.

Comments

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This is very thought-provoking.

[larmer.livejournal.com]

Thank-you. Very insightful.