I f given a chance, perhaps out of protest over the commericialism and excess that Christmas brings, would you like to burn and hang an effigy of Santa Claus in public?
If this has ever come to mind, you are not alone. Far from being the cause for a holiday depression, such an impulse re-enacts one of the most ancient of Christmas rituals.
Many people, especially in the countryside, still do celebrate the burning of their trees after Christmas. However, what is no longer recognized is that people used to execute and burn an effigy of Father Christmas, if not Father Christmas himself.
Is the only survival that we have left of this story the strange if not impossible event of a fat man going up and down a chimney?
A Forgotten Story
I t is impossible to give a unified account of who or what is referred to in the contemporary use of the name Santa Claus. Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Lord of Misrule, and Abbot of Unreason, are all names determining different aspects of a legend and/or historical personality that we today call Santa Claus.
Though most would agree linguistically that the proper name in American-English derives from the Dutch Sinterklaas and was first used in the United States in the 18th century, this is where the agreement ends.
As a consequence, most often the response to the question ‘Who is Santa Claus?’ is prejudiced by who you ask.
If you ask a religious person, Santa Claus comes from the historical figure of Saint Nicholas, a real 4th century AD century Greek Bishop whose legend was later transformed into the mythical figure of Father Christmas (Pere Noel, Papa Noel, etc.). In many countries today, this double origin is evident as Saint Nicholas is still celebrated on Dec. 6th and Father Christmas on Dec.25th — the supposed birthdate of Jesus Christ.
But if you ask a historian or someone with just a bit of anthropological knowledge, you will discover a different story.
Not only is there the explicit barring of Christmas from civil society, but the admonishment of the figure of Father Christmas.
In The Observations On Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (1853) p.504 by John Brand, we find the following passage:
Some sixty years since, in the university of Cambridge, it was solemnly debated betwixt the Heads to debarre young schollers of that liberty allowed them in Christmas, as inconsistent with the discipline of students.
Fuller, Good Thoughts in Worse Times, Meditation on the Times, Lond. 1647, p.193
From the same book, we discover Saint Nicholas has been replaced by an appointee, not that of a benevolent Father Christmas, but malevolent abbots called the Christmas Lords of Misrule:
Hence Virgil affirms in express tearmes that our Christmas Lords of Misrule (which custom saithe he is chiefly observed in England) together with dancing, masks, mummeries, stage playes, and other Christmas disorders now in use with Christians, were derived from the Roman Saturnalia and Bacchanalian festivals; which (concludes he) should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them.
Pyrnne, Histriomastix, 1633, p.757
Here, the 17th-century authors are equating the origin of Christmas to a time much earlier than the lineage of the Christian St. Nicholas and Father Christmas. These writers, two among many, are claiming that Christmas comes from the pagan cult of the Roman gods, Saturn and Bacchus. A time that Virgil claimed to be the Golden Age of Man¹.
In anticipation of the coming of the winter solstice, the Romans prepared for the Saturnalia, a ‘festival of light’ dedicated to Saturn celebrating the coming to an end (Dec. 25th) and rebirth (Jan.1st) of the new year.
It was only later when the Roman Empire came under Christian rule in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD did the popular pagan festival of Saturnalia become Christmas, the birth of light become the birth of Jesus, and the deity Saturn split into the religious figure of Saint Nicholas and his pagan double The Lord of Misrule.
In his celebrated article, the ‘Father Christmas Executed’ the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss wrote:
For historians and folklorists, both generally agree that the distinct origin of Father Christmas (Père Noël) is to be found in the Abbé de Liesse, Abbas Stultrom, Abbé de la Malgoverné, a copy of the English Lord of Misrule, all characters who rule for a set period as Kings of Christmas and who are all heirs of the King of the Roman Saturnalia.
Le Père Noël Supplicé, Les Temps Moderns 77, (March 1952)
What is important to note is the inverse ratio that Christianity maintains to the pagan ritual of the Saturnalia. Saturn was the devourer of his own children, whereas the legends of Saint Nicholas and Father Christmas do the opposite: Saint Nicolas is called the resurrector of dead children who were about to be devoured while Father Christmas is the benefactor of alive children. Opposed to them both is the Lord of Misrule who introduces another inversion: no longer an adult, but a young-abbot, fool, or peasant who has an antagonistic relation to the society of adults.
Schematically, contemporary Santa-Claus is at the intersection of a square of oppositions:
Saturn — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —Saint Nicholas
Lord of Misrule — — — — — — — — — — — —Father Christmas
The group on the left are the pagan origins and those on the right the Christian sources.
The Burning Of Santa Claus
Without going into the details in a such a short article, the festival of Saturnalia is widely recognized as a ritual that abolishes, for a short period of time, all the norms of society: the masters serve the slaves, the young rule the old, and an everyday poor person can become king.
Indeed, the Lord of Misrule was a Medieval version whereby an officer was appointed by lot among the peasants to preside at Christmas over the Feast of Fools: a riotous banquet where popes became fools and fools kings.
What is not often remarked is after the reversing of roles and the end of the Saturnalia, when the everyday person is no longer posing as the King of Christmas, he would be executed.
The anthropologist J.G. Frazer tells us:
We are justified in assuming that in an earlier and more barbarous age it was the universal practice in ancient Italy, wherever the worship of Saturn prevailed, to choose a man who played the part and enjoyed all the traditionary privileges of Saturn for a season, and then died, whether by his own or another’s hand, whether by the knife or the fire or on the gallows-tree, in the character of the good god who gave his life for the world.[13]
Which leads back to the beginning of the story and the photo at the top of the page.
In 1951, in order to protest the commercialization and paganization of Christmas, clergymen in the French city of the Dijon instructed the congregation of its youth to burn an effigy of Father Christmas.
Levi-Strauss replied by writing an article about this event in the Les Temps Moderns:
The paradox of this unusual episode is that in wanting to put an end to Father Christmas, the clergymen of Dijon have only restored in all his glory, after an eclipse of several thousands of years, what they had intended to destroy.
Le Père Noël Supplicé, Les Temps Moderns 77, (March 1952).
Notes
[1] Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, written around 42BC, describes the birth of a boy, a savior, who opens up the beginning of a new era, where the Iron race of war will be superseded by a Golden Age. By the 13th and 14th centuries AD, this savior was interpreted by the Christians to have been Jesus Christ. See Ella Bourne’s Messianic Prophecy Vergil’s Fourth Epilogue, The Classical Journal, Vol. 11, №7 (Apr. 1916), pp. 390–400
Bibliography
•Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1952). «Le Père Noël Supplicié», Les temps modernes, no. 77, pp. 1572–1590, Paris: Gallimard.
•Lévi-Strauss (1953). «Les avatars du Père Noël ou la psychologie des mythes», Revue des Arts et traditions populaires, avril-juin, pp. 161–163.
- English Translation, Father Christmas Executed, by Dianna Gittins; original link at aphelis.net
