Fascinating article on the evolution of Santa Claus

[Soineanta]

It's a little on the long side, but there's some really cool stuff in there.

"BEHIND SANTA'S GENIAL SMILE LIES A 70,000 YEAR OLD ANIMIST TRADITION OF A BEAST MAN

PHYLLIS SIEFKER UNMASKS THE ULTIMATE BEDROOM INVADER.

As the Christmas season engulfs us, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, and their international counterparts beam at us from
every medium, hawking earthly treasures to delight our loved ones.

As we watch this portly figure entice us with baubles, we are witnessing the last remnant of the oldest sacred figure that
exists, for Santa's past is full of ancient mysteries, with a depth few imagined. In the Middle Ages he was a Wild Man, a beast-man
who jousted with knights in Merrie Olde England and dashed through Germanic streets during Carnival, frightening children
and adults alike. In the Sixth Century, he was a beast-god so powerful that Pope Gregory the Great chose him to be Christianity's poster child for evil - the cloven-hoofed, goatish devil figure
that persists even today. For millennia before that, he was worshiped
as a god whose annual death was a necessity for life on earth itself.

Tracking the elusive Jolly Old Elf's history involved a labyrinthine journey that would make Daedalus proud. The search
began with 19th century gift givers in America, Britain, and Germany.
These gift givers appeared at end-of-year celebrations, but
didn't travel alone; they were accompanied by a predictable entourage,
no matter what country they trod. Santa's companions invariably
included a Bessy - a man dressed as a woman - and assorted
merrymakers dressed in goat or bear skins or wearing goat or
bear masks. The other characters varied; usually there was a comic
doctor and often an archer. Of course, America's Christmas Man
wasn't called Santa at the time; he gained that name in the mid-1800s.
First, he was Pelznichol, or Nicholas in Furs; in Nova Scotia he
was the Janney; in Trinidad he was Papa Bois; in Great Britain
he was Yule until Ben Johnson christened him Father Christmas in
his 1616 Christmas Masque. His names were as varied as the
communities he both terrorized and blessed.

The Wild Man's motley crew went door-to-door, demanding entry.
After the raucous group was welcomed, they acted out an odd play
- the leader, who dressed in goat or bear skins, argued with
another character or with the woman figure. He was killed, the
woman lamented, and the doctor comically resuscitated him, or he
spontaneously revived, declaring he wasn't dead after all.
Before the troupe left to visit the next house, they demanded gifts.
This might sound somewhat familiar; today's Halloween
trick-or-treaters carry on a juvenile version of the original
visit - going house to house, demanding gifts and treats. In the bygone adult
festival, the troupe gave its blessing and shared fruits of the
land with the inhabitants, or wreaked havoc and cursed the homes
if they weren't well received.

This invasion didn't take place at only at Yuletide; in Germany,
Carnival signaled the Wild Man's wild rush into town in the
Schembartlauf (run of bearded men). In other countries, the wild
run usually ended winter's reign, but no matter what the time of
year or what country, there were arresting similarities. In the
18th century, an emerging breed of "folklorists" noted these
similarities and began to record these festivals and theorize
about their origins. Jacob Grimm made a herculean effort to record
Germany's folk customs before they disappeared, and scholars in
Great Britain managed to accumulate some of the most extensive
collection of local rituals. These rituals encompass a wide
range of mumming activities with the ever-present Fool, an offspring of
the Wild Man and precursor of Father Christmas.

Those who study and categorize Britain's mumming rituals sort
them into three main types - the wooing ceremony, which includes
Plough Monday peregrinations, the sword play, and the Saint
George Play. All have a death and resurrection; of course this
death and resurrection in historical festivals is a comic one, but
these activities are remnants of a more serious death - the
death of the Wild Man, the beast-god who was responsible for life on
earth.

Richard Bernheimer pieced together the basic fertility ritual
from which these plays derive in his book Wild Men in the Middle
Ages. In that ritual, a town's young unmarried men went to the
woods to hunt the Wild Man or stir him from his cave. The
largest and strongest of the men dressed in animal skins and horns to
play the role of the Wild Man. He was captured, chained, and
dragged back to the village. Since he was, after all, a Wild
Man, he had torn up a tree or two to drag with him, showing his power;
in the village these trees became the May Pole and the Yule Log.

Because he was a god of the elements of nature - thunder and
lightning - the villagers fired guns and beat drums to herald
his arrival.

Chains dangling from his body, the Wild Man and his companions
made a mad dash into town, frightening and beating bystanders;
one of the devices he used to beat villagers was a giant
phallus, his symbol as a fertility god. In the village square, he mated
with a village wench (or wild woman, if one was available), then
was killed by an archer. He revived or was replaced by a son.
The mood was bedlam; the humor as coarse as it comes; and
everyone was both excited and terrified.

Folklorists who debated the origins of these holiday activities
were delighted when world traveler and Renaissance man R. M.
Dawkins happened upon a fairly untouched version of this ritual
in the Balkans in 1906. In this festival, large, blackened,
humpbacked goat-men shambled through the village with bells
around their waists and ankles. The leader carried a huge phallus;
another carried a crossbow. An old woman carried a doll in a basket. As
they went from house to house, the phallic goat-man pounded the
phallus on the door and demanded money. In the course of the
parade, the baby grew to manhood quite suddenly and demanded a
bride. When she was supplied, the pair copulated, the archer
shot the newly satisfied groom, the bride grieved, and the goat man
revived. After receiving a gift from the homes where they
performed, the paraders dragged a plough through the village.

This discovery was Nirvana for folklorists - they found all the
elements of the mumming plays; the Fool was in his original
beast form; the death and execution were enacted amorally. In
later plays, the Fool or beast-man is often killed by a young groom
because he "makes a pass at" the Woman, and narrators explain
the behavior with a comic script. In the Balkan version, the
inhabitants didn't need a verbal explanation; the ritual had
been part of their lives for centuries. Only in more recent times did the
master of ceremonies or narrator emerge.

This Balkan festival was the finest modern discovery yet of the
ancient rite of the god's birth, sacred marriage, death, and
sacrifice for his people. Better yet, it was found in Greece.
Scholars concluded that the hundreds of versions peppering
Europe could be traced to the great goat-god Dionysus. After all, the
Dionysian rites gave birth to modern theater; even the word
tragedy means goat song. Under this diffusionist scenario, Dionysus and
his counterparts Adonis and Bacchus spread throughout Europe
with spread of the Roman Empire.

This conclusion reflected a myopic flaw in many prehistorians'
thinking-that everything emanated from the Mediterranean, the
"cradle of civilization." But we find these rituals in the
Arctic Circle among people neither the Romans nor the Catholics found
worth their time to conquer or even visit in those days. There,
among the Lapps, the Vogul, and the Gilyaks some of the purist,
most ancient rituals continued. We also find the ceremonies
among the enigmatic Ainu, the aboriginal Japanese.

Among these Arctic peoples and the Ainu we discover the original
"storyline" of the ritual that found its way to ancient Japan,
Russia, Western and Northern Europe, and the Mediterranean. In
these ceremonies, the Master of the Mountain sends his gods to
his people as a bear to keep them from starving. In the ceremony,
the people rouse the hibernating beast in its cave, and the best
marksman ritually executes it with an arrow. They prepare and
mount the skin and skull in a certain manner, then share the
god's bounty in a feast.

In a ceremony of gratitude and honor the hunters re-enact a tale
of the bear's life - how it found a mate and bore an offspring,
then was killed by an archer. The people thank the bear for its
gift of life and send the emissary's spirit back to the gods,
until it returns next year. Here we find the arrow, the mating,
the sacrifice and rebirth, and the other accouterments we find
in today's mumming plays - even the ivy-crowned head.

How old is this ritual of bear and goat worship that found its
way to areas as widespread as the Mediterranean and the Arctic
Circle? There is evidence this bear sacrifice was carried out
more than 50,000 years ago; early 20th-century German excavatons of
the Wild Man's Cave and other caves in the High Alps discovered
altars to the bear with bearskins and skulls ritually treated
exactly as the Arctic peoples treated them.

Anthropologist Josepn Campbell and invesfigating anthropologists
made the connection between these ancient finds and the arctic
rituals and dated them to about 70,000 BC.

Of course. Homo sapiens sapiens - modern humans - weren't around
then; Neanderthals performed these ancient rituals. Later
archaeological excavations reveal Neanderthas sacrificed in the
same manner as the bears. The question inevitably arises whether the
original Wild Man was a Neanderthal, perhaps performing a bear
ritual.

The history of the death and resurrection of the beast-god that
sired Santa is older than Greece, even older than modern humans.
It was a ceremony of death and resurrection, of life and
fertility, carried on by an ancient aboriginal people - called
elves or fairies by later settlers - and adopted by these settlers, who
replaced them and continued the sacred rituals throughout
Europe.

Of course, burgeoning Christianity vigorously fought to suppress
this widespread "pagan" ritual, but it persisted. In response,
the church used the Wild Man's form to depict its Satan. Under
pressure from Christianity, villagers, holding to their old
festivals while adopting the new Christian religion, managed to
keep the old Wild Man alive by transforming him. In village festivals
he became the Fool; in this role he strode at the front of his
old troupe as master of ceremonies, the outspoken comic who
introduced the troupe and made fun of local citizens and mores.
In this role he evolved into the symbol of Christmas in America,
Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, and Germany. This fur-clad fool
and social commentator took yet another direction in Italy, where,
as Harlequin, he evolved from Medieval Devil to a primary figure in
the commedia dell'arte and became a standard character in French
and British Christmases. In all, the Wild Man adapted in almost
infinite ways under pressures from Church, State, and the
varying influences of civilisation.

In many areas, the beast-man changed little, and today the
ancient festivals persist in places the great past tides of
civilisation barely lapped. The hair-covered Chlaus yodel in
Urnasch, Switzerland; the beast-masked Narren leap through Black Forest
villages; the King of the Puck Fair is hoisted in Killorglin,
Ireland; the blackened, goat-bearded berika romp in Georgia; the
Perchta runners re-enact a death and resurrection ritual on the
fields of Austria. The Ainu ritually enact their sacred ritual
for tourists. The Paper Boys romp in Marshfield, Gloucestershire,
and Crookham, and, in Grenoside, the sword dancing team ritually
"executes" their captain.

Germany's carnival elements also live on in the well-known
Christmas poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas, which begins: "'Twas
the night before Christmas, and all through the house..." There we
see the old troupe preserved as reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, and
Prancer are the raucous, high-stepping, hair-clad dancers that
signalled the start of Carnival; Vixen is the Wild Woman; Cupid
is the archer who ended the god's life; Comet the sleigh of one of
the Wild Man's versions - the Wild Hunter; Donder and Blitzen
(thunder and lightning) are the hallmarks of the Wild Man's
dominion over nature.

In some instances the Wild Man survives as a famous folk figure
- in fact, some of our best known folk characters trace their
origin to this original mystery. In Britain, he became Robin
Goodfellow or Puck, celebrated by Shakespeare; Goodfellow's
cousin Robin Hood began life as Wood, a name for the Wild Man. In the
Black Forest, the Pied Piper of Hamelin re-enacts poet Robert
Browning's version of the ancient mystery.

And, of course, there's Santa Claus. As the ancient beast-god of
old, he continues to bring bounty and promise to us each year,
despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Gods, religions, nations
and even hominid species have risen and fallen while he somehow
persists. No wonder he winks as he sips his Coca-Cola."

_________________
"All things by immortal power, hiddenly,
to eachother linked are;
though canst not stir a flower
without troubling of a star." (Madeleine L'Engle)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Soineanta on 2002-12-20 14:29 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Soineanta on 2002-12-20 14:30 ]</font>

[E = Fb]

Can you tell us the source of the information?

[Ridseard]

The association of Santa with elves certainly suggests a pagan origin, but I think the argument that he evolved from the Wild Man is not very convincing. However, it's a fascinating theory. I wish it were true.

Hey, the winter solstice is tomorrow!
HAVE A HAPPY YULE!!!

[Soineanta]

The article was sent out to all members of PaganPaths, a newsletter I'm a member of. I don't know if the author was a member, or if a member just got ahold of it.
It's one of those things, I think, that is nearly impossible to prove or disprove. I don't think its ever good to completely assume, or completely dismiss either. But yea, it is a really interesting theory, and certainly could explain a lot of things.
Happy belated Solstice!

_________________
"All things by immortal power, hiddenly,
to eachother linked are;
though canst not stir a flower
without troubling of a star." (Madeleine L'Engle)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Soineanta on 2002-12-22 13:26 ]</font>

[The Weekenders]

Thanks for posting article. I found it very interesting. Does it explain Santa Claus to me? Not quite, but some of the elements of his VISIT are certainly there.

I thot the omission of the real St. Nicholas as well as the celtic-germanic elf traditions seemed odd. I always think of SC as the Christmas Elf...I guess hes kinda of a troll in this depiction!

I have always thot the two above were kind of melded into Santa Claus more than the Wild Man. Like the article stated, Halloween traditions seem more linked.

But very interesting indeed. Thanks!

[E = Fb]

Does anyone remember the episode of the Simpsons where Maggie discovers that the founder of Springfield was not, as believed, a hero, but a lowlife?

She was torn between keeping quiet about what she had found, and telling the truth. Telling would have the consequence that people would be disillusioned.

She made the right choice.

The origins of Santa are unimportant. What he represents is important. I should add, however, that I'm strongly opposed to telling children that he's real.

For many years I refused to keep Christmas because I believed it to be entirely pagan. I've changed on that, although I stll prefer the Spirit Of Thanksgiving to the Spirit of Christmas.

[madguy]

Interesting reading, yes- but factual? I highly doubt it!!!

~Larry