Wednesday, November 30, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Boughs of holly
Now that the nomi-
nally Puritan tradition of
Thanksgiving is in the bag,
it’s interesting to look for-
ward to the next big holiday
extravaganza — Christmas
— which was actually
banned by those same
Puritans in the 17th and 18th
centuries.
Fundamentalists across
the spectrum never seem to
tire of drawing up bans on
activities they don’t like,
particularly the fun ones.
Governor Bradford, a dour
if not practical guru of the
first colonial take on com-
munal living, punished sev-
eral Puritans for playing ball
on “Foolstide” by clapping
them in stocks, which was
also the New World’s first
openly Humbug move.
As late as 1712, Cotton
Mather, a New England fire-
brand, decried Christmas
to his flock, writing that
“the feast of Christ’s nativ-
ity is spent in reveling, dic-
ing, carding, masking, and
in all licentious liberty ...
by mad mirth, by long eat-
ing, by hard drinking, by
lewd gaming, by rude revel-
ing!” In other words, it was
fun. And in those days any
ideas about fun sat on the
polar opposite end of devo-
tion. It wasn’t until 1870
that President U.S. Grant, a
man who enjoyed his liba-
tions without shame, made
Christmas a federal holiday.
But Christmas, as a holiday,
has deep historical roots that
pre-date Christianity as a
world religion.
Begin with the Romans,
who celebrated a festival
known as Saturnalia, which
was essentially Mardi Gras
on steroids, a state holi-
day and a time when no
citizen could be punished
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for wreaking havoc in the
Republic. The celebration
shared a common theme
with Christianity, however,
in notions of salvation and
rebirth, with the same tragic
requirement of death.
During Saturnalia, the
Roman authorities — and
“authorities” should always
be considered a suspicious
bunch — chose an “enemy
of the Roman people” and
anointed him the “Lord of
Misrule.” After a week of
mandatory fun, he was killed
on December 25, in an act
they believed would elimi-
nate various forces of dark-
ness. It’s likely that is the
only reason we celebrate
Christmas on December 25.
In the 4th century, church
leaders — hungry for souls
and undoubtedly the finan-
cial boon that came with
them — enticed large num-
bers of pagans to convert by
dangling the promise that
they could retain elements of
their cherished Saturnalia.
The Christmas tree,
which is generally accepted
as a 17th century German
contribution to Christmas
celebrations, most likely has
its root in ancient northern
European winter solstice
festivities. In the long, dark,
northern European winters,
in William Manchester’s
words “a world lit only by
fire,” various tribes of pre-
Christian peoples often
brought boughs and other
greenery inside to cheer
things up and combat the
seemingly endless gloom.
The word “pagan” itself has
a root in the Latin word for
villager, but at least one lan-
guage scholar finds a cor-
ollary in an old Germanic
word for “field.”
The next big stop on the
big Christmas tour is natu-
rally Santa Claus, whose
principle origin — as we
know it — is with St.
Nicolas, a fiery, skinny,
defender of church doctrine
from the town of Myra, in
Roman Turkey. Defiant dur-
ing the “Great Persecution”
of Christianity, he was res-
cued from ignominy by the
Emperor Constantine, who
elevated the faithful and sal-
vaged St. Nicolas’ reputation
for generosity.
It is likely that Santa’s
method of delivering happi-
ness — from the sky — is
a nod to the ancient, long-
bearded Norse God Odin,
who oversaw the feasting
season of Yule, and led the
Wild Hunt, a ghostly proces-
sion of hunters in the sky.
Flying reindeer and long-
bearded hosts aside, it is
interesting that actually see-
ing the Wild Hunt was a por-
tent of catastrophe.
And then there is
Krampus. In the early
and, it seems, poorly orga-
nized attempts to make this
Christmas holiday into the
orgy of free-enterprise and
family fights that we all
enjoy today, it was thought
unseemly for St. Nick, a
kindly man after all, to spend
much time on children who
had been naughty. Krampus
fills a role for the bad kids,
allowing Sinterklaas, as the
Dutch would have it, to focus
his energies on the righteous.
Ultimately, Christmas
needs a villain, much as
Saturnalia did, though we
can perhaps divine some
evolution in our collec-
tive world view by look-
ing at the happier and more
modern contributions of
Ebenezer Scrooge — led
by a ghost to examine his
past and reconcile his faults
— and The Grinch, whose
heartfelt conversion to the
Christmas spirit on the out-
skirts of Whoville spares us
the ancient requirements of
bloodshed for retribution.
How any of this became
Black Friday riots, Shopping
Mall Santas, and an endless
commercial assault on our
psyches escapes me, but in
the quieter moments, next
to the Christmas tree and the
candles, with a cupful of hot
cider under a — pray for it
— fresh blanket of snow, we
can rest assured that in many
ways the new is still the old.
More importantly, we
can take a deep breath and
remember that this whole
event, as confusing as the
messages become, is really
about coming inside to the
light and the warmth, in our
own dark winters, to look
ahead to spring and the sea-
son of rebirth, and to share
our appreciation for the pre-
cious time we spend together
on this earth.
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