Open Mike: 21 Strange and Wondrous Christmas Facts (OT)

[Comments have been added.]

—Santa's flying sleigh and reindeer were invented by Washington Irving, the author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, although he has them "riding over the tops of trees," and on rooftops.

—The reindeer names Donner and Blitzen were originally Dunder and Blixem, all of which either are, or are similar to, the German or the Dutch words for thunder and lightning.

—There is no evidence that Jesus Christ was born in December, and no mention of December 25th in the Bible. The best guess is that Jesus of Nazareth was born in March, although the evidence for that is slender too.

—"Santa Claus" is a demotic pronunciation of Sinterklaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas, Dutch for Saint Nicholas. In the Netherlands, however, Sinterklaas has a sidekick, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), represented in blackface, so there's considerable sentiment now for ending the custom. [Thanks to s.wolters for this.]

—And why St. Nicholas? Washington Irving again! Pressing him into service as a personification of Dutch-American ethnic identity, Irving (under the nom de plume Dietrich Knickerbocker) popularized St. Nick as the patron saint of New York (the center of Dutch immigration in colonial times) in his satirical 1809 book Knickerbocker's History of New York. He also recast St. Nick as the overweight, merry Santa we know, as opposed to European depictions in which he can be somewhat thin, sere, and stern.

—Building on Irving's transformation of St. Nicholas as fat and jolly, the familiar look and costume of Santa Claus was finished off by the German-American Harper's Weekly illustrator and political cartoonist Thomas Nast in 1863. Although a few of Nast's drawings are maybe a tad creepy.

—Charles Dickens wrote five Christmas novellas, and intended to write a new one every year. A Christmas Carol so hugely outsold the others that he discontinued the project. Since its publication in 1843, A Christmas Carol has never been out of print. (It's essentially a story of spiritual rebirth. I wrote about the best movie version here.) Wikipedia says that Charles Dickens and Washington Irving "shared the belief that the staging of a nostalgic English Christmas might help restore the social harmony that they felt had been lost in the modern world."

—According to Carlo DeVito in the book Inventing Scrooge, Dickens got the name "Scrooge" from the tombstone of one Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie of Edinburgh, Scotland. The name also resembles the word "scouge," which meant to press or squeeze; Scrooge is described in the opening pages of the book as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!" Evidently it was only the name Dickens borrowed, because the real Ebenezer Scroggie, who got rich supplying liquor to the British Navy, was described as kindly and jovial and was known as a hard partier and scandalous philanderer.

—Evergreen plant cuttings were used as interior decoration during Solstice celebrations by the ancient Egyptians and pagan Romans.

—The tradition of the Christmas tree, however, originated in Germany. It was known in England in the 1700s, but didn't take off in America until a popular 1848 engraving of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria's Christmas tree created a craze for the custom.

—On average, 15,000 Americans are injured every year in Christmas decorating accidents.

—"Black Friday" was never the biggest shopping day of the year; it's beaten by several of the last ten days before Christmas. In any event, Black Friday has been in decline since 2014 as retailers seek to encourage shopping earlier and earlier in November. (One of our witty readers wrote, "I'll stop my war on Christmas when it stops its illegal occupation of November.")

—Speaking of which, "Jingle Bells" was originally written as a Thanksgiving song, by James Lord Pierpont. Its original title was "One-Horse Open Sleigh." The song is also in the Guinness Book of World [sic] Records as the first song ever played in space, in 1965.

—The Mayflower pilgrims (who weren't called pilgrims: they were "Saints" to themselves and called "separatists" by others) did not celebrate Christmas. They would have considered the holiday pagan in origin and insufficiently Christian in practice, and they disapproved of frivolity. It wasn't a fringe position; in fact, for more than 20 years in the later 1600s, celebrating Christmas was illegal in some American colonies. 

—Now, about 85% of Americans celebrate Christmas in some form, but roughly a third of that total celebrate it mainly as a secular holiday without particular religious meaning. Or at least their celebration doesn't include a visit to church.

—The most popular Christmas song is currently Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," which has earned $3.75 million for the singer from Spotify streaming alone. (Overheard: a man buying a half case of beer in a convenience store here at noon on Sunday, who exclaimed, "I got all I wanted for Christmas—a hangover! Same as every other day!")

An "Xmas" postcard from 1910

—There's nothing recent (or sinister) about the abbreviation "Xmas." X is an ancient shorthand for Christ that's traceable almost as far back as a thousand years; the consensus of scholars is that the New Testament was written in Greek, and X is the Greek chi and the first letter in Χριστός, meaning Christ. (Stephen Wright: "If you think about it, the New Testament is pretty old. Maybe it should be called the Most Recent Testament.")

—The giant Christmas tree in London's Trafalgar Square is itself a Christmas gift—from Norway, in thanks to Britain for its help during WWII.

—In Ukraine, spiders are considered good luck at Christmastime and you can find spider ornaments on Christmas trees. In Sweden, on the other hand, the Yule Goat is a big thing...literally: Google "Gavle Goat" and you'll see what we mean.

—Between 25 and 30 million Christmas trees were sold in the U.S. this year. Almost all are farmed. They start about 160 home fires annually—the bad kind of home fires, that is. The most fragrant species is the balsam fir (abies balsamea).

—Supposedly, ham has recently overtaken turkey as the most popular Christmas dinner. That fact is in some dispute; what appears agreed upon, however, is that the least popular Christmas dinner is tofu. Among some Jewish people, a traditional Christmas meal is Chinese food, because Chinese restaurants are traditionally open on Christmas day—when all the other restaurants are closed. 

Mike

Book o' the Week

Eyes Wide Open! 100 Years of Leica Photography Edited by Hans-Michael Koetzle

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Walfredo Cirne: "Since we count time from the birth of Christ, wouldn't his birth be January first by definition?"

Mike replies: 'Kay, you just blew my mind! Yeah, why wouldn't it? Stands to reason.

Terry Letton: "Apparently December 25 was recognized as the birthday of the god Mithra who was worshiped by many Roman soldiers in that time period. This seems to be part of the practice of the early church of co-opting earlier religious traditions to ease the conversion of people to Christianity. It probably didn’t hurt that the 25th was very close to the winter solstice."

Ernest Zarate: "Today’s my birthday (66, if anyone’s counting), and this article was a delightful present to open and read. Perfect birthday gift for me, Michael. It was full of 'Huh…isn’t that interesting?!' tidbits, yummy slices of 'behind the curtains' treats, and no fragments of underdone potato hanging around to ruin the effect. Thanks, and Happy New Year to you and all TOP readers!"

Mike replies: Happy Birthday Ernest! And I see what you did there with the underdone potato (for those who don't, it's one of the possibilities Scrooge gives as the explanation for his vision of Marley's ghost).

latent_image: "The Boston Christmas Tree is an annual gift to the people of Boston from the people of Nova Scotia in gratitude for the prompt aid sent to Halifax after the devastating 1917 Halifax Explosion."

Comments

[James]

"...The best guess is that Jesus of Nazareth was born in March, although the evidence for that is slender too."

I have no 'skin' in this but my guess would have been whenever the Romans collected taxes. Wasn't that why Joseph and Mary were traveling? And would it not be after harvest time? I really don't know, but being scientific about it seems logical to me.

[Ken Lunders]

Speaking of St. Nicholas, I visited his summer residence in Turkey a few years ago - https://www.flickr.com/photos/7331818@N02/31525411427

[s.wolters]

Dunder and Blixem sound very cute, but the Dutch words for thunder and lightning are donder and bliksem.

Sinterklaas is in The Netherlands under fire these days because his assistant Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) is dressed up as a blackface. It’s almost 2022 and I think it is time we should change this now. Some political activists don’t find this enough. They even see connections with slavery, but that’s nonsense. The tradition is much older that and traces back to the early middle ages. Originally he was from Germany and his assistant was Krampus. All over Europe there were traditions in winter with such bogeyman. Many of them painted their faces black. The French photographer Charles Fréger has been collecting them from all over the world. Imagine that you got one of them on your doorstep in the dark days of winter.
https://www.charlesfreger.com/portfolio/wilder-mann/

Christianity copied a lot of things from other religions within the Roman Empire. 25 December was the birthday of Mithras. The religion that was named after this Persian sun god was especially popular amongst soldiers. In the fourth century the christians adopted the date as the birthday of Christ. The are many more things that Christianity took over from Mithras as they also took elements from the Greek and from the Egyptian Isis religion. You won’t find a lot about the Jesus and Maria stories in the Bible but they are almost similar to the ones of Isis and her son Horus.

[Donald MacDonald]

When I was very young my father, a foreman butcher in the local Co-op, worked Christmas morning, finishing at midday. It only became a public holiday here in Scotland relatively recently. Hogmanay, on the other hand…

[Alan Amposk]

Donner and Blitzen still mean “thunder” and “lightning” - but in German.

[Bill]

I think this year, Black Friday was indeed the busiest shopping day of the year and that "it was never the busiest" is shall we say not quite correct. Black Friday was the top sales day in 2006-2009 in both sales and traffic. Some years 12-24 was larger but clearly not always.

[Patrick Perez]

I love the George C Scott version (his Scrooge is so evil Cratchit is played by David Warner!) but I really recommend The Muppet Christmas Carol also. It is fairly faithful, and Michael Caine plays Scrooge perfectly straight. He reportedly only accepted the role because the production agreed with his stipulation that he play Scrooge completely straight, as if at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

A few years ago, a good British television (aired on FX in America) adaption was made starring Guy Pearce which developed Scrooge's character with the background of why he was so psychologically damaged. Not canonical, but good just the same, and elements were fairly scary, befitting a ghost story.

Patrick Perez

[JOHN BOUR]

Interesting, thnx Mike,
a few remarks though;
"Donner und Blitz" is German (thunder and lightning)
"donder en bliksem" is Dutch (idem)
Sinterklaas is spelled as one word.

Happy New Year!
John

[Ari]

“Donner” and “blitzen” mean “thunder” and “flash” in German, so not likely a mispronunciation of the Dutch.

[BJ]

The strangest Christmas fact I’ve ever run across,

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/spain/articles/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-catalan-caganer/

but probably too gross to put on TOP. I find it offensive, as well as strange.

[Kevin Crosado]

I celebrated Christmas with some yule goat at one of the local Indian restaurants (the Chinese restaurants were all closed).

[Les Myers]

Great history lesson! Thank you. And Merry Xmas and Happy Nyew Yar!

[Gerard Kingma]

You're welcome. (Season's Greetings from Groningen in the north of The Netherlands)

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Thanks Mike,
Xmas trivia is always an interesting topic.
I recently read a couple of articles from The Conversation.
This one is about the history of celebrating Xmas, and it’s not-so-Christian origin:
https://theconversation.com/the-sordid-underbelly-of-christmas-past-172873

And this one covers some Christian myths about the Mother Mary:
https://theconversation.com/5-things-to-know-about-mary-the-mother-of-jesus-172483

The myth about the virgin birth, and the mis-translation that underpins it, is new to me.
Hmm, you may want to vet this comment the check whether it meets your policies about banned topics. The first link may be mostly harmless - the second link may be more controversial.
Acknowledging I am an atheist, and former Presbyterian. I’ve been away from religion for so long I can’t judge whether such a topic will be taken benignly or cause some chagrin.
Regards,

[Nick Reith]

Happy holidays Mike.
Thank you for your great website and interesting articles throughout the year. This one is no exception.
All the best for 2022.

[John Krumm]

No ham, but we had a re-heated roast porketta from a local deli, super delicious. Now back to mostly plants, I hope (it's really hard, I find, to transition from a mostly whole foods, plant based diet to a meat and dairy splurge, then back again).

[John Camp]

22. Santa's reindeer are most likely all female, and probably pregnant. The antlers of uncastrated male reindeer fall off before Christmas; pregnant females carry theirs through winter. (The antlers of both sexes fall off at some point during the year.) Castrated males may also carry their antlers over the Christmas season, but would Santa ever, ever castrate his male reindeer? I think not. Although, thinking twice, this would be a terrifying tale to tell little boys who were bad the year before.

[Steve Rosenblum]

Very interesting article, Mike. To me, one of the more interesting pieces of trivia about the modern American version of Christmas, is that many of the most popular Christmas songs were written by Jews of the Tin Pan Alley era

[c.d.embrey]

I ate dirty rice a spicey cajun dish, for Xmas dinner. I'm making jambalaya with beef and turkey sausage for this evening's meal. People eat a lot of ethnic food in Orange County, California.