Commercialization has taken its toll on the Advent and Christmas seasons, but some traditions and customs are still maintained today. So that they don’t get lost, we present texts like this from our archive again at the latest.
In the magazine Bayernspiegel I once read a meditation on Christmas that contained an apt observation. The aim is that, on the one hand, religious knowledge about the festival has shrunk dramatically in recent years, but on the other hand, the importance of Christmas is becoming ever greater. This is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that the Advent and Christmas circle continues to expand into autumn. To put it bluntly, a kind of pre-Advent begins shortly after the end of the summer holidays. This is expressed, among other things, in the fact that Christmas gingerbread cookies are safely placed on the shelves of hypermarkets in September and chocolate Santa Clauses in October.
Another strange change in the Christmas festival circuit concerns Christmas trees and Advent illuminations, which, as a result of a collective aberration in taste, brightly illuminate the month of death November. An almost absurd distortion of old customs is taking place. Until now, the Christmas tree was usually put up at Christmas, only to be left up until Candlemas (February 2nd) in extreme cases, but today it lights up gardens and department store corners after All Saints’ Day (November 1st), only to be disposed of the day after Christmas. The Christmas tree shows how volatile Christmas customs have become. The more it is pressured by commerce and the spirit of the times, the faster it changes.
But it is not the case that the Christmas tree is an ancient custom. It only became native to Bavaria at the beginning of the 19th century. The Advent wreath only became established in this country in the 1930s Munich Latest News can be seen. In 1933 the paper mentioned “now more and more common Advent wreaths decorated with candles”. In 1937 the first billboards appeared, for example from the Hettlage company, with Advent wreaths pointing to the approaching festival. But it was only after the Second World War that the Advent wreath became established as a domestic custom in Bavaria.
For a long time, the Catholic Church had difficulty with such symbols taken from nature, as they were considered pagan. The historian Cornelia Oelwein found that the Christmas tree only became established in Munich after decorated trees had found their way into the Munich Residence around 1800.
Outside Munich, it lasted until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, in which many soldiers had to celebrate Christmas in the trenches. The returnees brought the Christmas tree tradition home with them to the countryside, where this custom was still completely foreign or reserved for “better society”. The Catholic Church increasingly adopted the Christmas tree during the Nazi era, trying to use it to create a counterpoint to phenomena such as the Nazis’ neo-pagan light celebrations.
The tension between good and evil has always characterized the time before and after Christmas
The tension between good and evil, between light and dark has always characterized the time before and after Christmas, especially in Bavaria, where traditions were able to develop over long periods of time, from the Celts to the era of the CSU. What is striking is that the great saints of Advent – Nicholas, Lucia, Thomas – are each accompanied by dark, sinister figures who can hold their own in modern times as ever. They are called Knecht Ruprecht, Krampus, Schiache Luz and Bluter Dammerl and embody evil and darkness. The American film industry even paid homage to Krampus with its own film in 2015.
The centrifugal forces of Advent are most intensely concentrated in the figure of Bishop Nicholas. For a long time, St. Nicholas was the big figure of the Christmas season, not the Christ child and certainly not Santa Claus. The St. Nicholas custom probably developed in the 14th and 15th centuries. At that time, many churches and chapels in Bavaria were dedicated to this saint, and there were also plenty of St. Nicholas markets. One of the oldest testimonies to the gift-giving of St. Nicholas is a children’s prayer in a manuscript from the Tegernsee monastery from the 15th century: “Holy Bishop sanct Nicolas, In my distress, never forsake me . . .”
When the reformers in the 16th century tried to replace the popular gift-bringer with the Christ child, they only succeeded with difficulty. In Old Bavaria, it was only the Enlightenment in the 18th century that weakened St. Nicholas’ reputation. However, it could not be removed. When Buttenmandln still accompany Santa Claus in the Berchtesgadener Land and on the Samerberg, this scenery radiates the aura of a great past. The butts wear animal masks, their bodies are wrapped in straw, and they make a huge noise with their cowbells. This dark side of Advent naturally offered room for all kinds of grievances. In 1601, the district judge of Berchtesgaden noted “a noticeable amount of indecency with the Perchtlauffen”.
For centuries, Bavarian chronicles have recorded attacks and fights during Advent. In her book “Christmas in Old Munich,” Cornelia Oelwein listed many cases in which there were deaths and injuries. In view of tumult and riots, the authorities often felt compelled to ban Advent customs in order to ensure peace and order.
St. Nicholas or Santa Claus – who is displacing whom here?
For a long time, Christmas was not a celebration of presents. The change only came with the advance of Protestantism. It was only in the Biedermeier period that Christmas Eve developed into an intimate family celebration. In Munich people were particularly open to such celebrations, as the doctor Martell Frank noted around 1862: “The cozy religious festivals in public and at home, the Corpus Christi and other processions, like the Christmas presents and more demonstrate the cozy spirit of Munich.”
In recent years, the conflict between Santa Claus, St. Nicholas and Christ Child has been the big hot topic of Bavarian Advent. The question of who is displacing whom is being discussed with passion. One of St. Nicholas’ major lobbyists is the Catholic Bonifatiuswerk, which launched the nationwide “Santa Claus-Free Zone” campaign a few years ago. This is intended to help clearly distinguish St. Nicholas, the former bishop of Myra, from Santa Claus, who, according to Bonifatiuswerk, is merely a consumer-oriented fictional character.
However, old sources show that the displacement of St. Nicholas by Santa Claus was already an issue in the 19th century. In some Munich families, Santa Claus and Santa Claus worked together. The New Munich Tagblatt feared the “de-Christianization of Christmas” as early as 1900. Customs expert Michael Ritter from the State Association for Homeland Preservation said that Santa Claus definitely has his justification and tradition. “However, the boundaries between St. Nicholas, Santa Claus and Christ Child are becoming blurred, and the religious background is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize.”
Undoubtedly, Santa Claus also has a remarkable past. The painter Moritz von Schwind published it in the Munich weekly magazine in 1847 Flying leaves illustrated for the first time. The US Santa Claus in the form of Santa Claus first appeared in the magazine in 1862 Harper’s Weekly on. It was drawn by the graphic artist Thomas Nast from the Palatinate. The civil war was raging in America at the time, and the old man in the fur coat was supposed to fuel the propaganda. In 1931, the Coca-Cola company adopted the figure of Santa Claus and gave it the usual appearance with a bushy beard and red robe.
As an advertising figure, he fits ideally into the commercially driven Advent, which in retrospect was rarely quiet, but mostly loud and warlike. It has remained loud and shrill, with its fairy lights, Christmas markets and mulled wine stands, with Christmas celebrations that have little to do with the Christian origins of Christmas. Undisputedly standing above all, as perhaps the last common theme of the Christmas season, is a song that was first performed 200 years ago, on December 24, 1818, in Oberndorf near Salzburg and is now sung worldwide: “Silent Night, Holy Night, everything sleeps, lonely wakes up. ..”