Advent, Karma and the Problem with Santa

About European Advent traditions in Waldorf Schools, Saint Nicholas as a representative of the law of karma, and the problem with Santa, his American cousin.

Adventus is the time when Christendom prepares for the arrival of Jesus. The Legenda aurea lists the four weeks of Advent as symbolic of the four comings of Christ: coming to live as man amongst men; coming with grace into human hearts; coming to pass through death; and His final coming on the Day of Judgement.

Historically, Advent begins towards the end of the 4th century in the Roman Catholic Church as a quiet time of introspection and reflection, fasting and austerity. Dancing, jollities and celebrations are banned between St Martin and Epiphany.

The Orthodox Churches celebrate six weeks of Advent to this day, but Gregory the Great reduced their number to four, reminders of four thousand years of awaiting the Redeemer.

The Advent Wreath

Morning dew, the arriving ship, the star and the candle are the symbols of Advent, which has now been celebrated for 1,500 years, but the Advent wreath is a much more recent tradition. Like the Christmas tree it originates in Germany, and its story is this:

The youngsters of a boys’ home in Hamburg await the Holy Night with impatience. “Will it be Christmas soon?” they keep asking. Johann H. Wichern, the protestant theologian in charge, is inspired to give them a visual aid. He takes a spare wooden cartwheel and fastens candles to it: small red ones for workdays, fat white ones for Sundays.

On the first Advent Sunday of 1839, Wichern suspends his chandelier from the ceiling and lights the first candle. Every evening the community gathers to see the next candle lit. Watching the sum of candlelight increase and singing the church songs of Advent, the boys see Christmas approaching as they count down the days.

In 1903, a similar idea leads the German publisher Gerhard Land to produce the first Advent calendar. Its numbered doors open to reveal a Bible verse, a poem or a simple image each day.

By 1860, in Central Europe, wreaths of pine twigs appear in the Christian family’s Advent celebration. This green ring is symbolic of the sun’s power, shape and journey. Its scent of resin mingles with beeswax, cinnamon and citrus fruit to create the wonderful smell of Advent.

Each one of its four candles strengthens the light a bit more until, on the eve of the 25th of December, a splendidly lit Christmas tree announces the arrival of Jesus the Christ – the long-awaited Messiah, Saviour and Light of the World, who is to overcome darkness and death as God’s precious gift.

And that, pure and simple, is the meaning of Christmas.

The Christmas Tree

In pagan Europe, a branch of yew, laurel, box or holly is placed in the house to honour the life-giving sun at the winter solstice, to bring hope and health and keep out the demons of darkness.

In time, a green branch is hung up with gifts attached: sweetmeats, pastries, sausages, bacon, nuts and apples. Someone in post-Roman Central Europe has the idea of using the top of a spruce for this, and soon the first small trees are hanging from the ceiling.

In Church plays, put on as Bible lessons for illiterate folk, the Tree of Paradise is a freestanding spruce decorated with apples.

By the 1400s such a tree is also part of the German guilds’ Christmas celebration, and nuts, dates, gingerbread and candied fruit are attached to its branches as treats for the children. Straw stars and angels, paper roses, toys and baubles follow.

The Duchess of Silesia first puts candles on a tree in 1611, but some sources credit Martin Luther with this innovation, placing it in the 1500s.

Candles add considerably to the magic of the Christmas tree, but only clerics and the gentry can afford clean-burning beeswax. In the 1820s a French chemist discovers how to manufacture stearin, and now affordable candles make an illuminated tree more widely available.

In German-speaking regions, the Christmas tree is put up and decorated in secret on Christmas Eve, as a surprise for the little ones who do not get to see it until the candles are lit and a little bell rings to announce that the Christ Child – the Christkindl – has brought its gifts.

The children’s sense of awe and wonder is plain to see as the family sings carols, assembled before the radiant tree. The opening of presents takes second place to this important moment on which the celebration of Christmas centres, at least in families who do not attend the Holy Mass at midnight – the Christ Mass.

Every evening at dinnertime, the candles are lit for a short while with more singing of carols, until the tree is removed after Epiphany.

Saint Nicholas

An old Advent custom centres on Nicholas, the sainted Bishop of Myra, who lives from the third to the fourth century in what is now Turkey. His kind, helpful and generous nature becomes the stuff of legends and makes him the most popular saint after the Virgin Mary.

His name becomes vastly popular too, especially in Eastern Europe. You may recall the scene in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ where relatives are introduced as “Nick, Nick, Nick … Nick … and Nicky.”

The Greek wife of Kaiser Otto II brings the veneration of Nicholas to Germany’s Rhineland. There the custom develops of having Sankt Nikolaus visit the children to reward goodness with apples and nuts.

Unkindness and cruelty are rewarded with black coal – a reminder of the hellfire that awaits those who do not mend their ways. (“… but this practice has been discontinued,” Wikipedia is keen to point out.)

Reading from a scroll or a ledger, St Nicholas addresses his words to each child in turn.

Knecht Ruprecht, the saint’s servant and companion, is a rough fellow with wild hair, sooty face and uncouth manners. He wields a bundle of birch twigs to mete out punishment, carries the big sack and may attempt to stuff a naughty child into it once it is emptied.

His role is to add feelings of fear to the saint’s blessings, thus complementing the shining light of goodness and grace with the darkness of evil and terror. The message is clear: Every deed reaps its just reward.

St Nicolas in Waldorf Education

European Waldorf Schools keep the Advent tradition of St Nicholas alive in ways that depend on the customs of their region.

The idea that the spirit world takes interest in human thoughts, words and actions is expressed in verses or a letter that will be read out by the representative of St Nicholas who comes to visit the younger classes, or leaves a scroll, attached to the sack that is placed with a mighty knock at the door of older classes.

Note: Teenagers will try to recognise whoever is impersonating the saint and may feel obliged to make fun of a tradition they secretly cherish. But a loud banging at the door connects them instantly to feelings of their earlier years. And as Nicholas’s message is read out by the class teacher, the saint’s image lives on in the young people’s mind, untarnished by sarcasm.

The following examples are from A WALDORF DIARY – Class 3, 1, 2 and 6 respectively:

Class 2’s Main Lesson on The Lives of Saints is the right time to tell the story of St Nicholas. It is linked to the anniversary of his death, commemorated annually on the 6th of December:

My Class 3 wrote illustrated notes to St Nicholas (first image above), and in Class 4 an English lesson was spent composing individual verses to the saint, which the children later read out to him.

Note: Such a reversal of the traditional way of doing things can help to counteract a consumerist attitude by activating the children’s imagination, creativity and courage.

The Law of Karma

We now know the heavenly bookkeeping by its Indian name of Karma. Its purpose is the matching of every action with its just reward across many incarnations. Rudolf Steiner describes the Akashic Record where all earthly events are logged. No good deed is lost and no bad deed escapes notice.

It was always held important that children should absorb an awareness of this early on, and so the historic Nicholas became in time a personification of the law of cosmic moral judgement.

This law is described in the holy scripts of Ancient Egypt, Persia and India, and the three-fold Zoroastrian tenet “to think good thoughts, speak good words and do good deeds” is the moral lode star of practically every religion.

To summarise: St Nicholas visits at the beginning of Advent with simple gifts of nuts, apples, citrus fruit, chocolate coins and cookies. They sweeten his words that remind of the cosmic bookkeeping and the fact that all actions have consequences.

Then, at Christmas, the Christ Child is born – not to revoke the law, but to fulfil it – and now presents are exchanged in the name of God’s great gift to the world.

So far, so good and truthful.

But what about Santa Claus?

That Santa was created by Coca-Cola is an urban myth. Coca-Cola was first sold in 1886, by which time Santa Claus had been established for three generations.

Yes, he is admirably suited to their corporate identity, and they certainly employed him, but so did Pepsi.

In fact, Santa Claus is a descendant of St Nicholas, born in Victorian times from a coupling of Britain’s Father Christmas with the jolly Dutch Sinterklaas line.

The 1840s were the years of Europe’s Great Famine, and this age of widespread hunger, poverty and misery became much preoccupied with Christmas; its promise of redemption being just as important as a rich feast by a roaring fire.

A Brief History

1180s – The term Wihenaht, the Hallowed Night, is first documented in a medieval German poem.

1419 – First mention of a decorated tree, in connection with a baker’s guild in Freiburg, Germany.

1809 – The author Washington Irving writes Knickerbocker’s History of New York and describes St Nicholas for the first time not as a saintly bishop, but as a jolly old elf in a flying reindeer sleigh who delivers presents down the chimney. 

1818 – The carol Silent Night is first performed at St Nicholas parish church in a village in Austria, written by the young Catholic priest Joseph Mohr and set to music by the schoolmaster and organist Franz Gruber. 

1821 – In New York, the children’s book A New Year’s Present to the little ones from five to twelve is published, with an anonymous poem about old Santeclaus who brings rewards to children with his sleigh drawn by reindeer.

1823 – US author Clement Clarke Moore writes A Visit from St Nicholas (now famous as The Night before Christmas), drawing on Irving’s earlier description. Although Moore still calls him “St Nick”, he describes Santa’s mission and his sleigh right down to the names of his reindeer.

1830 – The first glass baubles for Christmas trees are manufactured in Germany.

1832 – Harvard Professor Karl Follen puts up a Christmas tree at home and introduces this custom of his native country to New England; but it only really takes off with the example of the British royals.

1839 – Johann Hinrich Wichern invents the Advent wreath in Hamburg.

1843 – Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol. Its story is based on a vision of the cosmic law of just rewards for earthly deeds, and the blessings bestowed on those who share their wealth with the poor. That same year Sir Henry Cole prints the first Christmas cards and sells them in his London art shop. The carol O Come all ye Faithful is introduced.

1845 – The Great Famine begins in Europe, killing an estimated one million people in seven years, as wave after wave of refugees brings Christmas traditions to the New World of their hopes and dreams.

1846 – Queen Victoria and her family are depicted in Illustrated London News around a Christmas tree. This German import immediately becomes the fashion in Britain and on America’s East Coast. That year the London sweet-maker Tom Smith wraps his merchandise in coloured paper, adds love notes, paper hats and small toys and makes these crackers go bang.

1847 – The first candy canes (dating back to 1670’s Germany) are placed on a tree in Ohio by a German-Swedish immigrant named Wooster.

1848 – The carol Once in Royal David’s City is introduced in Britain, followed 1858 by See Amid the Winter’s Snow. The American carols O Little Town of Bethlehem (1868) and Away in a Manger (1882) round off the canon of the most popular Victorian Christmas songs.

1853 – A magazine article describes American customs to British readers. These include hanging up stockings on Christmas Eve for a mythical bringer of gifts called Kris Kringle or Santa Claus.

1863 – Amidst the upheavals of the American Civil War, the Bavarian émigré and talented political cartoonist Thomas Nast draws the first image of Santa for the January cover of Harper’s Weekly.

“The first drawing shows Santa distributing presents in a Union Army camp. Lest any reader question Santa’s allegiance in the Civil War, he wears a jacket patterned with stars and pants colored in stripes. In his hands, he holds a puppet toy with a rope around its neck, its features like those of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.” smithsonianmag.com

Nast is a “war correspondent and journalistic crusader,” and his cover shows Santa Claus handing out gifts and letters from home to the soldiers in the camp. This is also the time when Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women are celebrating Christmas without their father – and without Santa.

1891 – For the first time, a Christmas tree is placed outside the White House in Washington.

To summarise: A new Christmas tradition arises from the 19th century blend of Old World traditions with New World poetry, politics, nationalism, journalism and consumerism.

It begins a victory lap around the world and turns Christmas into Clausmas – an altogether more secular affair. Commercial interests fuel its spread and make this Christian festival acceptable to all, regardless of faith …

For everyone loves presents, don’t they?

The Season to be Jolly

The idea of a Holy Child, born in a stable because no one wants to take His family in, is a non-starter where the advertising of toys and consumer goods is concerned.

And if Jesus were used for such a purpose, Christians would feel just as offended as Muslims do when their Prophet is caricatured.

But Santa is perfect for the job. His expansive centre of gravity speaks of a lifetime of self-indulgence; his sleigh holds a mountain of “loot”, and there seems no other purpose to Santa’s existence than to distribute it.

A little grammar joke on the side: “What do we call Santa’s helpers? – Subordinate clauses! Ho, ho, ho!”

Source: There’s Treasure Everywhere – A Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson

Source: It’s a Magical World – A Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson

The Problem with Santa

Ever since his invention, those who raise their children with the magical delusion of Santa are faced with a number of questions:

“When do we reveal the truth about Santa to our children? How best to do it? How will they respond? Could they be traumatised? Will they forgive us for having lied to them for so many years? Maybe it will make them not believe other things we tell them. Will they now doubt the existence of God?”

Criticisms and Solutions

Critics argue that the deception is less about the children and more about the parents’ nostalgia, because parents want to see their children just as excited about Santa Claus as they once were.

The philosopher David K. Johnson’s view is that “It’s a lie, it degrades your parental trustworthiness, it encourages credulity, it does not encourage imagination, and it’s equivalent to bribing your kids for good behavior.”

You may well find this view too harsh. But how do you deal with the issue without banning Santa outright?

At the website St Nicholas Center, Christine Natale’s Musings on Saint Nicholas and her lovely Stories for December are a helpful resource for those who are looking to celebrate Christmas in a meaningful way.

Comments are welcome, so don’t hesitate to share experiences, questions and feedback below.

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