SATURNUS The God of Christmas Parties..He is basically an Agricultural God who made good. SATURNUS was an old Italian deity in charge of crops and harvests, with a winter feast day in December. When Greek culture started to influence the Romans, SATURNUS found himself being mistaken for CRONUS, one of the Greek Titans. It was no use denying it — those excitable Romans would not take no for an answer. He was a dead ringer for CRONUS, they said, and his backstory would be updated accordingly. SATURNUS was soon promoted to Father of the Gods and given superpowers such as the ability to eat his own children without being thrown in jail. His old winter festival was recycled and expanded it into a huge event, fit for this new improved deity. As usual with the Romans, it was any excuse for a party and the Saturnalia Carnival came to dominate their calendar. This outrageous holiday celebrated not just SATURNUS but life in general. The bleakness of the winter season turned into an extravagant week-long festival of fun. All the normal rules were flipped upside-down. Slaves exchanged places with their masters. Boring senators cracked jokes. Silly hats were worn to formal occasions. Rudeness and lewdness were encouraged and much fun was had by everybody. Saturnalia included many rituals you may find suspiciously familiar. Gifts were swapped with frenzied good humor. People sang festive songs in the streets. Seasonal greetings were exchanged via slightly embarrassing poetic verses. Copious quantities of food and drink were consumed in an orgy of banqueting excess. And everywhere was heard the festive cry Yo! Saturnalia! — a kind of Roman equivalent of Happy holidays. Over time, the climax of Saturnalia merged with other December godfests, culminating in the Sol Invictus shindig on — you guessed it — December 25th. Theres a blow for church nativities. Christmas Day was invented by pagan party animals. Or was it? Scholars are still bickering about this. The Bible says a lot of things, but it doesnt mention a peep about when JESUS was born. It could have been the Fourth of July or Groundhog Day. Some experts claim that early Christians calculated a December 25th date by counting backwards from the date of the crucifiction. But if so they kept pretty quiet about it, as the birth of Jesus was not celebrated until after the Roman Empire became Christian. The early church was far more interested in celebrating Christs death than his birth. More to the point, we think, the church was horrified by Saturnalia and similar pagan celebrations. Far better for Jesus and Co to hijack the naughty Roman frolics and rebrand them. With the minimum of calendar fudging, December 25th miraculously transformed into Christs Mass, the birthday of Our Lord. Godchecker rating: Never mind Jesus — SATURNUS should be the King of Christmas. Discover more frolicking Roman gods and goddesses in our Classical Roman Mythology section. KOLEDA Festive Festival of the Winter Solstice If youre looking for an alternative to Christmas, this festive holiday is the real deal. It is an ancient winter solstice celebration involving VELES, dead spirits and the cyclical nature of time. There is a great deal of fun and entertainment, with dressing up, dancing and much bonhomie. Adolescents travel door-to-door greeting their neighbours, singing songs, receiving candy and pocketing gifts of small change. Which sounds a bit like Halloween to us, complete with the connotations of dead spirits returning to the mortal world. All treat and, so far as we can see, no tricks. Many cultures attributed the seasonal cycles of the sun with death and rebirth, particularly in places so far north as to experience a polar night. This is usually a cue for parties and frolics. There is an imprenetrable layer of obscurity covering the origins of the KOLEDA festival but it appears to be named after KOLJADA, the barely-attested goddess of time. Perhaps she was once an important deity, but it seems her festival became far more important than her. Everybody seems to have had so much fun partying that they forgot to pay her any attention. She became little more than a personification of the winter holidays. We are awaiting further info from our roving reporters in Poland. Perhaps after enough festive noggins inspiration will strike. In some traditions she represents the suns cycle from one year to the next. And in others she doesnt. There is even speculation that she may be named after the Roman Kalends, which would surely make her a deity of Calendars. Very useful. Whatever her exact origins, KOLJADAs winter festival was popular long before Christianity came along to gatecrash the party and borrow her ideas. So raise a glass to KOLJADA the next time Christmas rolls around. Godchecker rating: Bonhomie through obscurity. Find more intriguingly odd gods and goddesses in our Slavic Mythology section. ST NICHOLAS Patron saint of Christmas Born in the third century, Nicholas became Archbishop in Lycia (in modern-day Turkey). He also became Father Christmas. Oh yes, Santa Claus definitely exists. At least, he did. But you may have to abandon a few preconceptions. A true believer in Christian charity, Nick had a fondness for making anonymous donations. The romantic legend is that he secretly provided dowries to help three sisters whose father was destitute. Without money they would be forced into prostitution. Our Saint hit upon the scheme of clandestine gift-giving. He sneaked up a drainpipe on three consecutive nights and lobbed small bags of gold coins through a bedroom window. These landed neatly inside the girls stockings, which happened to be hanging up to dry over the fireplace. You can see where this is leading cant you? Come the morning: Oooh, look what Ive found in my stocking. Im rich! Just what I always wanted! Of course this was all done in the strictest secrecy. That is why you mustnt peep on Christmas Eve. It is said that the father peeped on the third night, jumped to the wrong conclusion, and blew the whistle on our hero. So much for Secret Santa. From stories such as this grew Nicholass reputation as a selfless gift-bringer. His legend grew in popularity. Any miracle of any sort was attributed to him. He restored a girl burnt to ashes back to life. He saved innocent victims by staying an executioners sword at the last second. He was so venerated that after his death he became part of the Holy Relic trade. His bones were found to give off an oily goo. This was very marketable. It turned out that Oil of Nicholas could cure anything. By miraculous chance it also smelt of fragrant roses — ideal as a perfume. All these miracles made him a fantastic symbol for Christianity. With a feast day in December and some gentle nudging by the church, its easy to see how St Nick gradually replaced WODEN or JOULUPUKKI as Europes Yuletide character of note. Old traditions blended together and St Nick became the definitive Father Christmas aka SINTERKLAAS, SANTA CLAUS, Pae Natal and so on. If you are worried about the red suit and the flying reindeer, do not panic. This is all to do with Finland and is sustained by another substance altogether — not oil, but hallucinatory fungi. Consult our entry on JOULUPUKKI. St Nicks reputation as a gift-bringer was assured, but perhaps his best gift was to the church itself. The little Orthodox Church in Myra enjoyed a massive boost from the pilgrim tourist trade. It was still reaping profits in 1087. But this caused jealously and concern to unscrupulous traders from elsewhere. One day, a gang of sixty-three mafia-style commandos sneaked into Myra harbor, smashed their way into the shrine and stole his sacred bones. They whipped them away to Bari in Italy — where they reside to this day inside the Basilica di San Nicola. There the bones of Santa Claus rested, more or less in peace, until modern times. In the 1950s, renovations to the crypt meant that Nicks bones had to be moved. The Vatican took the opportunity to call in a professor to X-ray and measure them. Forty years later a forensic scientist armed with pinhole cameras and the latest tech was given the opportunity for an up-to-date check. The resulting forensic reports have given us more than the bare bones of his appearance. Saint Nicholas was five foot six inches tall, thickset and short with a bulldog jaw and a broken nose. Not quite the jolly Ho Ho Ho appearance of his festive reputation. Physically he was more like a boxer. That makes perfect sense — at one point in his career he is reputed to have been imprisoned for biffing a bishop. He must have been as pugnacious as his mortal remains suggest. The good news is that beneath his rugged exterior he really did have a heart of gold. It was also found that some small fragments were missing — finger bones and so on which had apparently been sold off to raise cash. Sadly Nicks tomb is below sea level and his bones are slowly deteriorating. But the oil is still collected once a year (dont ask us how). Its diluted with seawater before going on sale to pilgrims. Oh yes, the trade still continues! Why not buy a small bottle of Santa Oil — the perfect gift this Christmas... Godchecker rating: The original and best, but you wouldnt want to sit on his knee. Meet more quirky saints, hermits and martyrs in our Christian Mythology dictionary. THE MANY FACES OF SANTA CLAUS Ho ho ho! The perfectly mixed-up Spirit of Christmas He needs no introduction. This jovial Christmas figure is familiar to all, in one form or another. From his home at the North Pole (or Lapland) Santas elves (or to be more accurate, gnomes) toil endlessly to replicate the latest in toys and games. Meanwhile he sits at his laptop and consults his modern oracles to see who has been naughty or nice. Must be a whole lot easier these days when he can just check Facebook. Is Project SANTA some secret initiative of the NSA? We are not completely sure how he gets around the world in one night so fast, but numerous organisations are able to track him online via satellite so he must be doing it somehow. Presumably his faster-than-light reindeer are fitted with rockets and dimensional stabilizers to prevent his impossible antics turning him into a festive black hole. The legend of Father Christmas is a wonderful example of mythological evolution. He is a Frankensteins mish-mash of myths, from ancient tales of mysterious winter goats to fleeting glimpses of Norse gods hunting across the sky. Almost every country has contrbuted a snippet to Santas DNA, and all have their own take on the myth. You might have heard the evil rumour that SANTA-CLAUS is really a creation of the Coca Cola Company. This is a lie. He just freelances there now and again. But its true that our modern image of Santa comes straight from old Coca Cola Christmas adverts. These were created by one Haddon Sundbolm, son of a Finnish immigrant, who based his designs upon Finnish folklore. In Finland the traditional winter figure is JOULUPUKKI, the Yule Goat. He seems to be a seasonal remix of WODEN, the top god of the Germanic pantheon, who was in the habit of riding his trusty goats across the sky. As you do. With the addition of a red leather suit and some white furry accessories, WODEN aka JOULUPUKKI brings gifts from his workshop in Lapland. Unlike his Americanised equivalent, JOULUPUKKI does not fly, as Finnish reindeer prefer their feet firmly on the frozen ground. Also, he knocks politely on the door and doesnt get involved with all that furtive nonsense with chimneys. Another big influence as the modern Santa evolved was the Dutch SINTERKLAAS, an interpretation of old Saint NICHOLAS with some rather unusual twists. For one thing, he had the bright idea to call Spain his home rather than the frozen North Pole. And instead of a legion of gnomes under his command, SINTERKLAAS has the Zwarte Pieten. Black Peters, as they are known, originated as SINTERKLAASs exotic oompa-loompa-like assistants. But by the early 20th Century, perhaps due to cultural tensions, they evolved into something of a racist caricature with a role reminiscent of KRAMPUS, the terrifying monster who stole naughty children. That idea has largely been excised in todays culturally sensitive times. Nowadays the Peters black faces are cunningly explained away as chimney soot. Such mythological rewriting is as old as the hills, but we cannot totally approve. We would much rather see a black Santa. Whether you are a believer in the jolly gift-giver or not, why not leave out a mince pie this Yuletide in recognition of one of the most enduringly mixed-up myths humanity has. Godchecker rating: Who says there aint no Sanity Clause? Find more throroughly modern gods and traditions in our new Modern Mythology section. THE END Thats all for this Christmas. And a very merry winter solstice to you all.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 05:37:30 +0000