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A History of Yule & Santa Claus
Yule Tidings: Santa Claus Was Real
By High Priestess Stephanie Donald
A few years ago Bill O’Reilly of Fox News began spewing the most venomous garbage about how Christmas was under attack and that Christians everywhere should be defending the sanctity of the birth of Christ!
I find this situation more than amusing considering that what O’Reilly and the Christians are defending is their rights to claim for their own a holiday that has for thousands of years been a Pagan holiday and was usurped by the Roman Catholic Church in order to entice more Pagans to convert to Christianity. The whole idea that their “Christmas” is under attack is so absurd that if it weren't so absolutely ridiculous that those of us who are Wiccan/Pagan would either have to laugh or cry.
The Christians hold dear a number of Pagan traditions during this holiday season that have absolutely nothing to do with Christ, even given that theological scholars have shown that Christ was born in July and not December, which include the lighted evergreen tree, exchanging of gifts, big feasts and celebrations and my favorite; Santa Claus.
Although the name of Santa Claus has changed through lore and intent through the centuries his intent was always Pagan and always will be Pagan. No amount of Christianization can pervert his figure from it’s original intent and most likely it was taken from one or more real people who kept the metaphor alive through possibly more than one millennia.
Prior to the 7th century A.D. the figure of “Santa Claus” is probably taken from the Germanic figure of the God Odin and the legend of his Solstice hunting party through the sky on his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir (eight-legged horse or eight tiny reindeer, far too similar to even speculate). On the night of the Winter Solstice the children would fill their boots up with carrots and hay so that Sleipnir would be able to have something to eat on the hunt and in gratitude Odin would leave gifts behind in place of the snacks for his horse. From that we get the stockings by the fireplace in modern times.
During the years when the press was on from the Roman-Catholic Church to convert Pagans there was no such thing as “Christmas” and in fact many of the modern Christian holidays were considered to be heretical to Christian doctrine. The problem was that there were still many Pagans in the world and the more tightly the Papacy declared festivals and holidays to be heretical the more potential converts they were losing. During the turning point of Rome during the 14th century the internal motto apparently became “if you can't beat them join them and if you can't join them kill them”. It was during that period of time that the betrayal of the Knights of Templar happened, the Malleus Maleficarum was written and imposed on women worldwide and the incorporation of two most important Pagan holidays were taken in by Rome in an effort to stamp out Paganism once and for all: Yule and May Day.
May Day was the Pagan festival of spring and the first harvest. Often it was considered a celebration of unions between lovers, the conception of children and the resurrection of life after the death of winter. It isn't hard to imagine the Pope sitting in the Vatican and scratching his beard considered the resurrection of life from winter and the resurrection of Christ in legend to be so close that the two should be married in order to bind Paganism and Christianity in intent in his mind, anyway. Call is Easter (actually another theft from Paganism of the Goddess Oester or Celtic Goddess of fertility).
Yule was much more puzzling and troubling for the tyrants in Rome to overcome. All Christian theologians knew and had agreed since the Council of Nicaea that Christ was born in what is on the modern calendar the month of July. Nothing regarding the observation of Christ’s birth involved snow, gifts (other than the gift to man of his supposed “son”), lighted trees or festivals to observe his birth and especially not at the Winter Solstice but this was not a festival that Pagans were willing to easily give up.
With a whole lot of slashing and burning, the legend of the three wise men was quickly written into the birth of Christ legend, the tree was meant to symbolize the light of God and it was perfectly okay to observe the birth of the son of God in December and it would be called Christ’s Mass. However, Odin was not invited to the party. It was pretty easy to rewrite Christianity since only about 1% of the population could actually read at this point.
This Papal decree still angered many Pagans who decided to keep the old ways alive and through many small villages they still observed the traditional Pagan ways with Odin making his Solstice rounds usually being chased by a legion of the Vatican Army trying to arrest him for heresy. No matter how hard they tried the tradition still endured until in the 15th century a Roman Catholic Bishop of Turkey by the name of Nicholas began handing out gifts to the children every Christ’s Mass going door-to-door. He was a plump fellow with a big flowing beard who wore the red hat and red robes of the Bishop. In the 17th century the Vatican declared him St. Nicholas. He had single-handedly wrestled the problem of Odin over to the church by twisting the legend ever so slightly to their favor.
Meanwhile, the keepers of the old faith had to run from the Vatican guard and they began moving north to evade them to ever more cold and desolate lands which probably gave birth to the legend of Santa Claus moving to the North Pole. In either event, the legend continues, albeit changed, with the Pagan overtones intact to this day.
From Down The Lane, Volume 10, Issue 10.
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