The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year (19 page)

reveals that his nickname of “Kris Kringle” is actually a corruption of the German
Christkindl
, the diminutive form of
Christkind
, the Christ Child. In parts of Europe, it is the Christ Child himself who delivers the presents and even

sets up the Christmas tree. More often that not, the part of the Christkind is played by a girl who makes no effort to

look like a boy but dresses in the veil and full white skirts of a bride. And the bride, as it happens, is one of the Yuletide goddess’ most enduring forms.

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150 Winter's Bride

The Christkind

In the Czech Republic, the Christ Child is never seen; he

arranges the gifts and sometimes also the tree behind

closed doors, then rings a tiny bell to signal his departure.

No matter how fast the children run after the sound of the bell, they won’t catch even a glimpse of his bare heels as he turns the corner. In Germany, however, a highly visible
Christkind
presides over Nuremberg’s Christmas Market in a pleated gold number that looks more life a cast-off from a Cecil B. DeMille set than anything a child might have worn in ancient Palestine.

The Nurnberger Christkind, who also sports a golden

crown and long yellow ringlets, is invariably played by a

teenage girl. This instance of female-to-male cross-dressing is no recent development; the earliest illustrations of the Christkind on “his” gift-giving rounds show a girl with fair, flowing hair, a white gown and a wreath of candles on her

head. The Christ Child as ethereal gift-giver can be traced back to the early seventeenth century. Though “he” would

find a permanent home in both Nuremberg and Counter-

Reformation Bohemia, he was born in Protestant Germany

as a reaction against the Catholic cult of St. Nicholas.

The early Christkind’s crown might also be made of

gold paper. In Alsace, she whitened her face with flour to help conceal her identity from the neighborhood children

and to effect a greater contrast between herself and her

companion, the black-faced Hans Trapp, as Knecht Rupre-

cht was known in those parts. She carried a bell in one

hand to announce their arrival.

Winter's Bride 151

In the very small town of Hallwil in the Seetal region

of north central Switzerland, the
Wienechts-Chindli
or

“Christmas Child,” and her colorful retinue continue to

make the rounds on Christmas Eve. The Wienechts-Chindli

has done the Alsatian Christkind one better: she appears

completely veiled, the generous layers of tulle held in place by a golden crown with tinsel streamers. In the 1800’s,

when the custom was more widespread throughout the

Seetal, this Christmas Child, like her invisible Czech counterpart, delivered the Christmas tree to the house. Now her visit is the occasion for lighting the candles on its branches.

In her present form, the Christmas Child looks like a

cross between a Western-style bride and an Afghan princess.

She is usually about thirteen years old, as are her “maids”

who are always six in number. You can’t expect bridesmaids to wear the same thing year after year, and their costumes have undergone subtle changes over time. In the 1800’s,

the maids, like the Christmas Child, dressed in white, but in the first half of the twentieth century, they switched to their Sunday best. After about 1950, they started to dress all alike, and they now appear in hooded cloaks of dusty

rose. They carry lanterns and baskets of presents, singing carols at each house they visit. Their faces uncovered, they act as intermediaries between the mortal children of the

household and the enigmatic Christmas Child whose only

greeting is a touch of her white-gloved hand. Unlike their early modern precursors, the ghostly, buzzing
Salige Fräuleins
or “Blessed Young Ladies” who consumed the essence of foods left out for them at night, the Christmas Child and her attendants accept no offerings in return.

152 Winter's Bride

Barborka

St. Barbara was a third century Syrian Christian martyr

whose feast was celebrated on December 4. In order to have absolute control over the young Barbara, her father, Dioscorus, kept her on the top floor of an ivory tower, which is why medieval artists often portrayed her hefting an ornate little replica of her prison. When Barbara converted to the Christian faith, her father hit the tower roof, pulled out his sword and would have slain his daughter on the spot if God had not chosen that moment to split the tower in half with a bolt of lightning, allowing the girl to leap out and flee to the mountains.

Betrayed by one of the shepherds among whom she

took refuge, Barbara was subsequently imprisoned, tor-

tured and eventually beheaded on December 4 by none

other than Dioscorus. Between Barbara’s capture and

death, she had just enough time to work a minor horti-

cultural miracle which is still celebrated today. When she was taken from the mountains, a twig from a cherry tree

became caught in her skirts and remained there even when

she was thrown in the dungeon. Barbara tended the twig

in secret, as she had her Christian faith, causing it to burst into bloom in the darkness of her cell. This is the explanation given for the “Barbara branches” which young women

cut on December 4 and force into bloom by Christmas Eve.

These days, Germans use the blossoming
Barbarazweigen

mostly for decorative purposes.

In Bohemia, cuttings of the sour or morello cherry were

fortune-telling tools. The process varied: you could sim-

ply wait and see if your branch bloomed, and if it did, you
Winter's Bride 153

would be married within a year and a day. If there were

more than one nubile girl in the household, the one whose

branch bloomed first would be the first to marry. Or, you

could cut several twigs and label each with the name of a

different boy. The boy whose branch bloomed first was the

one whom you would marry. In Czech, such a branch is

known as a
Barborka
(plural,
Barborky
) or “little Barbara.”

At dusk on the eve of St. Barbara’s Day, a whole tribe of

Barborky took to the streets. These were no twigs but actual girls. Beneath a chaplet of leaves or flowers, the Barborka was sometimes masked, sometimes veiled, but more often

she simply let her long hair hang in her face. If she hap-

pened not to have an abundance of hair, or if it were a boy taking over the role, then “she” could make a wig of tow or the golden “wavy hair grass” (
Avenella flexuosa
) that grew in the meadows. Since St. Barbara died a virgin, the flowing hair may be a token of her refusal to marry the man of her father’s choosing, but there the Barborka’s resemblance to the martyr ends.

The Barborka was unique to Central Bohemia, and

her costume varied from village to village. She might wear black dress, shoes and stockings in keeping with the more

frightful aspect of what Leopold Kretzenbacher in his 1959

work,
Santa Lucia und die Lutzelfrau
, has termed the
Mit-twinter Frau
or “Midwinter Woman,” an unpleasant and unabashedly heathen figure who began putting in appearances throughout Europe at this time of year. While in

black, the Barborka was more of a Midwinter Witch. Once

a female leader of the Wild Hunt, this diminished goddess

154 Winter's Bride

later went about on foot, her hair hanging down in tangles instead of streaming out behind her.

The Midwinter Witch might also be arrayed in white,

and when springtime came, her number was up. In Slavic

lands, she was put to death under many names: Marzana,

Morena, Morana. She could be made of straw, birch or

braided hemp. The Sorbs, a Slavic minority of eastern Ger-

many, dressed theirs in a white shirt provided by the household in which a death had most recently occurred, while

the bride who had most recently been married donated her

veil to complete the scarecrow’s costume. After it had been ritually stoned, this “Winter’s Bride” was drowned in the

nearest body of water. As her broken bits passed on down-

stream, they took Old Man Winter with them, allowing

spring to come.

But at Advent, the springtime is still a long way away.

The Midwinter Witch is just finding her stride and she will grow ever fiercer as she speeds toward her own feast day at Epiphany (January 6). Since the earliest days of the Church, efforts were made to subdue or at least to prettify the Midwinter Witch. On St. Barbara’s Eve she was re-christened in honor of the martyr. She was also placed in the vanguard of Svatý Mikuláš, the Czech version of the gift-giving St. Nicholas. After the Counter-Reformation, which lasted from

1542 until 1648, the Barborka began to resemble the Christ Child who now delivered the presents on Christmas Eve. In

her heyday around the end of the nineteenth century, the

Barborka wore a blue or scarlet sash atop a crisp white lace-trimmed dress under which sprouted an abundance of pet-

ticoats. The sash was tied on her left side, corresponding
Winter's Bride 155

to her “basket hand.” (In those pockets where the tradition survives, white remains the color of choice for the dress, and the red sash has won out over the blue.) In Barborka’s right hand she carried a broom or wicker carpet beater.

The Barborky, who usually traveled in batches, did not

ring the doorbell but struck the windows with their clean-

ing implements. Crossing the threshold, they announced

that they had come all the way from the tiny village of Dra-zic in South Bohemia to determine whether or not there

were any good children in the house. If not, Barborka

would swat the children with her broom or beater and let

St. Nicholas know that there was no point in stopping when he passed through on the night of December 5. Good children received fruits and candies from the basket. Then, her message delivered, Barborka departed to bang on the windows of the next house.

Lucia

Yet another bride-like figure persists in the Swedish Lucia.

Before the radical adjustments made to the calendar in

the sixteenth century, the longest night of the year fell, or was supposed to fall, on December 13. English poet John

Donne referred to St. Lucy’s Day as “Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight.” Never a big deal in England, the feast of Santa Lucia is one of the most important celebrations

of the year in Sweden, whose unique observance of the day

has spread to Norway, Finland, Denmark and the Swed-

ish communities of North America, each of which elects its own “official” Lucia.

156 Winter's Bride

By the 1700’s, the Swedish Lucia had started taking fash-

ion hints from the Lutheran Christkind. Since the early

twentieth century, the standard Lucia costume has been a

long white dress like a nightgown, a wide red ribbon tied

at the waist and a crown of at least six white tapers set in a wreath of lingonberry sprigs, though bay or box will do as long as the greens are fresh. (A wet handkerchief stretched over the top of the head will also help prevent the spread of flames without spoiling the effect.) A chandelier-like metal crown, not unlike the traditional Nordic bridal crown, is

also acceptable as are battery-powered candles if the Lucia is very small. Early Lucias tended to wear puffier gowns, in keeping with the fashions of the times, and the sash might be blue or draped across the chest. “Lucia 1908,” a painting by Carl Larsson, in which he depicts one of his daughters

in what appears to be an actual nightgown, may have led to the simplified design.

The third century St. Lucy was another virginal Chris-

tian martyr whose story does not differ much from St.

Barbara’s. Before her demise, St. Lucy was able to make herself useful by handing out gifts of bread to the poor which is the reason given why Swedish household and office

Lucias deliver coffee, pepper cookies and saffron buns

on the morning of December 13. Finland elected its first

national Lucia in 1930, but the old Finnish stave calendar had already marked the date with the image of a candle.

Despite the fact that Iceland had two churches dedicated to St. Lucy before the rest of Scandinavia had any, there were no Icelandic Lucias until 1954, and even then they were celebrated only by those Icelanders who had some connection

Winter's Bride 157

to Sweden. In Denmark, where
Lussinatt
used to be a night of augury, the tradition dates only to 1944, the year King Christian X was taken prisoner by the Nazis and the country began to experience its own deep midnight. Dressed in

white, with crowns of tinsel or lighted candles, the Danish Lucias appear on the night of the twelfth rather than the

morning of the thirteenth as in Sweden. On this erstwhile

darkest night of the year, it is the Danish Lucias’ mission to bring a little sparkle to nursing homes, hospitals and wherever else there is a desperate need to dispel winter’s gloom.

There are plenty of supporting roles in a Swedish Lucia

procession. Lucia’s maids carry candles while star boys wear tall pointed hats adorned with foil stars and sing their own set of songs in addition to the obligatory, “Santa Lucia.”

There may even be a few Christmas elves bearing lanterns.

Since 2008, boys have been fighting for the right to wear

their schools’ Lucia crowns, and girls to act as star boys, both with limited success.35 In response to those who insist that Lucia must be a girl with flowing blonde hair, I would point to the old-fashioned “Lussi-boys,” university students who strolled around singing carols to earn their Christmas pocket money, and to the now vanished West Gotland practice of placing the candle crown on the farm’s best cow.