As we plough towards Christmas Day like the big red Coca-Cola truck towards the soulless grins of saccharine-soaked children, I feel compelled to explore the different Christmas traditions from around the world and investigate their origins.
Let’s start off with the big fella.
Santa Claus himself, of course, originated in the Yemen as ‘walid almashkuk fih duhun almaeida’ or to transliterate, ‘Father of the Questionable Stomach Fat’, a legendary figure in the poems of Abu Bakr al-Aydarus. ‘Santa’ appears in one of his earlier poems entitled ‘alhikmat min akil alqarids aldaafi’ or ‘The Wisdom of Eating Warm Shrimp’, where he is described as bursting into a wedding and stealing all the seafood from the buffet. The character’s stomach becomes engorged – hence his Arabic name and his now traditional red appearance – and he consequently promises to bestow an extravagant gift upon anyone who can provide him with Pepto Bismal, and to anyone who works in the catering business a kick in the proverbials. The concept of a portly man rewarding good deeds with gifts and providing lumps in the sack for those who’ve been naughty essentially remain the same several centuries on and for most culture’s version of Kris Kringle.
In the Netherlands, however, rather than being led by eight reindeer, Santa’s sleigh is instead driven by six quantity surveyors called Smit. To distinguish between each one they are ascribed an adjective as an epithet to highlight either a physical or personality trait. There’s Dikke Smit, Wulpse Smit, Dronken Smit, Behaarde Smit, Gasvormige Smit, and Smit met Citroengeur. The song ‘Wulpse Smit kuste ooit Ronald Koeman’ by popular Dutch boy band ‘Stick ‘em Up’ reached number three in the Dutch charts back in 1989, and the scandalous lyrics about Saint Nick’s frisson with the former Barcelona and PSV player is only one way in which Santa’s beloved quantity surveyors have permeated Dutch popular culture.
A myriad of other Saint Nicholas exist in other societies too. In Thailand, Santa travels by pogo stick; in Austria he enters homes via the air-conditioning unit; and in Turkmenstan he’s wanted on fifteen charges of anti-state propaganda and illegal parking.
There are many traditions around the world that are Christmas-based yet have no link to Santa Claus. Up until recently, in Slovenia, when families gather on Christmas Eve, they gauge who is the warmest cousin by getting them to hold a popsicle betwixt their buttocks and seeing which is able to pull out a clean stick first. This ‘warm cousin’ or ‘topel bratranec’ is wrapped in lard and moss then placed outside all night as an offering to Santa’s reindeer, persuading them to alight there. If successful, Slovenian family awaken to find gifts festooning the Christmas tree and the ‘warm cousin’ covered in reindeer slobber. Tragically, the practice was outlawed in 1987 due to the number of deaths caused by hyperthermia or infected wounds from reindeer bites. Such deaths traditionally led to the victim being labelled a ‘lažni mlačni bratranec’ or ‘false tepid cousin’ and that branch of the family being ostracised until they’d all been exorcised by an Orthodox priest.
Of course, in Britain, before the Victorian Age and the influence of Prince Albert bringing across his big fir and Teutonic whimsies, we didn’t have many recognisable Christmas traditions. Yes, there was the Medieval habit of smearing goose fat on a coxswain every Christmas Eve, but not everybody had ready access to a coxswain and it soon became an elitist activity carried out only by Naval gentry in Portsmouth. Similarly, the ‘giving of the pork’ as referenced in Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ as part of ‘The Tale of the Pig-Botherer’ is no longer practiced outside of the Home Counties:
“When he hadde with care inserteth the beeste
He than taketh his leve, and wendeth forth his weye.” (line 847 ‘Tale of the Pig-Botherer’ – Chaucer)
And as for ‘The Marking of Jovial Kenneth’, not only is this no longer practiced as a Christmas tradition, it has been outlawed since 1794 for being blasphemous.
Alongside Prince Albert, filling the void of Christmas traditions in Britain was, quite famously, the great author Charles Dickens. Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Satan’s Napkin’ which was serialised in his ‘Narks and Norks’ magazine in late 1843, is where we get many of the festive features we now see as being traditionally Christmas. Features such as the randy chaffinch, decking the halls with boughs of Holly Willoughby, and giving a shiny sixpence to the first person called Lance you meet on St Stephen’s Day, all have their roots amongst those pages.
“’What’s to-day?’, cried Scrog, calling downward to a boy dressed in full randy chaffinch, grey beak protruding extravagantly from his noble prow.
‘To-day!’ replied the boy. ‘Why, St Stephen’s Day of course, and being as how I’m a Lance, I’m off to ingratiate myself upon the gentry before the cockerel has finished his a’calling.’
‘Lance?’ said Scrog unto the chaffinched boy, ‘Then you must have this shiny sixpence!’ And true to his word, Scrog threw down the sixpence to the grateful boy. ‘Why,’ he added unto himself, ‘Satan’s napkin was a’right! I’m being fleeced like a right Charlie!’ He whooped and hollered, quite overcome by the festive intoxication of daylight robbery.” (‘A Tale of Satan’s Napkin’ – Charle Dickens 1843)
Just across the North Sea, in Norway, the people of Oslo share presents not on Christmas morning but at 2:47pm on Christmas Eve in a tradition known as ‘Utålmodig Magnus’ or ‘Impatient Magnus’. The tradition originated when a nauseating retch of a child called Magnus blocked commuter traffic on the Lysaker Bridge by covering it with Lego until his parents allowed him to open his presents early. Norway has a traditionally liberal approach to its penal system, and promptly shot Magnus at dawn the next day to welcome in Christmas. Yet, in an ironic twist, every other child in the country is now allowed to prematurely unwrap gifts just before the Sun goes down on Christmas Eve.
Feathering a muskox is a tradition in Greenland, where the first person to successfully insert a Brünnich’s Guillemot’s feather into a muskox’s anus is crowned Prince or Princess of the ‘Violated Umingmag’ but isn’t invited round for pudding until they’ve washed their hands with bleach. Winners rarely put the achievement on their CVs though it does appear regularly on applications for art college.
In Belize, children are encouraged to sing light opera at a jaguar until it snaps in an apparent homage to the angelic host singing to the shepherds until they relented and agreed to visit the Holy Child. The tradition, apparently, has its origin in a catastrophic mistranslation. Like Winona Ryder. And veganism.
The plethora and sheer wealth of variety in Christmas traditions across our humble planet is a glorious reminder of the wonderful miasma that is the human condition. So whether your cousin is warm or merely tepid, it’s important to remember the family values associated with this time of year and revel in an event that unifies people around the globe.
Treatises of Gloria 