Santa Claus

by Gerry Bowler

  Most other American cards of the First World War cast Santa Claus in his familiar role of provider, even if he had to resort to new-fangled technology, including the biplane, in order to supply the massive needs of the troops overseas. When Uncle Sam decides to go to war, he calls upon Santa to enlist in the American cause as well and sends him “an army suit, / An airplane and maps of an airplane route.” Upon his arrival in France, Generals Haig, Foch, and Pershing* offer him the help of a big brass band (What can they have been thinking? If this was characteristic of the brain power of Allied leadership, little wonder the war lasted four years), but Santa wisely tells them he works best alone. He and his machine race all across France and Belgium on Christmas Eve, despite a foolish experiment at landing his craft on a European roof:

  He picked out a house-top away to the west,

  Said, “That’s where I stop, at least do my best.”

  He slowed down his engine on coming quite near,

  Put forth every effort – but airplanes are queer.

  It rocked and it dipped on its way toward the ground,

  Then came a jar, and a harsh scraping sound,

  The bricks of the chimney went down with a crash,

  And hearing the noise, someone threw up the sash.

  With a turn of the wheel to the left and the right,

  The airplane was free to continue its flight,

  But Old Santa knew ’twas a very close call,

  Airplanes on housetops are no good at all.

  So he threw out his bundles, ’twas the best he could do,

  But, oh, how he longed for the old chimney flue;

  The children of Belgium he found very dear,

  The night was far spent and the morning was near.

  The Great War brought America decisively into European affairs, and as well as their doughboys and dollar there was Santa Claus. Postwar Britain and France grew enchanted with the jolly gift-bringer, who became an increasingly common fixture in the department stores of Paris and London and in the December dreams of children.

  In 1933, the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. Much of the party’s leadership was anti-Christian, particularly anti-Catholic; some were adherents of a Teutonic neopaganism, and all viewed Christianity as an ideological threat that could pose a barrier to their totalitarian ambitions. In ruling a country whose population was overwhelmingly Christian in upbringing, Nazis had to tread carefully as they sought to replace its traditional festivals. At first Nazi and Christian elements coexisted as in the case of a 1933 Christmas pageant in Berlin where the storm-troopers’ “Horst Wessel Song” was sung along with more traditional Christmas carols and a troop of brown-shirted SA men (the Sturmabteilung) accompanied the Holy Family onto the podium. A Nazi Christmas film of 1933 included a Nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus beneath a portrait of Adolf Hitler and surrounded by Teutonic knights and SA troopers. By the late 1930s, the black-shirted Nazi SS elite was openly promoting a pagan approach to the season for the families of its men and advocating public ceremonies such as “bringing home the fire” that would displace traditional German Christian practices at Christmastime. “Jul” (“Yule”) would replace “Weihnachten” as the name of the season*, the “Child of Light” would replace the Christ child, Wotan’s Day would replace St. Nicholas Day, and the emphasis would be on the winter solstice rather than on the birth of Christ. Carols and Nativity plays were banned from German schools and the Gestapo arrested Protestant pastors who denounced the rise of neopagan practices. Children in state orphanages sang a Nazi version of the beloved German carol “Silent Night,” in which Adolf Hitler took the place of the Christian God and Christ child.

  Even after hostilities broke out in 1939 and Germany was involved in total war, the Nazi campaign against a Christian Christmas was waged in state, party, and army publications meant for the troops, their families, and the public. Party propaganda experts annually published a book that was directed to German mothers to help plan activities for the month of December. Here there is no mention of the Nativity, the Holy Family, or traditional Christian observances of Advent – instead a winter solstice symbol on the cover gives a clue to the sort of social changes the Nazis were trying to achieve. The book explained the pagan runes, including the swastika, that could be made to decorate the home and festive tree. The traditional Santa Claus figure, der Weihnachtsmann, or Saint Nicholas, is replaced by Knecht Ruprecht, “Ruprecht the Servant,” who rides about on a grey or white horse. Once a shaggy figure of the German backwoods, the Nazis identified Knecht Ruprecht with the Nordic god Wotan, who travelled through the winter sky, leaving presents and announcing the winter solstice. Housewives were told that the image of this “Rider on the White Horse” could also be used to decorate trees or baked in pastry form. On December 6, now Wotan’s Day, German children should be taught about this one-eyed, white-bearded god and encouraged to leave out plates or shoes on the windowsill where in the morning they will find apples, nuts, and cookies.

  Other Nazi publications meant for the armed forces and their families are full of Christmas stories and songs, including a heartwarming tale of Adolf Hitler’s Christmas in his jail cell where he had spent time during the 1920s for a failed coup attempt. They contain very little that can be construed as Christian content and they too evicted Saint Nicholas from his usual spot on the calendar, referring to December 6 as Ruprechtstag. Children were told that the gift-bringer’s sack would not bring much during the war years as the brave soldiers had first call on his resources (an echo of General Lee and Santa Claus from an earlier war on a different continent), but they might expect cookies baked in symbolic shapes. This secularization, or perhaps paganization, of the Christmas season did not go unnoticed by the troops, but critics were told that this was the official line the army and the party had agreed upon.

  Aside from using Santa Claus to persuade Germany’s children that it was patriotic not to expect too much in the way of Christmas presents, Nazis found little employment for him in the war effort. To be sure, he showed up at the occasional military banquet and appeared on a few Christmas cards but when compared with his abundant presence among the Christmas material of Germany’s western enemies, his absence is surprising. (The image of Adolf Hitler appeared on American and British Christmas cards far more often than in Germany, but only in a mocking way, while fellow dictators Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin chose to be associated with their nations’ magical gift-bringers*. Hitler’s reluctance to appear in a Christmas guise was probably a calculated strategy.)

  The choice of Nazi Christmas symbology may be partly explained by their anti-Christian ideology: Saint Nicholas, the Christ child, and angels are clearly incompatible with a revival of Teutonic paganism and partly by the war situation itself. After early successes on both the western and eastern fronts, German armies found themselves in serious trouble after 1941: defeats in North Africa, the loss of Stalingrad and the gradual collapse of the Russian front, and the Allied invasion of Italy and France meant that themes of jolliness and celebration at Christmas gave way to those of grim determination and yearning for home.

  Christmas cards and other printed material of the last three Nazi Christmases reveal much about the state of mind of the army and the civilian population. Images increasingly concentrated on the grim determination to defend the Fatherland – the picture most frequently appearing in German Second World War Christmas cards of troops at the front is that of the single sentry, outdoors in the wind and snow, standing on guard for those at home. Nazi propagandists, hoping to inspire Germans to a never-say-die spirit, morbidly attempted to turn Christmas away from a celebration of the Nativity of Christ to a day of solemn remembrance for the war dead. Families were instructed to create a little altar with a picture of the fallen hero, to recite poems in honour of the dead, the family, and the Führer, and to light candles on Christmas Eve for the slain. In the paganized Advent calendar, the entry for December 24 is a poem that
begins “Einmal im Jahr, in der heligen Nacht, / verlassen die toten Soldaten die Wacht” (“Once a year on the Holy Night, dead soldiers leave their watch”) and for a time return to their old homes for a look at the tree and the candles and to hear the living sing Christmas songs. As they leave, the soldiers place their ghostly hands on the heads of the children and whisper that they died for them and Germany.

  It is difficult to see how Santa Claus could have been useful in such a setting and in such a national frame of mind. His benevolence, mirth, and bounty were extremely ill suited to a country whose once-conquering armies were being driven back upon its own borders, whose cities were aflame in nightly bombings, and that awaited the vengeance it had provoked in the hearts of its enemies. In the end we can say that Christmas proved a far more comfortable ally for the German war effort of 1914–18 than that of 1939–45. A people who had raised up the ghost of Wotan had no place for Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, or the Christ child.

  In Nazi-occupied Norway, Christmas was a time when people felt the wartime restrictions and shortages particularly keenly. Customary holiday foods such as cheese, oranges, and pork were impossible to find; other necessities such as margarine, bread, and milk were in short supply. Nevertheless, the Norwegians clearly expressed their Christmas message in the light of oppression by German forces and their Quisling collaborators. They displayed pictures of an exiled royal family, with the national flag and defiant graffiti. Cleverest was the use of traditional Norwegian Christmas symbols, especially the red-capped elf known as the nisse, who haunted house and barn but who had become over time a lovable and comic figure of the season. Artists and Christmas-card manufacturers made this once-pagan sprite who became the country’s magical gift-bringer into a nationalist icon of resistance that prompted Nazi occupiers to outlaw the elf and his red cap and to mandate the death penalty for their use.

  In the free countries of the Western alliance, Christmas was also a challenge: there were shortages of food in Britain, and rationing in North America affected materials that might in happier times have been used to make toys or decorate the tree, but there were a number of ways in which Santa Claus made himself useful to the Allied war effort. Probably the most common task he undertook was to reassure people that Christmas could be celebrated during wartime, perhaps simply, but at least with a good conscience. The 1940 equivalent of the post–9/11 cry “we must not let the terrorists win” was a Canadian Christmas card with Santa Claus, the Union Jack, and warplanes on the cover. Inside, the encouraging message was: “Here on the home front, / Hang up the holly. / One way to win this war – / Keep Christmas jolly.” Winston Churchill’s Christmas Eve 1941 address to the American people spoke of the role that Santa played in this frame of mind: “Here then for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world, should be a brightly lighted island of happiness and peace. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter; let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their thoughts; let us share to the full in their unstinted pleasure, before we turn again to the stern tasks in the year that lies before us.” At the front, soldiers and sailors tried to recreate the normal Christmas in unreal situations, erecting makeshift Christmas trees, eating improvised holiday meals, and invoking Santa Claus in humorous skits*, in drawing his picture on their V-mail letters home, or half-seriously setting out stockings in their barracks on Christmas Eve. If Santa Claus was around, things must not be too bad.

  Conversely, Santa was also a symbol of the abnormal Christmas, and his message was clear: if Santa Claus has to change, then everybody else has to pitch in too. His face appeared on posters urging people not to telephone long distance during the Christmas holidays and to leave the lines open for military purposes; he instructed them in ways to make rationed food go further and how to meet overseas mailing deadlines. In a 1944 interview with a Canadian newspaper, Santa Claus explained to children that for the duration of the war he was unable to deliver toys made of metal, which was, of course, needed for the war effort. However, he promised that, after the war had ended, he would resume his accustomed toy-giving with an even bigger selection.

  By this time Santa Claus had enjoyed a long career as a salesman of commercial items, but now he was being asked to lead the campaign to sell war bonds. In doing so, he brilliantly succeeded in transforming the nature of Christmas gift-giving: instead of purchasing things for one’s loved ones, gifts should be given to one’s country. A 1942 booklet entitled “A Merry Christmas to a Young American” showed Uncle Sam and Santa Claus in a mutual salute. Inside was the caption “Down with Hirohito, / With Adolf and Benito … / Let’s give their plans a ‘Veto’ / With Savings Bonds and Stamps! / For Uncle Sam’s relying / On US to ‘keep ’em flying’ / So buy and KEEP ON BUYING / Till we’ve proved ourselves the CHAMPS!” Caricatures of enemy leaders decorated the spaces where the savings stamps were to be glued, and mottoes urged buyers to “Lick Hitler,” “Trap the Jap,” “Paste the Paperhanger” (a reference to the popular belief that Adolf Hitler had once worked in the home-decorating industry), “Muzzle Mussolini,” “Give it to Goering,” and “Axe the Axis.” Another savings bond booklet captioned “Let’s Stamp Out the Dictators!” depicts Santa flashing a V-for-Victory sign as Uncle Sam rudely puts the boot to the trio of totalitarians: Mussolini, Tojo*, and Hitler. On similar cards in Canada, Santa Claus assured buyers of war bonds that this form of giving was the surest way to a stable peace.

  During the Second World War, Santa Claus became even more of a fighting man; not content merely to deliver supplies or Christmas treats to his boys, just as he had done in previous conflicts, this time around he is increasingly busy laying a licking on the enemies of democracy. In a number of advertisements (the Interwoven sock ad is the most famous), he can be seen smiting the bad guys hip and thigh. Harsh-faced and determined, Santa’s picture also appears on the nose of Allied bombers; grimly ironic Christmas greetings from him are painted on bombs to be dropped on Nazi cities. He wears the uniform of different Allied nationalities and service branches; his reindeer team pulls him along, not in a harmless sleigh full of toys but a P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft or a Sherman tank.

  As Allied armies advanced around the world, the North American version of Santa Claus became a symbol of generosity to the liberated and the conquered. In Britain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and, eventually, Germany, Italy, and Japan, troops dressed as Santa dispensed food and toys to the children of war-ravaged Europe and Asia on his behalf. In many cases this was their first exposure to the North American version of the gift-bringer, and it served to make him a much more important figure than he had been before the war, further hastening the disappearance of local characters and threatening the existence of his own spiritual ancestors such as Sinterklaas or Pelznichol. A French sociologist has said that Santa Claus came to Europe in the suitcase of the Marshall Plan.

  Santa Claus continued to go hand in hand with American military activity for the remainder of the twentieth century – and he will see duty in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf – as a symbol of home to the troops and generosity to local children.

  Opposing armies have long used psychological propaganda against each other – false stories have been spread, false newspapers published, counterfeit money and ration cards distributed, and seductive broadcasts made to weaken morale. Sometimes this is aimed at the general population of the enemy homeland; sometimes it is aimed at the enemy’s military, urging them to surrender or to be suspicious of their officers. During the Second World War, both Allied and Axis powers practised these black arts to demoralize their foes. Inevitably, Christmas was used as a means of reaching the hearts of one’s opponents, touching on childhood memories and the desire to be home. German propagandists designed fake Christmas cards and wrote on them bogus messages from homesick wives and sweethearts – often the cards featured a picture of a scantily clad young woman, the better to ensure they were picked up and read. The Communist Chinese followed a similar policy during thei
r intervention in the Korean War, but it was the National Liberation Front of Vietnam – the Viet Cong – who brought Santa Claus into this dirty business. Was he in fact a double agent? From presses in North Vietnam, a series of Christmas cards bearing the image of Santa were scattered in areas where they might be picked up by American servicemen. Bearing the imprimatur of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, they used Santa as a means of disarming resistance to the subversive message these cards bore: “End the War!”, “Get Out Now!”, and “Go Home Now Alive!”

  Though these cards had crude images (Santa’s pack was a European-style wicker basket that never saw the North Pole) and their texts were phrased in ways that betrayed a writer not entirely comfortable with the English language, their message was a shrewd one. Christmas did matter to young men brought up in America and fighting far from home; they longed for its sights and smells and a thousand associations with better times, and as the enemies of the United States knew, Santa Claus was inextricably woven into that matrix of memories – a willing volunteer at home and at the front, Santa Claus was packed into the equipment of every American serviceman.

  Two final images of Santa Claus and war. In December 2003, the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry of the American forces occupying Iraq posted a picture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, taken shortly after he was pulled in a dishevelled state from his underground den, which had been altered to resemble Santa Claus – nose reddened, shaggy beard whitened, and a red cap with a white pompom crowning his disconsolate features. The cover of a New Yorker magazine in late 2004, entitled “In the Shadow,” portrays a busy street of Christmas shoppers. Ringing the bell as if soliciting for a charity kettle is an emaciated Santa Claus, looking ominously like arch-terrorist Osama Bin Laden scanning the streets of the metropolis to which he had once brought terror. Both of these Santa imitations tell us a good deal about what we think of him while portraying him in ways that he is not. He is not a mass murderer, either on the run plotting further evil or dragged out of the earth to face justice; he is not defeated nor still malevolent; he is trustworthy, loving, and giving. By morphing the face of evil with the universal standard of goodness, we assert the power of Santa Claus to lighten our hearts in even the darkest circumstance.