Pagan Christmas (13 page)

The rose smells like purity and virginity. Yet it is also an aphrodisiac, a substance that stimulates sensuality. Historians write that the Romans, in their most decadent times, used large quantities of roses to decorate halls, streets and sleeping rooms meters high (Fischer-Rizzi 1989 [reissued 2002], 142).

Rhododendron, Christmas Rose of the Himalayas

Rhododendron spp. L., Ericaceae (rhododendron)

Rhododendron arboreum Sm.

Rhododendron giganteum Forrest

The flowering rhododendron tree (Rhododendron arboreum) of the Himalayas. (Dhulikhel, Nepal, March 2003)

The name Rhododendron was introduced by Carl von Linné. It was taken from the Greek rhodos (rose) and dendron (tree) and thus translates literally as “rose tree.” Rhododendron is a member of the heather family (Ericaceae), which dates back to the time of the earliest known flowering plants of the Cretaceous period. The plant developed at least one million years ago.6

The first rhododendrons came from the area that is now Yünnan, Szechuan, and Tibet. Nearly all of today’s rhododendrons, including all species and varieties, may be derived from the Chinese species Rhododendron giganteum, a tree that can grow up to 25 meters (about 80 feet) tall (de Milleville 2002, 2). Thus the rhododendron is a gift from the Himalayas to the whole world. The Himalayas of today were once under the Sea of Thetys. During the continental shift, when the Himalayan mountains were rising up to the skies, Rhododendron arboreum was growing in Sikkim, Darjeeling, and Nepal. The plant thought so well of itself sitting there on the throne of the gods—on the roof of the world—that it became the floral emblem of Nepal. About thirty kinds of rhododendron may have ethnobotanical meaning to the Nepalis. The people carve everyday tools as well as ritual objects from its wood, commonly known as rosewood. Many species have medicinal applications and are used in healing incenses and beverage infusions (teas). The red-flowering Rhododendron arboreum, called “beautiful woman” in Nepali, is of particular ethnobotanical importance (de Milleville 2002, 59).

Like the poinsettia, the red and green rhododendron is radiant with traditional Christmas colors. No wonder then that the Yeti—the legendary Himalayan snowman—is associated in his home region with Father Christmas. This idea is not at all far-fetched. Because the Christmas feast is such an important ritual to them, the Nepalis logically identify the Yeti with Father Christmas. Conversely, for westerners, the Yeti is the best-known figure from the legends of the Himalayas. When Reinhold Messner searched for the Yeti in 1998, was he actually trying to follow a childhood dream and see Father Christmas face to face?

Yeti, disguised as Father Christmas, climbs to the heights of the Himalayas. (Christmas card from Kathmandu, Nepal, 2002)

Yeti, the Snow Being

Of course, the Yeti is not a physical animal,* as believed by Reinhold Messner, the mountaineer and conqueror of the Himalayas (1998). It is a shamanic being. It is the ban jhankri, the wild man or forest shaman: a figure from the shamanic universe, a spiritual being, a shamanic spirit (Müller-Ebeling et al., 2000).

*The Yeti is pictured and described in the Tibetan-Mongolian Anatomical Dictionary for Recognizing Numerous Illnesses (Vlček 1959): “The Wild Man is a being from the bear family, who lives in the vicinity of the mountains and looks very much like a man. He has great powers. His flesh is a good medicine against evil spirits that cause illness” (Vlček
et al.
1960, 153). Bear flesh is considered aphrodisiac (Rätsch and Müller-Ebeling 2003).

A MULTICULTURAL FATHER CHRISTMAS

The Tibetan Father Christmas sits in a wheelbarrow pulled by a white horse. He spins the Lamaistic prayer wheel, sending the blessing Om mani padme hum (the jewel in the lotus blossom) whirling in all directions. Instead of Christmas tree fairies, Christmas balls, and gold foil, Tibetans decorate the Vajarayan fir tree with prayer flags. The wind is supposed to scatter the prayers throughout the whole world to reach all compassionate beings.

The Christmas tree does not care about the religion, worldview, or ideology of the perspective from which it is adored. The main thing is that the tree is adored! The gesture of contemplation in the presence of the tree is what is important. If Christmas really is the feast of love, then all people are free to take their share of the feast. The form this takes—whether festive, satirical, comedic, or contemplative—does not matter.

Tibetans’ prayer wheels mark the pulse and the music of life, making the jewel in the lotus blossom shine and sparkle. Om is the beginning, and hum is the end and the beginning of om. All is cyclical. Christmas is the most prominent manifestation of the eternal return of the beautiful life that we all share. This is why all over the world, Christmas symbolizes the end of one year-long cycle and the awakening of a new year-long cycle.

On this note, we encounter a Father Christmas born of a westernized, Asian-Buddhist perspective. It is an amusing example of Tibetans “going native” with the image of Father Christmas, down to the typical traditional Bhotya dress of the highland Tibetans who live in Nepal. It is obvious from the symbol on his fur coat that this Father Christmas is no Christian believer. He wears the famous Buddhist sign of luck, long associated with the Tibetan region and culture. In English, such good luck symbols are described as auspicious, a word that comes from the Latin auspicium, meaning “observation of the sights.” One of the sights in Nepal is that of bearers carrying two baskets full of goods through the narrow, winding streets. These goods should be for sale, but Father Christmas makes an exception, or he would not be the mythical bringer of presents.

Tibetan prayer flags flying in the wind. (Swayambunath, Kathmandu, Nepal, March 2003)

Father Christmas dances with a Tibetan couple. (Christmas card from Kathmandu, Nepal, 2002)

The Tibetan Father Christmas brings the holy tree on a horse-drawn wheelbarrow. (Christmas card from Kathmandu, Nepal, 2002)

A Buddhist bearer of goods dressed as Father Christmas. (Christmas card from Kathmandu, Nepal, 2002)

Whether you worship Father Christmas as the charitable bishop St. Nicholas, Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, helper Ruprecht from Wotan’s wild army, or, as we suggest here, a Buddha figure bearing presents, this is an intercultural spiritual concept that comes from a common foundation. It is an obvious, age-old pattern that has been programmed into the genes of the human being. Whoever worships nature will receive many gifts, especially love. “Love life!” was the way my father Paul Rätsch addressed these great questions—he whom, in my childhood, dressed as Father Christmas to delight the children.

Rose of Jericho

Anastatica hierochuntica L., Brassicaceae

Selaginella lepidophylla (Hook. & Grev.) Spring, Selaginellaceae

Christmas flower (Turbina corymbosa). Known as jewel cord by the Maya, this bindwind serves as a psychedelic tunnel that connects the shaman with the cosmos. It is an umbilical cord connected with the birth of a new world. This is why in Mexico, the bindweeds are associated with the miracle of birth. Whoever tastes of the jewels of the cosmic umbilical cord sees a wonderful, fantastic world: the mystery of being, which includes the poles of life and death and exists only because of them.

A Psychedelic Christmas Flower

In Mexico, a snow-white flowering bindweed known as Christmas vine or Christmas flower (Turbina corymbosa, L. Raf., Convolvulaceae) was ritually used as an entheogen since pre-Spanish times by Mazatec, Zapotec, and Mayan shamans. In Aztec, it was called ololiuqui (that which causes spinning) and in Mayan, xtabentun (jewel cord). After ingesting the seeds, which contain a molecule similar to LSD, shamans can travel or fly in an alternative reality to find the cause of their patients’ illnesses and a way to heal them (Rätsch 1998a, 513ff).

In contemporary Mexico, this bindweed is used to induce trance. Strangely enough, in Spanish it known as flor de pascua, meaning Christmas flower, just like the poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, which is also called pascua, santa, and Santa Catarina. Does the Christmas flower bindweed open the way to Santa Claus?

Other names for this plant include bejuco de San Pedro (tendril of holy Peter), flor de la virgen (flower of the virgin) and hierba María (Mary’s herb).

OTHER NAMES

Auferstehungsblume, chérites panagiás (Greek, “hand of God’s mother”), Christ rose, doradilla (Mexican), id fatma bint e nabi (Algerian, “Fatima’s hand”), Jericho rose, kaff maryam (Arabic, “ball of Mary’s thumb”), Marienrose, rosa della Madonna, rosa di egitto (Italian), rose de Marie, rose hydrométrique (French), weihnachtsrose, weinrose

The crusaders considered this plant a symbol of the resurrection … because of its ability to shrivel up its dead husk and grow afresh from the wet seed.

GERMER 1986, 50

No Central European Christmas market would be complete without a stand selling examples of Christmas plants. Recently, the rose of Jericho has reappeared in old-time markets for customers who have a sense of reverence for the plant. This plant—an excellent example of a Christmas blossom miracle—is sold in the form of a dry nodule which, after being placed in water, quickly rewards one with a flower. The true rose of Jericho is a desert plant, Anastatica hierochuntica. The rose of Jericho offered at Christmas markets of today, however, is from an entirely different species of plant, Selaginella lepidophylla. This is a club moss from Mexico that is botanically unrelated to the true rose of Jericho, but provides a satisfactory blossom miracle in lieu of the original.

Rose of Jericho (Anastatica hierochuntica) grows in the desert regions of Morocco, southern Iran, and Egypt.7 This strange desert being is unrelated to true roses, but has much in common with their symbolic and mystical qualities. The stem—perfectly adapted to the desert climate—shrinks during drought to an ugly, dry nodule as big as a fist. This ball can be carried by the wind through the desert, just like a Texas tumbleweed. But as soon as it is put into water, it quickly becomes green and puts forth little white blossoms. Botanists describe this moisture-induced flowering as hygrochastic.

The “Rose from Jericho” (Rosa Hierichuntis) (Woodcut from Lonicerus 1679: 501)

The three sexes of the roses of Jericho (Rosa Hierichuntina) (Woodcut from Tabernaemontanus 1731: 835)

In the early modern era the ominous herb Amomum was regarded as belonging to the “Roses of Jericho.” The woodcut in the herb book of Tabernaemontanus (1731: 1336) is hard to define botanically.

In earlier times, the rose of Jericho was the center of an important Christmas miracle blossom ritual. On Christmas Eve, people would put an inconspicuous rose of Jericho nodule (a dried stem) in a basin of water beneath the Christmas tree. After it flowered, before New Year’s Eve, it was put back in a box to dry so that it could be enjoyed again the next year, with another miraculous flowering. Over time this famous Christmas miracle was forgotten.

Christian interpretations saw in the rose of Jericho a link to the Eucharist (the symbolic presence of the son of God in the consecrated bread and wine taken during the Communion sacrament). Accordingly, they saw the greening of the plant as the resurrection of Christ: “The so-called Rose of Jericho (Anastatica hierochuntica) that looks the whole year as though it were dead and dry unfolds out and has this delicious perfume, which is why it is also called the resurrection flower and is dedicated first of all to the Savior” (von Perger 1864, 56f).

The Coptic Christians of Egypt took this symbol for their own when they placed a rose of Jericho in the hands of a mummy, found in a grave dating from the fourth century CE at Antinoe. Crusaders and medieval pilgrims brought the strange botanical rarity from Jerusalem to Europe. They saw a clear analogy between the flowering of the rose of Jericho and Christmas, because “with Christ’s birth, the flower blossomed, during his crucifixion it closed its petals, and for the resurrection it opened its blossoms again” (Mercatante 1980, 121). There are numerous legends connecting the Virgin Mary with this plant’s emergence and indestructible constitution. The plant was purported to have sprung from a footprint left by the holy family on its flight to Egypt. Mary was believed to have blessed the plant and thus given it eternal life.

The first modern “fathers of botany” had the infamous rose of Jericho as a subject. It was first described by Lonicerus in 1679. Tabernaemontanus wrote about the “three generations” of the rose of Jericho: “The old women think a lot about this rose: And they get it/ that it takes all year/ outside of Christ night/ when in certain hours it opens/ if it is put in fresh water/ and then they have their intuition and their sense of it/ like later many things will happen/ which is wrong/ because put in the water/ it goes up every hour” (Tabernaemontanus 1731, 836).

MAGICAL AND FOLK USE

The use of the rose of Jericho in folk medicine goes back to the birth of Jesus:

… because when Holy Mary was climbing up in the dense darkness to the skull hill Golgotha, wherever she left a print of her hand, the rose of Jericho grew. While she was in labor, her suffering made her face and her lips moist with sweat, which was blessed with the rose of Jericho so it was easier to get through the hard hour (Seligmann 1996, 137f).

Muslims had a particular woman in mind when they named this plant. In various languages, its name means “hand of the blessed Fatima,” in honor of Fatima,8 the youngest daughter of the prophet Muhammed. From the nature of its miraculous blossoming, pregnant women read prophecies concerning delivery and birth, and special magic rituals were handed down. For an easy birth and faster healing, for example, a pregnant woman should drink the water in which the flower is blossoming. “The blossoming of the rose during the end period of the pregnancy [foretells] a happy birth. If it does not open, though, it is a bad augury for the woman who is giving birth” (Fabich 1991, 116f).

FALSE ROSES OF JERICHO

The roses of Jericho sold today in our Christmas markets come from a Mexican plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, which is a member of the club moss plant family (Selaginellaceae). In contemporary Mexico, the plant is called doradilla, “little gold-leafed one.” Other common names for the plant translate to “resurrection plant.” This plant, which can be found growing from Texas to El Salvador, is related to the northern fir moss or club moss (Lycopodium spp.). It was first described in an Aztec manuscript from 1552, which was translated into Latin by Juan Badiano. It appears with a picture under the name texochitl yamanqui (soft blossom that is born in the stone). This document noted that the plant “arouses sexual things” (de La Cruz 1996).