Pagan Christmas (21 page)

Baked goods containing poppy seeds played an important and colorful role in the Christmas folk traditions of old Germany:

At Christmastime, especially in eastern Germany, people eat baked poppy goods and cake. Even the dog gets three poppy muffins on Christmas Eve, to grow strong. The chickens get poppy seed; depending on however many they eat, they will produce that many eggs. To eat poppy on Christmas Eve brings lots of money… . On Christmas Eve, a girl who yearns to know where her future bridegroom will come from breaks open a poppy biscuit, gives it to the dog, and drives him out of the yard. Her bridegroom will come from whichever direction the dog jumps first. Or the girl can throw poppy seeds over her head before going to bed, so that she can see her beloved in her dream… . Poppy seeds placed in front of the door keeps the witch from the entry because she must count them all… . Poppy seeds must be sown on Christmas Eve, three days before, or on a Wednesday [Day of Wotan]! And you must keep silent, or birds will eat the poppy seeds (Pieper 1998, 20).

One word of caution: “To eat poppy on Christmas Eve is supposed to bring a lot of money, but to eat too much poppy is supposed to make you stupid!” (Hiller 1989, 191).

Flax and Hemp

Linum usitatissimum L., Linaceae (flax, flaxseed)

Cannabis sativa L., Cannabaceae (hemp, marijuana)

The gods gave humans hemp in an act of charity, so that they could have illumination, lose fear, and maintain their sexual desire.

RAJA VALABHA, SANSKRIT TEXTS, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Flax and hemp both have a long history of association with Christmas, particularly because of their magical uses in fertility rituals and love magic. Both plants are valued as food and have also been used by farmers to ensure the fertility of the fields in the coming year. In the case of flaxseed, careful observation of nature, a lot of experience, and a little bit of mythology helped farmers with a steady hand earn a living:

Icicles tell the farmer the best time to sow flax.

In the pine tree mountains (fichtelgebirge), icicles on house roofs were considered an omen that the flax would prosper. If the icicles were long and unsegmented in December, you were supposed to sow the flax in early spring. If they were at their most beautiful in January, you should sow in mid-spring; if they were longest in February, one should choose a late sowing time. If the icicles were segmented, the flax would grow the same way. Flowering flax wards off sorcery, and the flowers can enchant a whole field in such a way that, even during peaceful weather, it can seem like streaming water (von Perger 1864, 193).

Flax is the oldest cultivated plant in Europe and one of the most important sources of fabric, oil, and other products. For ages, flax has been known as a love potion. Sometimes flax played a role in love magic spells. For example, nine flax flowers woven with nine flax threads was supposed to create a binding spell of compulsive love that men could not resist. Flax has long been valued as a food, but perhaps more important, it has always carried a touch of magic, even of wonder: “On Christmas Eve, a driver saw the Holy Virgin putting flax out on the snow. He kept a handful of flax for himself, and the next morning it was changed into gold” (von Perger 1864, 177).

In old Greece, flaxseed was called osyris (similar to the name of the Egyptian god of vegetation, Osiris!) and used as an ingredient in aphrodisiac meals. When “mixed with honey and pepper, the cake—eaten in large portions—makes you want to make love” (Dioscorides 1610, 125). This peppered honey cake was reputed to “help the old man get back up on his horse” (Matthiolus 1626, 116b).

Hemp also has a long history of use as food, medicine, and magical plant. During the time of the old Tsarist empire in Russia, hemp mixtures were used both medicinally and ritually. Hemp seeds, called semieniatka, were cooked in soup and offered on Christmas night to the souls of the dead ancestors (Benet 1975, 43). The cult of the dead and the ancestors is clearly connected with hemp, especially in eastern Europe: “Even today, in Poland and Lithuania, when the dead visit their families for an hour on Christmas Eve, the people eat semieniatka—a soup made of hemp seed—in their honor. In the Ukraine, it is cooked for the same reason on epiphany” (Behr 1995, 42).

In numerous cultures, hemp was the sacred plant of the love goddess. The Romans called her Venus; in other regions of Europe, she was known by Freia, Freya, Frija, Holda, Frau Holle, or Frau Venus. She is the goddess of fertility, spring, and the erotic and the guardian of long life and marriage. Her sacred hemp was supposed to inspire lust, health, and fertility in human beings. In cultures that held lust and the erotic sacred, hemp was “a plant of the gods” because of this long connection with the love goddess.

The Germanic goddess of love, Freia or Freya, flew through the world in a cart pulled by two black cats. Her sacred animals were the cat and the rabbit (think of the Easter rabbit); her sacred plants were hemp and flax. Just as this goddess was reclassified later as a witch, her holy plant hemp has become a devil’s herb.1

Flax (Linum usitatissimum) and hemp (Cannabis sativa), both sacred plants of the love goddess. Both are cultivated and used in many cultures as aphrodisiacs, love magic, oracular charms, magical protection, medicine, and food. In former times, people drove away winter with hemp stems at Christmastime. (Colored steel etching, nineteenth century Germany)

For Germanic and Slavic peoples, hemp symbolizes human and animal fertility. It has a close association with the smudging nights and Christmas festivities:

Apothecary Recipe: Pastilli Cannabis Indicae

Ingredients for pharmaceutical-grade hemp pastilles:

Extracti Cannabis Indic. 5.0 g (hemp extract)

Sacchari 25.0 g (sugar)

Pastae Cacao 20.0 g (chocolate paste, raw)

Sacchari Vanillini 0.2 g (vanilla sugar)

Each 0.05 grams of hemp extract makes 100 pastilles.

The hemp seed seems to be a fertility symbol as well. Hemp seeds are fed to chickens so that they will lay eggs all winter long. On Christmas Eve, you eat hemp soup, poppy muffins, fish, and baked fruits (in Beuthen, Upper Silesia). The sowing of hemp is a love charm. But in Germany, it is not described as being performed by girls, as it is in England. Instead, the husband sows the hemp, and the wife brings him a meal of eggs (hemp eggs) out in the field so that the hemp will grow well. (The Slavic people also use hemp in a love charm.) For similar reasons, hemp pancakes are baked on epiphany in Transylvania… . The childless Hungarian woman eats Spanish flies2 cooked in donkey milk and hemp blossoms every Friday [the day of the love goddess, Freia or Venus] before the sun goes down” (Lussi 1996, 133).

In old Germany, a girl who wanted to know whom she would marry was supposed to put a hemp plant on the floor while uttering certain magic words. She also had to place hemp seed in her belt. Then she was supposed to leap on the hemp plant and sing: “Andrej, Andrej, I put hemp seed on you. Will God show me with whom I am going to sleep?” (Benet, in Behr 1995, 43).

Chocolate Father Christmas: Ritual Christmas Cannibalism

With the massive enjoyment of food and drinks, massive sexual enjoyments follow at the same pace …

MOST 1843, 448

Theobroma cacao L., Sterculiaceae (cocoa)

OTHER NAMES

Ca-ca-huatl (Aztec, “black nut”), cacao, chocolate

In 1639, a book published in Europe said that the sea god Neptune had brought chocolate from the New World to Europe. Today, cocoa and the many forms of chocolate made from cocoa rank among the most popular treats enjoyed by humankind. What would Christmas be without chocolate? Are there particular reasons why we are especially keen on chocolate at Christmastime? These are questions with astonishing answers. “Chocolate is divine, a heavenly drink, sweat of the stars, seed of life, divine nectar, drink of the gods, wonderful and all-healing substance” (Geronimo Piperni, eighteenth century).

The German word for enjoyment (genuss) comes from geniess, which in turn is derived from the Middle High German niez, meaning “use.” Thus, genuss indicates “communal use of something, the use of something together” (Hartwich 1911, 14). Thus, in this word for enjoyment, we find a hint about social ritual, a sense that while enjoying something in the company of others, a collective change of mood can happen.

The cocoa fruit hangs from its stem like a red Christmas ball on the Christmas tree.

Chocolate comes from the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao), which has long been an object of veneration in its home country, Mexico. In its native land, cocoa is considered a sacred tree and a food of the gods.3 The name chocolate comes from the Aztec ca-ca-huatl, meaning “black nut.” According to the report made by the Franciscan Jiménez, who was a member of the party that accompanied Conquistador Hernán Cortez to Mexico around 1520 CE, chocolatl means something like “foaming water.” Cacao, the plant’s species name, is a word from the Mayan language and refers to the tree, the fruit, and the drink that is made from it. The Indians made cacao or chocolatl from ground cocoa beans, corn flour, honey, vanilla, allspice, chili, cinnamon, balsam Peru, and various flowers.

The cocoa tree is one of the shamanic world trees of the Maya. The holy cocoa tree was both a wellspring of life and a portal to death. It unifies the inseparable aspects of the two poles of life and death. It is a tree of the south, the direction in which the land of the dead is located. Because of the red color of the berries, the tree is symbolically connected with blood. In the cocoa treetops sit shining red parrots, symbols of the hot tropical forests from which the cocoa comes. In their branches climb wild spider monkeys, which have a “twenty-first finger” on the end of their long tails. The Mayan hieroglyph for cocoa is a stylized monkey’s head. The spider monkey is often pictured in Mayan art with a cocoa fruit in its hands and an erection, smoking a cigarette. The sexual connotation cannot be denied.

Cocoa Recipe Anno 1528

The Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortez is supposed to have brought the following cocoa recipe back to Spain in 1528 (Montignac 1996, 27).

56 grams of cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum)

14 corns of chili pepper (Capiscum spp.)

14 grams of cloves or allspice (Syzygium aromaticum or Pimenta dioica)

4 vanilla beans (Vanilla planifolia)

1 handful of anise (Pimpinella anisum)

Musk, ambergris, and orange-flower water

The holy three kings bring their true present: real Swiss chocolate! (Advertising poster for Tobler Chocolate from 1926, Kraft Foods archive postcard, © Übersee-Museum, Bremen)

Here, the parrot sits on a perch, not in the world tree of the Maya, but still tells the astonished boy about the secrets of chocolate. (Old advertisement for Suchard chocolate, early twentieth century)

The evergreen cocoa tree grows up to 15 meters (about 50 feet) high and can live for 60 years. The tiny white, pink, and purple flowers, which look something like orchid blossoms, grow directly from the stem or thicker main branches. They are often present at the same time as the fruits, which also hang down the stem. A single tree produces around one hundred thousand flowers per year. The fruits are green at first, and turn yellow, red, or purple as they ripen. Cocoa beans are the seed of the delicious fruit of the cocoa tree. In old Mexico, cocoa beans were used as currency. City prostitutes were paid for their services with this aphrodisiac food of the gods.

The Ecstasy of Biedermeier

“Is the children’s drink an intoxicating substance? This is not so far-fetched. On the one hand, the enjoyment of chocolate causes a release of endorphins that evoke euphoric and happy feelings, just like opium or morphine. On the other hand, the fruit of the cocoa tree itself contains stimulating substances, such as theobromine and caffeine, that raise blood pressure (a well-known effect of coffee). Recently, scientists discovered a substance called anandamide that is supposed to have the same effect as hashish. But these substances are not really present in high concentrations in chocolate. To get as ‘high’ as you would from smoking a joint, you would have to eat as much as 20 kg of chocolate. No reason, then, to forbid dear children their enjoyment of chocolate and all of the sweet chocolate delicacies that are everywhere plentiful in these weeks” (Feuersee 2001, 49).

Sexy chocolate. Advertising and packaging for some chocolate products openly illustrates the aphrodisiac character of the food of the gods, Theobroma. Here, a package of prophylactics is glued to a bar of Billy-Boy chocolate. (2002)

Chocolate has rightfully been called “brain food” or “nerve food.” Eaten regularly, it has an uplifting and comforting effect. This can be traced to the chemical compounds chocolate contains. These include the alkaloids theobromine and caffeine as well as phenylethylamine—a neurotransmitter (messenger chemical) also found in the human brain, which is believed to evoke feelings akin to those associated with falling in love. Theobromine can lead to a kind of dependency, the so-called “chocoholism”! Not long ago, researchers discovered an additional important chemical compound in cocoa, called anandamide. This is another naturally occurring neurotransmitter, that, like THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol) in Cannabis, produces feelings of well being.

In pre-Columbian America, cocoa was treasured as a tonic and aphrodisiac. In Europe, cocoa and chocolate were accorded the same value. In Germany, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, succolade was made from pulverized cocoa beans, sugar, and wine and was sometimes spiced with a lot of cardamom (Elettaria cardamomom) and saffron (Crocus sativus) (Root 1996, 364). In the nineteenth century, a “spicy chocolate” was in vogue as an aphrodisiac: “It was made, like all chocolate, from roasted cocoa beans and sugar mixed with vanilla, cinnamon, and cardamom.4 It is good for the weak, the emaciated, and people with cramps, but not good for anyone sick with high fever and inflammation. It is also a stimulant for men” (Most 1843, 118).

In his eighteenth-century treatise, Diputatio Medico Diaetetica, the Viennese doctor Johann Michael Haider reported that chocolate is an aphrodisiac, calling it Veneris pabulum (Venus food). It “makes the body randy” wrote Anselm von Ziegler Kliphause in a pamphlet from 1703. This is why the Catholic Church feared “excesses” due to chocolate and thought it necessary to ban cocoa and chocolate, because the last thing a celibate person needed was an aphrodisiac! Still, cocoa was permissible as a clerical fasting beverage: Liquidum non fagit jejunum (fluids do not break the fast) (Schwarz and Schweppe 1997, 91).