Pagan Christmas (26 page)

In recollection of the Golden Age and as homage to the old, kind god,5 the Saturnalia was celebrated in ancient Rome from December 17 to December 19. (Later on, during the time of the Roman emperors, the celebration was extended to the seven days following December 17.) It was a feast that did away with limits and relaxed normal social boundaries. This was especially true on December 19, the day on which master and slave switched roles and clothing. Thus, at least once in the year, social differences were eliminated, although it seems that the temporary switch would have made the differences even more obvious.

The most important source of information about the Saturnalia is the work of a Roman state official and Latin scribe, Macrobius (circa 400 CE). His writings present Saturnalia from the perspective of late antiquity and therefore provide us with a synthesis of many interpretations.

Saturnus and Janus were seen as guardians of the doors of the state treasuries. A candelabra that has survived from this time period illustrates their multifaceted symbolism. On one side of Augustine’s marble candelabra was the image of Saturn riding on a peaceful donkey—a representation of the zodiac sign of Sagittarius, a centaur. On his divine thighs is an eagle, the eagle of Jupiter. On the other side of the same candelabra, Sol (the sun god, Apollo) represents the zodiacal sign of Cancer. “The planet Saturnus rides on the zodiac sign of December, because its feast occurs in that month, while Apollo, as lord of the Ludi Apollinares [an Apollonian feast that took place July 6–13] rides on the star sign of July” (Simon 1990, 198f). Thus the two solstices, winter and summer, are depicted on the two sides of the candelabra.

The planet Saturn was also connected with the Greek god Phaeton, the “shining one.” Because Phaeton was the son of the sun god Helios, he was sometimes called “little sun,” or “son of the sun.”

God of the Incense Altars

Magic Carthage of the sea! Even if you are no more, your aroma climbs up from these bare rocks and speaks: from incense, from the balm tree and from roses.

PIERRE FOUQUET, QUOTED IN ROVESTI 1995, 217

Saturn was the god of incense. Accounts of Phoenician worship show this clearly. In the ancient city–state of Carthage in North Africa, Saturnus was identified with the locally reigning Phoenician god Baal Hammon, whom the Phoenicians had worshipped as a fertility god since the ninth century BCE. At the same time, the main god of Carthage was Hammanim, “lord of the smoking altars” (Simon 1990, 194), because Phoenician merchants ruled the incense trade. This trade was not only lucrative, but was also politically important, because the monopoly led to conflict, war, and, in the end, the destruction of the city.

Through this Phoenician trade, the cult of the god of incense altars came early to Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia, and from there extended all over the world. Thus the lord of the incense altars became the predecessor of the Erzgebirge smoking men! A god under whose all-knowing eye smoking substances as important as myrrh and incense became very important at Christmastime.

Saturn’s Plants

Astrologically speaking, the herbs of Saturn are all the plants that come under the reign of the planet Saturn. These are the following: hemlock, hellebore, mandrake, savin tree, nightshade and so on—and henbane is the most important of all.

SCHIERING 1927

In antiquity, many plants were dedicated to gods and goddesses. By association with particular gods, these plants also were connected with their planets and stars.

Occult botany defines the plants of Saturn according to their astrological signature:

The plants that carry Saturn’s signature grow very slowly. They are heavy, sticky, and draw together. They have a bitter, sharp, or acid taste. These plants produce fruits without blossoms; they often carry black berries. Their smell is strong, even penetrating, and they often look gloomy and spooky. They contain a lot of resin, have a numbing effect, and are connected with death and the ceremonies of mourning (Belledame 1990, 25f).

During the Roman Saturnalia, the people hung holly as the ritual evergreen. According to the famous English doctor and astrologer Nicolas Culpeper (1616–1645), holly is a Saturnian tree; Saturn influences its evergreen power. Other plants associated with Saturn included the olive tree, bindweed (Father Christmas beards), European wild ginger, mistletoe, rye (Secale cornutum), and horsetail (little Christmas tree).

Many incense plants in contemporary Christmas ethnobotany have been associated with Saturn since antiquity: fir, spruce, pine, yew, cypress, cedar, costus, storax (or styrax), male fern, common fumitory, European wild ginger, henbane, rue, asafetida, valerian root, hemp, hellebore, mandrake, opium, sage, nightshade, aconite, belladonna, hemlock, and ivy. Because the planet and the god Saturn (the guardian of the threshold) are associated with all psychoactive plants (for example, mandrake, henbane, hemp, and aconite), one can presume that his alchemical elixirs can also have spirit-moving effects.

Many Saturn plants have reputations as aphrodisiacs: “Saturn and Venus together make a big tree come out” (Belledame 1990, 31). Thus, the use of Saturn plants seems to result in the same kind of wild goings-on that happened during the Saturnalia.

The Erotic Bean Feast

In the seventeenth century, bean soup had a reputation so erotic that it was forbidden in the convent of San Jeronimo in order to prevent conditions that might result in indecent arousal. But that order no longer stands, since the nuns gave up their habit.

ALLENDE 1998, 197

The Bean Feast by Jakob Jordaens. During the bean feast, the people elected a ritual master called the bean king: “On the last smudging night (December 6) a cake was baked in which a single bean was hidden. Whoever got the bean became the bean king. He directed a big drinking feast and led the singing of obscene songs” (Aigremont 1987 I, 123).

Phaesolus vulgaris L., Fabaceae (garden bean)

Beans, also influenced by Saturn, played an important role in the Saturnalia and other ecstatic mystery cults and celebrations in old Rome. Beans are ancient cultured plants from legume family (Fabaceae). An ancient form of bean known in old Rome was called “the erotic chick pea” (Cicer spp.): “The religious cult uses it after festivals” (Pliny the Elder XVIII, 32). Most types of beans eaten today are from the New World, especially tropical Mexico—home of many other plants important in the ethnobotany of Christmas.

In German mythology, there is a suspicion about the pea (similar to the bean) in regard to the cultic meal of the elben [fairies connected to the Elbe River], which they eat in the twelve smudging nights. You were not supposed to eat it; if you did, you got skin spots, or you were spellbound by the elben. This is why you must catch the wild women with beautiful long hair who entrance young boys in the pea field. Peas are used in German love magic; if placed behind a door, a pod containing nine (!) peas will make the next person that enters the room say one’s bridegroom’s name aloud… . The pea belonged to Donar, the god of marriage. It makes things fertile and brings blessings… . Peas were also thrown to the animals in the stalls on Christmas night to make them fertile (Aigremont 1987 I, 125f).

In old Germany, the January feast grew out of the concept of the Roman Saturnalia. It was a time to celebrate the awakening of the Earth from its winter sleep. Because the bean was the center of ritual attention as a fertility symbol, the German folk vernacular called this feast—with its sexually excessive orgies and Saturnalian drinking and eating—the “bean feast.”6 The bean clearly had a sexual connotation: “On Walpurgisnacht, at Blocksberg, the lover presented his beloved with a bean blessed by incantations of the helper spirits. In later Christian traditions, these spirits were demonized as devilish sexual partners for the lover and the beloved. Because of its testicular shape, the bean holds the power of life. In the folk language, ‘bean soup’ is a description of male semen” (Hirschfeld and Linsert 1930, 192).

The Bean Feast: January 6

“The symbolic meaning of the reawakening of nature was expressed in the medieval January feast that developed from the Roman Saturnalia. Just as in Rome, in Germany, the Netherlands, and France, this led not only to big drinking and eating feasts, but also to sexual orgies. This was called the bean feast in the vernacular, because the bean was considered a sexual symbol in all of the Germanic tribes” (Bornemann 1974, I).

What made beans so important in this context? The fact that they were considered a fertility symbol during the Saturnalia, or that they have served as a symbol of the testicles and of the power of life since antiquity? Or perhaps it is simply that throughout the world, beans are considered one of the most important sources of protein in the plant kingdom. In the mythology of Christmas, beans were considered a divine food and sacrificial offering, as they were the favorite meal of the demons of the smudging nights: “In German belief, it was forbidden to eat beans or peas during the twelve smudging nights because, at this time, the souls that have joined the wild army over the earth have first claim on any food that comes along” (Seligmann 1996, 77).

To this day in Germany, during children’s birthday parties, a bean king is crowned. A hard, dried bean or pea is baked in the birthday cake. Whoever bites into it is celebrated as the bean king. Little does the child know that he or she represents the sun god Apollo’s chosen one!

NEW YEAR’S EVE: THE WILD FEAST OF SYLVESTER

Profound and magical charm that gets us drunk

In the present on the restored past!

Like the lover from an adored body

Culls the exquisite flower of memory.

BAUDELAIRE 1857, THE FLOWERS OF EVIL

When talking about Sylvester or New Year’s Eve, who doesn’t think of wild parties, drinking feats, and a big headache afterwards?

According to the etymological dictionary, the name Sylvester goes back to Pope Sylvester I (314–335), who became a Catholic saint whose day fell on December 31. The word sylvan comes from the Latin and means “wooded, wood, or wilderness.” The etymological dictionary is no more specific than this. But we know that Sylvester is also a god of the forest, who later became “the strange old man of the woods”—the waldschrat. After the long road to Catholic sainthood, the word came back to its origins. Sylvester is a wild feast day that falls on the furthest border of the year’s cycle.

Protection and Fertility Rites

The smudging and incense rituals of the smudging nights marked the completion of the cycle of the year. On Sylvester the juniper twigs that had been collected at the beginning of the year were burned to protect the house and the court. The people cut fresh elder (Sambucus spp.), braided it into the shape of a wheel, and put it in the house as a traditional protection against fire. To protect the animals on Christmas and on the night of Sylvester, they smudged the stalls with wormwood (Artemisia absinthium). “In Frankonia, on Christmas and Sylvester night, you take a handful of different varieties of corn and mix it in a baking bowl with clover. And then you give it to the animals, in order to ward off witches” (Seligmann 1996, 152). Horses were fed stolen cabbage (Brassica oleraceae) to keep them in good health during the coming year. In order to make fruit trees fertile, the people beat them with little sacks of peas on Sylvester.

Like a Hagedize (hedge rider=witch) among the rose hips, the baby Jesus is perched between Christmas worlds.

People also believed that wild pears could protect against death (Pyrus pyraster, called dragontree in the Lausitz region): “Right at midnight, if you put a broth made of the fruit on the threshold, then death would not enter the house that year” (Seligmann 1996, 75). Common speedwell (Veronica officinalis) served a special protection and healing function. Vernacular names for this plant include Sylvester flower, maennertreu (faithfulness of men), and allerweltshei (world healer). These names illustrate the folk belief that on Sylvester, love magic makes men become faithful, and this brings about a healing of the whole world.

Red rose hips (Rosa canina) were dedicated to Freia or Holda. They also played a role in a practical joke for Sylvester, in which children put rose hip seeds inside people’s shirts as a sort of itching powder.

Rose hips are a good remedy against accidents and maladies of the coming year if you eat three (while sober!) on Christmas Eve, Boxing Day (St. Stephen’s Day), and New Year’s Eve—and especially on New Year’s Day. The people were supposed to pass the three rose hips through a window without saying a word. These three rose hips had a reputation for providing protection, especially against sore throats, pains in the side and stomach, gout, and erysipelas. A decoction of pulverized rose hips collected on Christmas Eve was supposed to help with kidney stones and other such problems in the kidneys, the gall bladder, and other organs (Hiller 1989, 113).

The meals prepared on this special day were not only for purposes of nourishment, but also for future happiness and good fortune. To be blessed with luck and money, one had to eat millet gruel. Other lucky foods included fish, carrots, and lentils:

Whoever eats a scaly fish during Sylvester will make enough money the following year. And this was also the case if you had carrots, or a lentil meal on the table… . A hemp cord should not be left dangling during the Sylvester night, because sorrow could come through it into the New Year (Hiller 1989, 265).

One could learn just how much and what kind of sorrow would cross over into the New Year from plant oracles: “During Sylvester night, you put an evergreen leaf of Vinca minor on a plate filled with water. If it remained green the following night, health could be expected the following year. But stains prophesied illnesses—and blackness, death itself” (Hiller 1989, 140).

Lucky Plants

In the last days of December, the plants that show up in the flower shops and supermarkets remind us of old rituals that, for the inhabitants of the house, serve to keep good luck going for the coming year. These include little pots or miniature beds of hyacinth, anemones, four-leaf clover, winter aconite, and similar fast-growing and symbolic plants. These little plantings grown for Sylvester go all the way back to the ritual gardens of Adonis.