Pagan Christmas (23 page)

The boar is the mythological animal ridden by the Wanen god Fro (also known as Frey or Freyr). Fro, sometimes considered the brother of Freia because he is the god of fertility and potency, is usually shown with a mushroom cap decoration and an erect penis. On special days, a boar might be sacrificed in his honor—at Yule time, for example, or on wedding days. The boar served a similar function in Lombardy: “Around Christmas it was killed and sold; the money went to the honor of St. Anthony” (Seligmann 1999, 51).

To this day, the Christmas boar with apple and parsley in his mouth is spiced with rosemary. The roast does not only get spicier, but also takes on the holy smell of the incense dedicated to Fro. The Yule boar of the fertility god also lives on in Christmas representations of the wild boar, usually made from marzipan now.

There are numerous different myths about the origin of rosemary. Once, there was an Assyrian youth called Libanotis (meaning “incense”). Because he honored the gods, he was so dear to them that they changed him into a divine rosemary bush when he was driven out of his country. According to another myth, the incense bush was originally the sun’s daughter, Leukothoe. It was changed into rosemary after she incestuously seduced her father. The erotic connotation has been retained in the folk custom: “In Koburg the young boys pepper (=engage in sexual intercourse with) or dengel (=expose themselves to by squeezing of testicles) the women on the first Day of Christmas. Two sprigs of rosemary were preferably used for this; this custom shows a sexual and erotic character”13 (Aigremont 1987 I, 144).

The strongly aromatic rosemary herb was dedicated to the Roman house gods. Pliny wrote that “its leaves smell like incense” (Pliny the Elder XXIV, 99). This is why thatches of rosemary were burned on Roman graves. Based on this use, the plant has been known to the present day as “the incense herb”—in French, encensier or incensier. It was burned in French hospitals alone or in combination with juniper berries to purify the air: “As a smoking substance, rosemary has always been known to drive out bad spirits or germs and to help against conditions of nervous exhaustion” (Belledame 1990, 103).

Rosemary is sometimes used in smudging night or other midwinter smudgings because it was dedicated to Frau Holler, the winter Freia. “On Christmas night around twelve o’clock, all water is changed to wine and all trees are changed to rosemary” (von Perger 1864, 143). In Arabic, rosemary is called iklil al-gabal, “the crown of the mountain.” On the winter solstice, the Berber tribes of Morocco smudge with rosemary herb (azir) (Venzlaff 1977, 38).

The following, a much-loved mythical story from medieval times, was altered in order to Christianize rosemary. The legend holds that Mary put up Jesus’s diapers in a rosemary bush for drying. After this, the bush took on the color of heaven. Rosemary then became a symbol of faithfulness and commemoration.

Merry Christmas from Mother Coca, Coca-Cola, and Santa Claus

Coca-Cola as a “Lord’s supper” is a very common idea of the cultural scene.

FRITZ 1985, 88

The ethnobotanical history of human culture has more facets than our eyes can detect through the veil of Christmas romance. In every culture, certain plants have been held sacred since antiquity. These have not vanished from memory, but rather have been rededicated to new ideas, religions, and rites. Thus, plants from very diverse, faraway places conquered the snowy Christmas landscape of our own culture.

In Peru, it is said there was a special tree that gave protection to Mary; it nourished her and helped her regain her strength. It was not gorse or sticky palm, nor was it juniper or laurel. For the Peruvians, this sacred plant was the evergreen coca bush (Erythroxylum coca). Like other kinds of Christmas evergreens (for example, holly and spurge laurel, Daphne mezereon), this bush also has shining red berries.

The evergreen coca bush (Erythroxylum coca) has shining red berries like holly and spurge laurel. No wonder coca is associated with the Christmas story in South America. (Legal coca plantation, Chulumani, Bolivia, 2000)

Coca and kola (Erythroxylum coca and Cola acuminata) are the two plants whose names were taken for the internationally successful American soft drink. According to the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, the Coca-Cola bottle fell from the sky into the desert of South Africa—as a Christmas present for humanity!

Even though the Spanish church has forbidden the use of coca, the folk belief gave the sacred bush a place in the syncretistic, mythical treasury of South America:

It was said that when the Virgin Mary rested under the coca bush during her escape into Egypt, she chewed some leaves and felt refreshed and confident. According to another legend, Jesus was supposed to have blessed this bush; and from this time on, when they were used during rituals, the leaves gave power to human beings (Wiedemann 1992, 8).

Thus the coca plant made its way into Latin American Christmas folk custom, personified as the love goddess Mama Coca.

The modern beverage known as Coca-Cola got its distinctive aroma from the coca bush and, as in former times, still has the taboo energizing effect, due to a relatively high caffeine content. Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 by a pharmacist and morphine user, John Styth Pemberton (1831–1888), in Atlanta, Georgia. It was intended to be a nonalcoholic alternative to the very successful Vin Mariani, a coca extract that contained a good deal of alcohol and was treasured as an inspiring stimulant by the American artistic, intellectual, scientific, and political elite of the late nineteenth century.14 In these times, the alcohol prohibitionists had political power and the collective folk soul was thirsting after a refreshing drink with a similar effect but no alcohol. So the inventor’s concept came just in time to conquer the market, and Coca-Cola quickly became one of the most successful soft drinks (perhaps better termed a soft drug?) in history (Pendergrast 1996).

Santa Claus in front of the star-spangled sky with a sack full of surprises. (Postcard, A Merry Christmas, circa 1900)

Nearly a century after his introduction in advertising, Santa Claus still brings the Coca-Cola. (Cartoon by Leendert Jan Vis, © Paperclip International, 1999)

Snowballs for Santa Claus Clones. (Postcard from G. Bauer, “Christmas 2,” from around 1995)

In the vernacular, Coca-Cola became “coke.” Since the turn of the twentieth century, coke has also been a much-used nickname for the drug cocaine. Because what the Art Deco youth meant when they ordered coke was so ambiguous, the Coca-Cola Company secured the nickname as a company-owned brand name: Coke®. In 1903, the cocaine was removed from the drink, but an extract of good-tasting Trujillo coca (Erythroxylum novogranatense var. truxillense) from northwestern Peru remained an ingredient in the beverage. Thus, the typical taste of the sacred plant of the Incas is still important in today’s Coca-Cola, even though the “soul” of the plant—the banished cocaine—has been “exorcised” (Rätsch and Ott 2003).

Santa Claus on a Coca-Cola can: Santa Coca!

In 1931, the Coca-Cola Company introduced to the market a Santa Claus drawn by Haddon Sundblom (Fritz 1985, 147). The company actually secured this very public and popular mascot, the American Father Christmas, with the trademark Santa Claus®. In 1964, the American Father Christmas was simply called Coca-Cola Santa (van Renterghem 1995, 106). In 1966, the company’s advertisement referred openly to Christmas: “Christmas without Coca-Cola—bah, humbug!” (Fritz 1985, 154). Even today, the Coca-Cola Company still uses Santa in Christmas advertising.

CHRISTMAS SPICES AND CHRISTMAS BAKING

The smell of spices is an aroma that comes from paradise into the human world.

SCHIEVELBUSCH 1983, 16

In the weeks before Christmas, you can easily find spice mixtures and more unusual ingredients (for example, ammonium carbonate, also called salt of hartshorn) for Christmas baking. The smell of waffles and gingerbread, of punch and herbal sweets and teas spiced with Christmas spices caresses our noses. Hints of anise, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, and clove oil hover over the shopping malls and Christmas markets. Advent time beguiles us with aromatic sensations from diverse worlds.

When the crusaders returned home to their castles from the Holy Land in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they brought back with them the spoils of their raids and pillaging: the Christmas spices we hold so dear today. Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and saffron quickly conquered the kitchens of central Europe. Thus it seems that, especially at Christmastime, we are truly able to take home everything the world has to offer!

Christmas spices used for baking, roasting, beverage spicing, and other facets of cooking yield an aroma that functions as a sort of incense smoke. This aroma stimulates a sense of well being and lightens the mood in dark days. Many botanical ingredients used as spices and incense were also used as baccy substances, including anise, benzoin, cascarilla, cassia, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, lemon peel, mastic, rose petals, star anise, storax, and valerian. Cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, and orrisroot had the honor of being used in mead (Wallbergen 1988, 108).

Typical Christmas baking spices come from exotic places: cardamom and ginger from Southeast Asia, star anise from China, nutmeg from the Indonesian Malaku province (“spice island”), galangal from Thailand, chili pepper from Central and South America, and cinnamon stick from Ceylon.

Medieval Spice Mixture for Nuremberg Gingerbread‡

1½ parts cloves

¼ part mace

‡From Ehlert 1990, 209.

Astonishingly enough, many Christmas spices were considered aphrodisiac, including anise, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, ginger, juniper, mugwort, nutmeg, saffron, star anise, turmeric, and vanilla.1 So was the spice recipe for Nuremberg gingerbread that appears here.

CHRISTMAS SPICES

Spice name

Botanical name

Origin2

Allspice

Pimenta dioica

Caribbean

Anise

Pimpinella anisum

Egypt

Laurel

Laurus nobilis

Mediterranean

Cardamom

Elettaria cardamomum

India

Caraway

Carum carvi

Central Europe

Cassia

Cinnamomum odoratum

China

Chili pepper

Capiscum annuum

Mexico, Peru

Cinnamon

Cinnamomum verum

Ceylon

Cloves

Syzygium aromaticum

Indonesia

Coconut flakes

Cocos nucifera

South Pacific

Coriander

Coriandrum sativum

Mediterranean

Cumin

Cuminum cyminum

Mediterranean

Fennel

Foeniculum vulgare

Southeastern Europe

Galangal

Alpinia galanga

Southeast Asia

Ginger

Zingiber officinale

Southeast Asia

Hemp seed

Cannabis sativa

Europe

Juniper

Juniperus communis

Europe, Northern Hemisphere

Mace

Myristica fragrans

Indonesia

Mastic

Pistacia lentiscus

Greece

Mugwort

Artemisia vulgaris

Europe, worldwide

Nutmeg

Myristica fragrans

Indonesia

Poppy seed

Papaver somniferum

Central Europe

Pepper

Piper nigrum

India, Madagascar

Rose

Rosa spp.

Southern Europe

Rosemary

Rosmarinus officinalis

Mediterranean

Saffron

Crocus sativus

Eastern Mediterranean

Star anise

Illicium verum

China

Turmeric

Curcuma longa

Southeast Asia

Vanilla

Vanilla planifolia

Mexico

Many eastern recipes for stimulating potions and intoxicating aphrodisiacs describe very similar spice mixtures, usually combinations of cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, and pepper of different kinds. Most spice essential oils contain psychotropic ingredients. In order to experience the effect with the herbs themselves, however, one must take a high dose. This is why in medieval times festive meals were sprinkled “to the thickness of a finger” with spice powder, most often with pepper, nutmeg, and cloves (Schivelbusch 1983, 14f).

Anise and St. Andrew’s Night

Anise should awaken sexual lust.

HILLER 1989, 15

Pimpinella anisum L., Apiaceae (anise)

OTHER NAMES

Aniseseed, sweet cumin

Anise is one of today’s most popular spices for Christmas baking. Use of this aromatic plant, which is believed to come from the eastern Mediterranean, is also associated with Christmas love and oracular magic in folk custom, as are so many other Christmas plants. As early as the first century CE, Dioscorides wrote that anise seeds were a love substance that stimulates sexual activity (Dioscorides III 1610, 58).

As an erotic stimulant, anise is considered especially potent with magic during St. Andrew’s Night, which is why that day was called Anishday or simply Anish in old Bohemia.

Originally occurring around the time of the winter solstice, Andrew’s Night was moved to November 30 with the introduction of the Julian calendar. It was a festive time of fertility, marriage fortune, and good health—Andrew (Fro, Freyr) is the patron saint of marriage for lovers… . This night is connected with many practices involving love magic and love power through plants (Aigremont 1987 II, 75f).

As a love substance, people not only consumed anise seed and foods spiced with it, such as gingerbread, they also drank anise-flavored liqueurs, such as Pastis and Pernod. These beverages, which are related to absinthe, are still popular today in southern Europe. In the past, on so-called flax-swinging days (the days of the flax harvest), lovers used a mixture of gingerbread soaked in wine and anise liqueur as a love potion. This mushy drink was called a “little trough” and a girl fed it to her beloved as he knelt before her.