By Joe Perry, History Teacher - The Conversation
In 1921, in a Munich brewery, the newly appointed leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, delivered a Christmas speech to an excited crowd.
According to the undercover police, 4,000 onlookers cheered as Hitler condemned "cowardly Jews for destroying the world liberator on the cross" and vowed "not to rest until the Jews ... lay shattered on the ground."
Later, the crowd sang Christmas carols and nationalist anthems around a Christmas tree.
Working-class attendees received generous gifts.
For Germans in the 1920s and 1930s, this
combination of anti-Semitism, nationalist propaganda, and the familiar way the holidays were celebrated
was not unusual.
As the Nazi Party grew in size and scope, and finally seized power in 1933, propagandists set out to 'Nazify' Christmas: they
redefined family traditions and devised new symbols and rituals
to channel the principles of Nazism through of this popular festival.
Given the state's control over public life, it is not surprising that Nazi officials managed to spread their version of Christmas with radio broadcasts and newspaper articles.
[The so-called 'star of Bethlehem' will be seen, the first close encounter of Jupiter and Saturn in hundreds of years]
But under any totalitarian regime, there can be a disparity between public and private life, between the rituals of the squares and those of the home.
How did Nazi symbols and rituals penetrate private family celebrations, away from the gaze of party leaders?
While some resisted the heavy-handed politicization of Germany's favorite holiday,
many indulged in this new Nazified Christmas
which was about the family's place in the 'racial state', free of Jews and other 'foreigners '.
Redefining Christmas
The first thing the Nazis did was
redefine Christmas as a neopagan Nordic celebration.
Rather than focus on their religious origins, the Nazi version celebrated the supposed 'heritage of the Aryan race', the label the Nazis gave to those they considered "racially acceptable" in the German racial state.
According to Nazi intellectuals of the time, Christmas traditions were based on
winter solstice rituals practiced by 'Germanic' tribes before the advent of Christianity.
Lighting candles on the Christmas tree, for example, evoked pagan prayers for the "return of light" after the shortest day of the year.
Researchers have noted that these and other invented traditions had a manipulative function, but that does not mean they were unpopular.
As early as 1860, German historians, theologians, and writers argued that
German celebrations were remnants of pre-Christian pagan rituals and popular superstitions.
So, as these ideas and traditions had a long history, Nazi propagandists could easily present
Christmas as a celebration of German pagan nationalism.
A vast state machine (centered on the Nazi Propaganda Ministry) ensured that the Nazified version of the celebration dominated in the Third Reich.
But two aspects of the Nazi version of Christmas were relatively new.
A Christmas stamp with the Nazi swastika symbol in circulation during World War II emphasizes the role of light in the festivities, in accordance with Germanic pagan rites. Provided by the author
First, since Nazi ideologues viewed organized religion as an enemy of the totalitarian state, propagandists
sought to downplay the Christian aspects of the holiday, or eliminate them altogether.
Official celebrations might mention a supreme being, but they emphasized more the solstice and 'light' rituals and their pagan origins.
Second, as Hitler's 1921 speech suggests, the Nazi celebration evoked racial purity and anti-Semitism.
Before the Nazis seized power in 1933, vicious and shameless attacks
on German Jews were already typical of Christmas propaganda.
Open anti-Semitism at Christmas disappeared after 1933, as the regime sought to please a population tired of political struggles, but Nazi celebrations still excluded those who the regime deemed 'unfit'.
Images in the press of white, blonde, and blue-eyed German families
gathered around the Christmas tree normalized ideologies of racial purity.
A Hispanic actor in a film about the hunt for Nazis in Latin America
Aug. 29, 201802: 14
Meanwhile, anti-Semitism continued to creep into the Christmas season.
Many boycotted Jewish department stores.
The cover of a 1935 Christmas catalog, for example, which showed a blonde mother wrapping Christmas presents, featured a sticker that assured customers that
"an Aryan has taken over the department store!"
In Nazi Germany, even buying a gift was used to naturalize anti-Semitism and reinforce the 'social death' of Jews in the Third Reich.
The message was clear: only "Aryans" could participate in the celebration.
Erase Jesus from Christmas
According to National Socialist theorists, women, especially mothers, were crucial in strengthening the ties between private life and the 'new spirit' of the German racial state.
Everyday acts of celebration - wrapping gifts, decorating the home, cooking 'German' Christmas meals, and organizing family celebrations - became part of the cult of 'Nordic' nationalism.
Propagandists proclaimed that, as a "priestess" and "protector of the house and home," the German mother could use Christmas to "revive the spirit of the German home."
These concepts flooded women's magazines, Christmas books, and Christmas carols.
Swastika Christmas tree decorations were just one of many ways Christmas was Nazified. Provided by the author
They also encouraged mothers and children to make homemade decorations in the shape of a 'Solar Wheel of Odin' [one of the main Nazi symbols, aside from the swastika] and to bake Christmas cookies in the shape of a fertility symbol.
They promoted
Nazi songs that replaced Christian themes with their racial ideologies.
Exalted Night of the Clear Stars
, the most famous Nazi Christmas carol, was reprinted in Nazi songbooks, broadcast on radio shows, performed at public celebrations, and sung in homes.
Although the song's melody mimics a traditional Christmas carol,
the lyrics deny the holiday's Christian origins.
Verses of stars, light, and an eternal mother suggest a world redeemed through faith in National Socialism, not Jesus.
Exalted Night
became so familiar that it was still sung in the 1950s as part of an ordinary family celebration (and even as part of some public performances today).
Conflict or consensus?
We will never know exactly how many families chanted
Exalted Night
or baked Germanic sun wheel shaped Christmas cookies.
But we do have some official records on people's response.
For example, the "activity reports" of the National Socialist League of Women (NSF) show that
there were disagreements among its members.
According to NSF files, tensions flared when propagandists pushed too hard to eliminate religious observance, generating
"much doubt and discontent."
The pandemic does not stop him: Santa Claus arrives by air, sea and land to celebrate Christmas
Dec. 23, 202002: 07
German priests openly resisted Nazi attempts to get Jesus out of Christmas.
In Düsseldorf, clergymen used Christmas to encourage women to join their respective women's clubs.
They threatened to excommunicate
women who joined the NSF.
Elsewhere, women of faith boycotted NSF Christmas parties and charity drives.
However, that dissent never defied the principles of the Nazi holiday.
Reports on public opinion compiled by the secret police, the Gestapo, commented on
the popularity of the Nazi Christmas festivities.
Well into World War II, as looming defeat increasingly discredited the Nazi holiday, the secret police reported that complaints of these policies dissolved into a general "Christmas mood."
Despite their conflicts over Christianity, many Germans accepted the Nazification of Christmas.
A return to colorful pagan 'Germanic' traditions promised to reinvigorate the family celebration.
Not least, it was about observing
a Nazified holiday that symbolized racial purity and a sense of national belonging.
The "Aryans" could celebrate German Christmas.
Not the Jews.
The Nazification of this family celebration thus revealed how
paradoxical and controversial private life was in the Third Reich.
The seemingly banal and everyday decision to sing a Christmas carol or bake a Christmas cookie became an act of resistance or support for Nazism.
Joe Perry is an associate professor of history at Georgia State University.