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The conversation
How the Nazis took over Christmas
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 undercover police observers, 4,000 supporters applauded when Hitler condemned “cowardly Jews for breaking the world’s 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. Attendees from the working class received charitable gifts. For Germans in the 1920s and 1930s, this combination of the familiar holiday observance, nationalist propaganda, and anti-Semitism was not unusual. As the Nazi party grew in size and scope, and finally seized power in 1933, committed propagandists worked to “Nazify” Christmas. By redefining family traditions and designing new symbols and rituals, they hoped to channel the main tenets of National Socialism through the popular festival. Given state control of public life, it is not surprising that Nazi officials were successful in promoting and propagating their version of Christmas through repeated radio broadcasts and news articles. But under any totalitarian regime, there can be a great disparity between public and private life, between the rituals of the town square and those of the home. In my research, I was interested in how Nazi symbols and rituals penetrated private family festivities, away from the gaze of party leaders. While some Germans resisted the politicized and heavy-handed appropriation of Germany’s favorite holiday, many actually embraced a Nazi holiday. which evoked the place of the family in the “racial state”, free of Jews and other outsiders. Redefining Christmas One of the most striking features of private celebration in the Nazi period was the redefinition of Christmas as a Neopagan Nordic celebration. Rather than focus on the religious origins of the holiday, the Nazi version celebrated the purported heritage of the Aryan race, the label the Nazis gave to the “racially acceptable” members of the German racial state. According to Nazi intellectuals, the cherished holiday traditions were based on the winter solstice rituals practiced by “Germanic” tribes before the advent of Christianity. Lighting candles on the Christmas tree, for example, recalled pagan wishes for “the return of light” after the shortest day of the year. Scholars have drawn attention to the manipulative function of these and other invented traditions. But that’s no reason to suppose they were unpopular. Since the 1860s, German historians, theologians, and popular writers had held that German holiday celebrations were holdovers from pre-Christian pagan rituals and popular folk superstitions. So, because these ideas and traditions had a long history, Nazi propagandists were easily able to present Christmas as a celebration of German pagan nationalism. A vast state apparatus (centered on the Nazi Propaganda and Enlightenment Ministry) ensured that a Nazi holiday dominated public space and celebration in the Third Reich, but two aspects of the Nazi version of Christmas were relatively new. First, because Nazi ideologues viewed organized religion as the enemy of the totalitarian state, propagandists sought to downplay, or eliminate entirely, the Christian aspects of the holiday. Official celebrations may mention a supreme being, but more prominently featured solstice and “light” rituals that supposedly captured the holiday’s 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, ugly and overt attacks on German Jews typified Christmas propaganda. Blatant anti-Semitism disappeared more or less after 1933, when the regime sought to stabilize its control over a population tired of political struggles, although Nazi celebrations still excluded those deemed “unfit” by the regime. Countless media images of invariably blonde and blue-eyed German families gathered around the Christmas tree helped normalize ideologies of racial purity. However, outright anti-Semitism emerged around Christmas time. Many would boycott Jewish-owned department stores. And the cover of a 1935 Christmas mail-order catalog, which showed a blonde mother wrapping Christmas presents, featured a sticker assuring customers that “an Aryan has taken over the department store!” It is a small, almost banal example. But it says a lot. In Nazi Germany, even buying a gift could 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. Bringing the ‘Christ’ out of Christmas According to National Socialist theorists, women, especially mothers, were crucial in strengthening the links between private life and the ‘new spirit’ of the German racial state. Everyday celebratory acts – wrapping gifts, decorating the home, cooking “German” Christmas meals, and organizing family celebrations – were all tied to a cult of “Nordic” sentimental nationalism. Propagandists proclaimed that as a “priestess” and “protector of the house and home”, the German mother could use Christmas to “bring the spirit of the German home back to life.” The Christmas issues of women’s magazines, Nazi Christmas books, and Nazi Christmas carols colored conventional family customs with the ideology of the regime. This type of ideological manipulation took everyday forms. Mothers and children were encouraged to make homemade decorations in the shape of the “Solar Wheel of Odin” and bake Christmas cookies in the shape of a bow (a symbol of fertility). The ritual of lighting candles on the Christmas tree was said to create an atmosphere of “pagan demon magic” that would subsume the Star of Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus in feelings of “Germanity.” The family song personified the porous boundaries between private and official forms of celebration. Propagandists tirelessly promoted numerous Christmas Christmas songs, replacing Christian themes with the racial ideologies of the regime. Exalted Night of the Clear Stars, the most famous Nazi Christmas carol, was reprinted in Nazi songbooks, broadcast on radio shows, performed at countless public celebrations, and sung at home. In fact, Exalted Night became so familiar that it could still be sung in the 1950s as part of an ordinary family vacation (and, apparently, as part of some public performances today!). While the song’s melody mimics a traditional Christmas carol, the lyrics deny the holiday’s Christian origins. The verses of stars, light, and an eternal mother suggest a world redeemed through faith in National Socialism, not Jesus. Conflict or consensus among the German public? We will never know exactly how many German families chanted Exalted Night or baked Germanic sun wheel shaped Christmas cookies. But we do have some records of the popular response to the Nazi holiday, mostly from official sources. For example, the “activity reports” from the National League of Socialist Women (NSF) show that the redefinition of Christmas generated some disagreement among members. NSF files note that tensions erupted when propagandists pushed too hard to sideline religious observance, generating “much doubt and discontent.” Religious traditions often clashed with ideological goals: was it acceptable for “convinced National Socialists” to celebrate Christmas with Christian Christmas carols and nativity plays? How could Nazi believers observe a Nazi holiday when stores mainly sold conventional holiday items and rarely stocked Nazi Christmas books? Meanwhile, German clergymen openly resisted Nazi attempts to remove Christ from Christmas. In Düsseldorf, clergymen used Christmas to encourage women to join their respective women’s clubs. The Catholic clergy threatened to excommunicate women who joined the NSF. Elsewhere, women of faith boycotted NSF Christmas parties and charity drives. Still, such dissent never really challenged the main tenets of the Nazi holiday. Public opinion reports compiled by the Nazi secret police often commented on the popularity of the Nazi Christmas festivities. Well into World War II, as impending defeat increasingly discredited the Nazi holiday, the secret police reported that complaints about official policies dissolved into a general “Christmas mood.” Despite the conflicts over Christianity, many Germans accepted the Nazification of Christmas. A return to the colorful and pleasant pagan “Germanic” traditions promised to reinvigorate the family celebration. Not least, observing a Nazi holiday symbolizes racial purity and national belonging. The “Aryans” could celebrate German Christmas. The Jews couldn’t. The Nazification of the family celebration thus revealed the paradoxical and controversial terrain of private life in the Third Reich. The seemingly banal and everyday decision to sing a particular Christmas carol or bake a Christmas cookie became an act of political dissent or an expression of support for National Socialism. ideas from academic experts. Read more: * Hitler at home: how the Nazi PR machine remade the Führer’s domestic image and misled the world * How Charles Dickens redeemed the Christmas spirit * Can astronomy explain the biblical star of Bethlehem? Joe Perry has received funding from the German academic Exchange Service and Georgia State University.
