Santa's companions

[spudtater]

I've talked about the different versions of Santa, but there's one very interesting aspect I haven't covered yet: the companions of Santa. These are beings who accompany Santa (or similar gift-bringer) on his journey to deliver his presents. In Britain and America we think of him as travelling alone, or with a nameless elf or two. But other cultures have much more fleshed out characters.

• In Russia, the gift bringer Ded Moroz is traditionally accompanied by his granddaughter Snegurochka (or the "Snow Maiden"), a character who in the fairy tales yearned for the companionship of mortal humans, but evaporated into a small cloud upon falling in love. Obviously, though, she must have got better, because nowadays she helps her Grandpa deliver presents every New Year's Day.

• The German Knecht Ruprecht is a sinister creature with ragged clothes and sooty face, who carries a large sack into which naughty children will be placed and carried away. He is only one of a whole raft of similar figures:

• In France, Père Noël is accompanied by Père Fouettard, a similarly evil being, who whips children who have been naughty. In mortal life he was said to have been a murderer of three children. Père Noël discovered the murder and shamed Père Fouettard into becoming his helper.

• America's German communities brought the same figure to the New World in the shape of Pelznickle, a fur-clad character who would carry sweets for the good children, or a switch for the bad ones.

• Holland has Zwarte Piet or "Black Peter", a moorish boy who carries a whip to punish naughty children — or a sack to carry them off to Spain in. Some stories tell that St. Nicholas liberated a slave boy, who then chose to follow St. Nicholas on his travels. Some people believe that Zwarte Piet might be an adaptation of Odin's ravens Hugin and Munin, citing the blackness of their feathers, but the link is tenuous.

• Not all companions are male; Berchtel, Buzebergt, and Budelfrau are all female Santa companions, with ragged appearance and handy with a whip or rod. And not all travel with Santa; the Christkindlein sometimes acts as the "angel" figure to offset the "devil" aspect of Knecht Ruprecht and friends.

• In Austria, the figure is known as Krampus, and is possibly the darkest figure of the lot. He is a furry, long-tongued creature sporting an enormous pair of goat's horns, making him an obvious Pan/Satan figure. He whips children with a switch, or puts them in a basket on his back and carries them to hell. He has resonances in an ancient Germanic legend, which tells a story of a holy man and a demon. The demon terrorised the land by slithering down chimneys at night, slaughtering children — disembowelling them, stuffing them up the flue, or taking them away in a sack. The holy man tricked the demon and caught it with magical shackles, and thereafter forced it to obey his orders. Nowadays the holy man has been associated with Santa, and the demon with the Krampus.

  Krampus is a popular figure in Austria, having his own night on December 5th. Children participate in Krampus runs, where they dress in black rags and chains, and terrorise people on the streets and the sledding hills. Among adults, "Krampusnacht" has become associated with drinking and excess, with many people holding parties. At some point people dressed as Krampus (Krampi?) will enter and attack the partygoers... if anybody's still sober enough to notice. Finally, Krampus postcards are popular at that time. Particularly popular are ones showing the Krampus leering at young women — as he is a symbol of lust and lechery as well as everything else. (In which guise his long tongue takes on entirely different connotations.)

What have we learnt from all this study of Santa? Well, that Santa is merely the most modern incarnation of a figure who appears to be older than written records can trace; a figure who has left widespread and highly variant figures all over Europe and beyond. He predates his namesake St. Nicholas for sure, he predates Christianity, and he predates Coca Cola by a long way. So if anybody tells you that Santa was invented by the Coca Cola company in the 20th century, you can now quite thoroughly correct them!

Comments

[batswing.livejournal.com]

Very interesting!

*goes off to reread "Hogfather"*

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

I am impressed and intrigued by the amount of information you've put forth. Thank you.

On the other hand, your closing para isn't quite the way I'd put it, which naturally is the cue for a long and involved argument ending with thrown drinks, mutual hatred and cutting each other dead forever after. (Or not.) I think I'd tend to say that there is and has always been a cluster of wintertime divinities / brownies / gift-givers, varying wildly by region and time and degree of numinosity, with very little in common across all of them. Santa certainly fits right in there, and specific feature of his representation can be traced back through a kind of genealogy, but I'd say that Santa is a very young member of a very old family. More of a change of emphasis than a disagreement, though.

...Have you read "The Golden Bough" yet? Is outdated in anthropological detail, but still a fun read. I seem to recall he mentions gifting from the point of view of interplay with sacrificial traditions: a) the death of a Corn King or Holly King or God of Yams can involve actual theophagy or distribution of the god's largesse, b) a sacrifice *to* the god can get distributed - which is often very nearly the same thing as a) - , c) sacred or semi-sacred objects, particularly representations of wealth or goods, get made and displayed in various ways: they may come from a god-representative or be given to her. Coming from a family which still has a bit of the German christmas traditions, I immediately think of the carved wooden tree ornaments.

Thank you again for a fascinating discussion!

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

It's a matter of opinion, I think. I assumed that the "winter gift-bringer" myth had a common source, which diverged into various different forms across different cultures. You seem to think that it is something that comes up in all cultures independently, which would give it a sort of Jungian archetype status.

It's unlikely to be proven one way or another, because as I said, it seems to go so far back that history cannot trace it. And it's unclear which way Occam's razor would cut. So we'll just have to hypothesise freely and never really know.

I keep meaning to finish the Golden Bough. I got about four chapters in, I believe.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Not all cultures, just many. Gift-giving (or even just social living) is a human kind of thing, mythologising is a human kind of thing, and outside the tropics winter solstice is kind of important for agricultural people - it's a reset point for counting days and months. So, for me, diverse origins and cross fertilisation of cultures within the temperate zone seem more likely. (We do know there were many distinct pantheons, languages, etc: postulating a point source that crosses pantheons, language, language families, and geography is, I think, on the wrong side of Occam's razor.)

The big Golden Bough, or Frazer's abridgement in one volume? I've only read the abridgement. Much shame.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know. The old pantheistic religions were very flexible. I can see them finding out about some other culture's tradition and/or deity, saying "I want me summa that" and nicking it for their own. And we've seen how infectious the Santa meme is in modern times; I know it's spread throughout Asia by now, and probably lots of Africa too.

The big one, I think:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Even given that cultural traditions both split and coalesce freely, I'm still not convinced that a point source is needed. Shrug. Should really be talking about this while propping up a bar, you realise?