SILENUS, SATURN, THOR
And now you may be tempted to ask, “What bearing has all this stuff
about the pagan festivals upon the question of the identity of our old
friend Santa Klaus?”
I am coming to that. In every one of these festivals the leading figure
was an old man, with a lot of white beard and white hair rimming his
face.
In the Bacchanalia the representative god was not the young Bacchus,
but the aged, cheery and decidedly disreputable Silenus, the chief of
the Satyrs and the god of drunkards.
In the Saturnalia it was Saturn, a dignified and venerable old
gentleman--the god of Time.
In the Germanic feasts it was Thor, a person of patriarchal aspect, and
a warrior to boot.
Now, although the central figure of the Christian festival was the
child-god--the Christ-Kindlein--none the less the influence of long
pagan antecedents was too strong within the breast of the newly
Christianized world to be readily dismissed. The tradition of hoary age
as the true representative of the holiday period, a tradition, it will
be seen, in which all pagan nations agreed, still remained smouldering
under the ashes of the past. It burst into flame again when the past
was too far back to be looked upon with dislike or disquietude by the
Church. No longer did there seem to be any danger of a relapse into the
religious errors of that past.
At first the more dignified representative was chosen as more in
keeping with a solemn season. Saturn was preferred to Silenus, and was
almost unconsciously rebaptized as Saint Nicholas, the latter being the
greatest saint whose festival was celebrated in December and the one
who in other respects was most nearly in accord with the dim traditions
of Saturn as the hero of the Saturnalia.
If you look at the pictures printed in this book you will see that in
face and figure the Saint Nicholas of the early painters was not unlike
the ancient idea of Saturn.
And it was many, many years before Saint Nicholas had ousted the
Christ-child from the first place in the Christmas festivities. Indeed,
as we shall see, he often accompanied his Master on His Christmas
rounds. It may be added that he still does so in certain country places
in Europe where the modern spirit has been least felt.
[Illustration: Silenus and Fauns.
Painting by Annibale Caracci.]
In course of time, as the idea of worldly merriment at the Christmas
season prevailed over that of prayer and thanksgiving, the name
Saint Nicholas gradually merged into the affectionate diminutive of
Santa Klaus. Under the new name the old saint lost all his austerity.
He became ruddier, jollier, more rubicund in aspect, while the
Christ-Kindlein faded more and more into the background, until at last
the very name of the latter, under the slightly different form of
Kris-Kinkle, was transferred to his successor.
And now compare the pictures of Santa Klaus which are scattered through
this book with that of Silenus. Is it not evident that the one is a
revival of the other, changed, indeed, in certain traits of character,
sobered up, washed and purified, clad in warm garments that are more
suited to the wintry season which he has made his own, but still the
god of good fellows,--the representative of good health, good humor and
good cheer?
Extremes meet once more. The most modern hero of the season of
merriment is a return to the most ancient. The Santa Klaus of to-day is
the Silenus of an unknown antiquity.
Let us learn a little more about Silenus. He was the tutor of Bacchus
and seems to have had so much respect for his pupil that his life
after the invention of wine was one long spree. It was a merry
and good-natured spree, however. Silenus never became maudlin or
quarrelsome in his cups. He was the most jovial of tipplers. His
outlook upon life was as rosy as his nose. A cheery laugh beamed over
his large fat face, the light of humor twinkled in his beady eyes, his
rotund stomach spoke of good cheer, his smile beamed assurance of an
unruffled disposition.
Among all the brute creation he chose an ass, that caricature of the
horse, as his favorite charger. He always appeared with a troupe of
laughing fauns and satyrs around him, and his advent was everywhere the
signal for quips and cranks and wreathèd smiles.
Now Saint Nicholas, also, in former times used to ride abroad on an
ass, and still continues to do so in certain portions of Europe. In
fact, as already noted, all the genial traits of Silenus, save only
that of drunkenness, are reproduced in Santa Klaus,--the jolly pagan
who is to-day the personification of Christmas.
But though a modernized pagan god holds this important position in our
festival, everything that could be offensive in the old pagan way of
celebrating it has been abolished.
[Illustration: Santa Claus and his young friends.
From Thomas Nast’s “Christmas Drawings for the Human Race.”
Copyright 1899 by Harper and Brothers.]
It was not always so. The Church which so wisely sought to retain the
old heathen forms, found it often very hard, and sometimes impossible,
to subdue the heathen spirit. In spite of the protests of priests and
the anathemas of popes, in spite of the condemnation of all wise and
good men, Christians in the early days frequently reproduced all the
worst follies and vices of the Bacchanalia and the Saturnalia.
Even the clergy were for a period whirled into the vortex. A special
celebration, called the Feast of Fools, was instituted in their behalf
with a view, said the doctors of the Church, that “the folly which
is natural to and born with us might exhale at least once a year.”
The intention was excellent. But in practice the liberty so accorded
speedily degenerated into license.
Early in the history of the Church excesses were so great that a
council of bishops held at Auxerre was moved to inquire into the
matter. Gerson, the most noted theologian of the day, made an immense
sensation by declaring that “if all the devils in hell had put their
heads together to devise a feast that should utterly scandalize
Christianity, they could not have improved upon this one.”
If even among the clergy heathen traditions survived so strenuously,
what wonder that they survived among the laity? The wild revels,
indeed, of the Christmas period in olden times almost stagger belief.
No amount of drunkenness, no blasphemy, no obscenity was frowned upon.
License was carried to the utmost limits of licentiousness. Even in
the seventeenth century, when the revels had been slightly toned down,
Master William Prynne discovered in them those vestiges of paganism
which are apparent enough to the historian of to-day.
“If we compare,” he says in his _Histrio-Mastix_, “our Bacchanalian
Christmas and New Year’s tides with these Saturnalia and feasts of
Janus, we shall find such near affinity between them, both in regard
of time,--they being both in the end of December and the first of
January--and in their manner of solemnizing--both being spent in
revelling, epicurism, wantonness, idleness, dancing, drinking,
stage-plays, masques and carnal pomp and jollity--that we must conclude
the one to be but the ape, or issue, of the other.”
The very excesses of the Christmas period proved their own eventual
cure. In England the Puritans revolted so bitterly that they for a
period put an end to Christmas altogether. In Europe the revolution
was more gradual. But everywhere a change of manners and of morals has
purified the festival over which Santa Klaus presides, and Santa Klaus
himself, even if we look upon him as a revival of the pagan Silenus, is
a Silenus freed from all the offensive features of paganism, a Silenus
who with his new baptismal name has taken on a new character.
[Illustration: Carrying home the Christmas dinner.
Drawing by John Leech.]
It must be remembered, however, that Santa Klaus does not rule all
over the Christian world. There is even a wide difference between our
Santa Klaus and the Saint Nicholas of Southern France and Germany. The
latter, grave, sedate, severe, preserves more of the Saturn than the
Silenus type. He is Saturn christianized and dignified with episcopal
robes. He distributes gifts like our Santa Klaus, but in addition
to gifts for good little boys and girls, he carries a birch-rod for
bad ones. In the more primitive sections, such as certain parts of
Lorraine, the Tyrol, Bohemia and so on, he is attended by an evil
spirit called Ruprecht who looks after bad boys and girls.
It is also frequently the custom on Christmas Day for a couple or more
of maskers to dress themselves up as Saint Nicholas and Ruprecht,
and other attendants, such as the Christ-child or St. Peter or who
not,--these additional characters varying with the locality. They go
from house to house rewarding the good children and punishing the bad.
More of this, however, in a future chapter.