The relationship of the Nazis with Christmas

How the Third Reich tried to manipulate the great celebration of Christianity, turning it into an instrument of National Socialism

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In a beer garden in Munich in 1921, the new president of the National Socialist Party of German Workers, someone Adolf Hitler, delivered a Christmas speech in a crowd that was going crazy.

According to the German secret police present, some 4.000 supporters cheered every time the leader condemned "the cowardly Jews who crucified the liberator of the world" and swore "I will not rest until the last Jew falls under soil".

After the fiery speech, the people sang carols, traditional Christmas songs, but also nationalist hymns around the decorated fir tree. Those in attendance even belonged to the working class and received gifts.

Today we know that for the Germans of the 1920s and 1930s this combination of festive atmosphere, nationalist propaganda and anti-Semitism was not only foreign.

But as long as the Nazi party grew in numbers and power and even before taking power the country, democratically in 1932 and dictatorially since 1933 (after the burning of the Reichstag), the party's propagandists turned with great care and study to what historians call the "Naziization of Christmas."

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The aim was to give family traditions a new symbolism, hoping to lead the followers of National Socialism on new paths.

Given the complete state control of public life, it is no wonder how successful the campaign was for their own version of Christmas. This is what the citizen of the Third Reich was constantly hearing on the radio, he also read them in the daily press.

Historians today have no doubt about the impact of Nazi Christmas and its diffusion into the private lives of citizens. All that remains to be discussed is the extent to which this has happened.

That is, at a time when there were Germans who did not celebrate the political Christmas of the Third Reich in their homes, impressively many embraced their Nazi version, turning the family home into a celebration of hatred.

The redefinition of Christmas

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Perhaps the most characteristic element of the Nazi conception of Christmas was their redefinition as a neo-pagan holiday. Northern European origin.

Instead of focusing on the Christian origins of the holiday, the Nazi version honored the supposed superiority of the Aryan race.

According to the theorists of the Third Reich, what one deserved to celebrate at Christmas were the rituals of the winter solstice that the Teutonic tribes used to honor before their arrival. Christianity.

The lighted candles on the Christmas trees symbolized in Nazi ideology the pagan desire for the "return of light" after the smallest day of the year.

The Nazi conception of Christmas was a "laboratory celebration," as historians call it, a mixture of pre-Christian rituals and popular myths and prejudices.

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The propaganda mechanism of the Third Reich caught fire to transform them Christmas in a celebration of pagan German nationalism.

A really huge machine was set up, always focusing on the Ministry of Propaganda, in order to erase from the collective memory of the people the Christian origins of Christmas.

The Nazi attempt is explained on the basis of two main reasons. Hitler and the National Socialists considered the institution of religion to be the absolute enemy of the authoritarian state they wanted to create. And so it was fitting to erase the Christian elements of the feast.

Although the official celebrations referred to a higher being, they connected it with the light and the sun, pressing on the pre-Christian traditions of the German nation.

The second reason is already inherent in Hitler's speech in 1921: Nazi celebrations had to evoke feelings of racial purity and anti-Semitism. Before taking power in 1932, they managed to turn attacks on German Jews into an informal holiday feature.

This continued, and after 1933, Nazi Christmas continued to exclude those it deemed "inappropriate."

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The holiday iconography depicted families of blond and blue-eyed Germans around the Christmas tree, wanting to normalize the ideology of racial purity.

The apparent anti-Semitism of the new Christmas rhetoric was not even hidden from the official agenda. Status called for a boycott of Jewish shops during the festive season.

In a department store catalog at Christmas 1935, featuring a mom holding a gift, there was a note to reassure people: "The store has passed into the hands of Arius!".

In Nazi Germany even a gift had to propagate hatred of Jews. Thus strengthening the official rhetoric of the party for the "social death" of the Jew.

The message was one and clear: only Aryans could take part in the festivities…

Removing Christ from Christmas

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According to the ideologists of National Socialism, names such as Alfred Rosenberg that is, the woman and especially the mother was a decisive factor in strengthening the relationship between privacy and the "new spirit", as they called their racist state.

The everyday aspects of Christmas, such as the wrapping of gifts, the decoration of the house, the festive table, were thus associated with the woman, drawing on elements from the pagan traditions of the (European) North.

Nazi propagandists crowned their German mother the queen of Christmas. "Priestess" and "patroness of the house and the hearth" anointed her to bring Christmas back on track, to "revive the spirit of the German house," as their rhetoric promoted.

And so the women's magazines, the Christmas preparation guides, even the Nazis carol, it was all a mixture of family traditions and intolerance.

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The ideological manipulation was extensive and covered all aspects of everyday life. Mothers and children were encouraged to make homemade ornaments that traced their origins to the Teutonic and Scandinavian deities.

Ornaments for the tree, such as the "Odin Solar Wheel", and loop-shaped cookies, the symbol of fertility in Teutonic traditions.

Even the lighted candles on the Christmas tree were promoted with new meaning. The Nazis believed that it created an atmosphere of "pagan demonic magic" that could dethrone the Star of Bethlehem and its birth. Jesus from the heart of the festive season.

The aim was to deify "Germanism" by covering up all the religious implications of Christmas. Christian extensions, alas.

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And here the people in charge of the Nazi propaganda went to great lengths to perform so many carols and merry Christmas songs, in order to replace the Christian themes with their neo-pagan rhetoric.

The traditional "Holy Night", let's say, was preserved, it simply had no reference to God, Christ and Christianity.

The "Night with the Clear Stars", the most popular Nazi carols, played constantly and everywhere, from public celebrations and radio to private in every home.

These carols became so popular and so intertwined with Christmas that you heard them sung in her homes Germany even in the 1950s. They had gone beyond their Nazi origins, they had become an integral part of the Christmas ritual.

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"Night with the Clear Stars" (Hohe Nacht der klaren Sterne) was a demonic work. It had a melody that was very similar to traditional carols, but the lyrics denied anything Christian. They sang about stars, lights and the "eternal mother", about a world that would be saved by National Socialism and not Jesus.

Ο Ιησούς it was, after all, intertwined in the minds of the Nazis with its Jewish origins. They could not celebrate the birth of the "Jewish Messiah", as they called him between 1933-1945…

How all this was accepted by the German people

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As with most issues related to Nazi ideology and the suffering of the Third Reich in Europe, the debate inevitably focuses on how the people welcomed the deliberate effort of Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler to uproot Christianity from Germany, replacing it with the panspermia of the old Teutonic gods.

The historical reality is that we do not know exactly how many households sang Nazi carols and baked cookies in Odin's honor. Not many citizens believed the theorists of Nazism who said more or less that Christmas had nothing to do with the birth of Christ.

They argued that the Christian elements of the holidays had been forcibly imposed on the ancient Germanic tribes and that the real meaning of Christmas was the celebration of the winter solstice, the "rebirth of the sun".

The swastika, they said, was an ancient symbol of the sun and even the Santa Claus it was but a Christian reinvention of Odin. And so the Christmas saint was replaced in Nazi iconography by a bearded Odin, and where the manger once stood they now simply decorated a garden with wooden deer and bunnies.

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As for the Virgin Mary and Jesus, they did not disappear, she was just a blonde blue-eyed mother holding a baby in her arms.

However, we have testimonies and records of how popular all this became in a large part of German society.

From the National Socialist Women's Union (NSF), for example, which kept minutes of its meetings, we learn that there was great disagreement among some of its members over the redefinition of Christmas.

The union's records, however, show that these objections were allayed when the Nazi party pushed hard to sideline Christian holiday extensions.

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The only strong resistance the Nazis encountered in their attempt to remove Christ from Christmas came from the German clergy. We know that in Düsseldorf the clergy insisted on adhering to the (catholic) Christian traditions and even threatened to absolve women who wanted to join the NSF.

We also know that in other parts of Germany, devout Christians did not go to Nazi Christmas events or NSF charity gala. Historians, however, argue that these were the exceptions rather than the rule.

In gallop made by the regime's secret police to measure attitudes regarding the Nazi Christmas, the officials always appeared satisfied with the acceptance of their interventions in the world.

It seems that a good part of the society accepted the Naziization of Christmas. Even more people welcomed the return to the "real German traditions", which came to boost the national prestige of the Germans.

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For others it was just another symbol of racial purity and white supremacy. Only Aryans could celebrate New German Christmas.

This was another black Nazi move to divide society. The simple daily decision about what kind of cookies to bake on holidays was now either an act of resistance or a proof of adherence to the ideals of National Socialism.

How did it all end? Simple and practical. From 1944, when the Nazis realized that they would lose the war and concentrated all their forces on the military, no one cared which god Kosmakis would sing in his homes.

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