Before Santa Claus Came

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. Mansfield, Mo.

Hundreds of years ago when our pagan ancestors lived in the great forests of Europe and worshipped the sun, they celebrated Christmas in a somewhat different fashion than we do today.

The sun, they thought, was the giver of all good. He warmed and lighted the earth. He caused the grass to grow for their flocks and herds to eat and the fruits and grains for their own food, but every year after harvest time he became angry with them and started to go away, withdrawing his warmth and light farther and still farther from them. The days when he showed them his face became shorter and shorter and the periods of darkness ever longer. The farther away he went the colder it grew. The waters turned to ice and snow fell in place of the gentle summer showers.

If their god indeed left them as he seemed to be doing, if he would not become reconciled to them, they must all perish, for nothing would grow upon which they could live and if they did not freeze they would die of hunger. Their priests' demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of a child!

What is now our Christmas eve was the night chosen for the ceremony. On that night the door of every hut in the village must be left unfastened that the priests might enter and take the child. No one knew which house would be entered nor what child taken to be sacrificed on the altar of the Sun God.

Perhaps the priests knew that the shortest day of the year had arrived and that the sun would start on its return journey at this time. They may have taken advantage of this knowledge to gain greater control over the people, but it may be that the selection of the right day at first was purely accidental and they believed, with the people, that the Sun God was pleased by the sacrifice. It was, to them, proof of this that he immediately started to return and smiled upon them for another season.

Do you suppose the children knew and listened in terror for the footsteps on Christmas eve? The fathers and mothers must have harkened for the slightest noise and waited in agony, not knowing whether their house would be passed by or whether the priests would enter stealthily and bear away one of their children or perhaps their only child. How happy they must have been when the teachers of Christianity came and told them it was all unnecassary. It is no wonder they celebrated the birth of Christ on the date of that awful night of sacrifice, which was now robbed of its terror, nor that they made it a children's festival.

Instead of the stealth steps of cruel men, there came now, on Christmas eve, a jolly saint with reindeer and bells, bringing gifts. This new spirit of love and peace and safety that was abroad in the land did not require that the doors be left unbarred. He could come thru locked doors or down the chimney and be everywhere at once on Christmas night, vor a spirit can do such things. No wonder the people laughed and danced and rant the joy bells on Christmas day and the celebration with its joy and thankfulness has come on down the years to us. Without all that Christmas means, we might still be dreading the day in the old terrible way instead of listening for the sleigh bells of Santa Claus.

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. "Before Santa Claus Came." Missouri Ruralist,  (December 20, 1916).

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