Happy Christmas!

Festival of lights

In the Christian tradition Christmas is associated with the birth of Jesus. We now know that he wasn't really born on 25 December: the date was chosen by the leaders of the Catholic Church in order to harness the pre-existing festivals of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights (held this year from 22 to 29 December) and the ancient Roman Saturnalia festival, celebrating the solstice, the shortest day of the year. Despite Christianity, these Jewish and pagan festivals thrived in the west, which was unbearable for the Roman Catholic Church, but it wasn't until 1175 AD that the first Christian Christmas was celebrated. Christmas retains some features of the celebrations which it replaced. Lights in the streets and candles in the Christmas tree recall Hanukkah and the origins of Christmas lunch can be traced back to the excesses of the Roman feast.

The beautiful story of Father Christmas

Our faithful online readers will already know that Father Christmas is really a secular interpretation of Saint Nicolas, patron saint of children in the Catholic tradition. The kindly white-bearded old man, ruddy and jolly, is a recent phenomenon. In the nineteenth century he gave up his mitre (the mitre of Saint Nicolas) in favour of a bobble-hat. At the same time he traded his long gown for a shorter tunic, rather fetching and certainly more practical for negotiating chimneys en route to delivering presents to good children. While we are on the subject, it is worth noting that his uniform wasn't always red: in some Nordic countries it was green while in other countries, such as Russia under the tsars, it was blue. This is also related to the fact that Saint Nicolas is, depending on the country in question, the patron saint of teachers, glaziers and people from Lorraine, Freiburg (in Germany) and Russia.

Most lovely fir tree

Father Christmas, as we know him, was born in a poem dating back to 1821 when an American pastor, Clement Clark Moore, wrote about him in The Night before Christmas. This was the first time we heard about the jolly man with a big white beard, red cheeks and a bulging sack of toys. In 1836 the cartoonist Thomas Nast, at the time working for the New York magazine Harper's Weekly, gave him a face and it was the same Thomas Nast who located Father Christmas's residence at the North Pole. Another American, Louis Prang, inventor of the Christmas card, dressed the children's best friend in red. The Far North inspired many Christmas traditions in the nineteenth century. It was only in the 1860s that the idea of the Christmas tree, "of all the trees most lovely", would be introduced in France by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III.

Christmas throughout the world

The Christmas tree is actually rather controversial. It isn't very ecological to decimate the fir tree population. A fake Christmas tree might be better, but plastic is not that popular either. These days we are advised to get a tree in a pot, which can be replanted when Christmas is over. You can choose. The traditional Christmas meal varies depending on local customs around the world. In Argentina they eat parrillada, a selection of grilled meat while the Japanese vote for lobster and fishbread. To keep warm, Russians get through no less than 12 courses, supplemented with little pancakes called blinis and poppy biscuits with honey. In Spain the food of choice is mantecados, churros (fritters) and peppers. Biscuits in the shape of toys and Christmas characters come from Finland: they are called piparkakut and are made with ginger and cinnamon.

Tintin and Christmas

In one of the drawings he did to wish his readers a Merry Christmas, Hergé placed Tintin and his friends in a scene centred around another established tradition: the Christmas turkey. This was an old European tradition that spread to the United States but was then forgotten in Europe until it was brought back by American soldiers during the First World War. Christmas was a source of great inspiration for Hergé. One of Hergé's oldest illustrations on this theme can be found in a story, Noël chouan, which appeared on 25 December 1927. Numerous covers of Le Petit "Vingtième" were devoted to Christmas as was also the case later in Tintin magazine.

Merry Christmas to friends of Tintin all around the world!