Christmas Stories

Christmas Stories:

I don't know if there's a "war against Christmas" per se, but the holiday has not in my memory been so violent in its imagery. Still, I suppose it's only a return to roots. I saw from Drudge that the American Family Association is protesting Labafana, the "Christmas Witch." Well, I know nothing of Labafana, but I am going to guess that she's a friendly witch, as the witches of my association abhor violence. Not so the "mother Christmas" we were looking at yesterday! A traditional Icelandic figure, Gryla the Mother of December...

...likes to cook up naughty children and eat them, bones and all. "Gryla" is also married to "Leppaludi". This charming couple own a large black cat as well. This larger than human cat is called Christmas cat. He also eats children who do not get new clothes for Christmas. Not getting new clothing is proof that you were sooooo naughty, you deserve nothing except to be eaten.

Meanwhile, via Southern Appeal, I see that the original St. Nick slapped a heretic at the Council of Nicea. (One of the commenters to the post proposes a new Christmas carol: "Deck them all for all their folly.")

The heretic in question was Arius, who was the primary advocate of what came to be known as the Arian Heresy. The Catholic Encyclopedia makes the dispute sound highly technical, which may lead you to believe that it was a dispute among scholars only. It certainly doesn't sound like the kind of thing that would become popular enough to create a major schism in the religion, which it did. There was a reason that Santa Claus was mad enough about it to punch out the fellow. The Encyclopedia says that:

[Arianism] is not a modern form of unbelief, and therefore will appear strange in modern eyes. But we shall better grasp its meaning if we term it an Eastern attempt to rationalize the creed by stripping it of mystery so far as the relation of Christ to God was concerned.

The encyclopedia then proceeds to do anything other than strip the thing of its mystery. Instead, it clouds what Arius was saying beneath a host of doctrinal points about what the Church holds.

What Arius said was that Jesus was the "son of God" in the sense that he was half a god, half a man. The Church holds that Jesus is fully god and fully man at the same time. That is one of those logical contradictions that the Church says shows that the brains of mortal men can't grasp the power of God. This is not an unreasonable position -- the finite being unable to grasp the infinite -- but it is also not obvious. In fact, if anything is going to appear strange to modern eyes, it's this position.

Arius' position, on the other hand, was immediately understandable. Greek-speaking pagans at once grasped that you could have a god that was all-powerful: Zeus was sometimes said to be (and so, by a certain cult, was Bacchus). It also had no trouble with the idea of that god fathering children, who were half-gods. God is like Zeus, only moreso; Jesus is like Heracles, only with a very different message. The Arian Heresy made conversion to Christianity very easy in much of the Indo-European world, and thus it produced a huge number of adherents.

The Church didn't agree, but it had its work cut out for it. Arius held firm, which is why Santa Claus was so angry at him. The violence didn't stop there:

George of Cappadocia persecuted the Alexandrian Catholics. Athanasius retired into the desert.... Hosius had been compelled by torture to subscribe a fashionable creed. When the vacillating Emperor died (361), Julian, known as the Apostate, suffered all alike to return home who had been exiled on account of religion. A momentous gathering, over which Athanasius presided, in 362, at Alexandria, united the orthodox Semi-Arians with himself and the West. Four years afterwards fifty-nine Macedonian, i.e., hitherto anti-Nicene, prelates gave in their submission to Pope Liberius. But the Emperor Valens, a fierce heretic, still laid the Church waste.

Sort of puts that "Christmas Witch" thing in perspective, doesn't it?

UPDATE: A little searching around proves that "Labafana" is actually "La Befana," a traditional Italian legendary figure.

As legend has it the three Wise Men were in search of the Christ child when they decided to stop at a small house to ask for directions. Upon knocking, an old woman holding a broom opened the door slightly to see who was there. Standing at her doorstep were three colorfully dressed men who were in need of directions to find the Christ child. The old woman was unaware of who these three men were looking for and could not point them in the right direction. Prior to the three men leaving they kindly asked the old woman to join them on their journey. She declined because she had much housework to do. After they left she felt as though she had made a mistake and decided to go and catch up with the kind men. After many hours of searching she could not find them. Thinking of the opportunity she had missed the old woman stopped every child to give them a small treat in hopes that one was the Christ child. Each year on the eve of the Epiphany she sets out looking for the baby Jesus. She stops at each child's house to leave those who were good treats in their stockings and those who were bad a lump of coal.

So, once again, the American Family Association is... ah, misinformed. Rather than anti-Christian, it's just the regular sort of multiculturalism.