White Christmas: How the Nazis celebrated the Yule
Nazis have a habit of latching on to things that people generally consider positive and not letting go until people associate those good aspects of life with fascism.
It’s not just Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party that follows this trope, which can be a vote-winner for any politically related figure that wants to get the masses on their side.
There’s a reason that Nigel Farage seems to have a pint surgically grafted to his hands at all times. Elon Musk dined out on the Tony Stark tag so heartily that people believed he inspired the Marvel superhero that was first before he was born. Donald Trump’s favourite movie is, apparently, Sunset Boulevard because it’s universally adored, and people will think he’s tasteful if he claims to like it. Whether they actually care about these things they claim to love is another matter; they just know what works with the people.
Similarly, this is the reason why fascists have been trying to claim Christmas as their own for centuries. The ever-present dog whistle in regards to the so-called ‘war on Christmas’ isn’t a recent phenomenon; people have been trying to brainwash decent folks into hating their fellow man with the yuletide season for too long to remember. In fact, the Nazi Party revealed exactly what they wanted Christmas to be after they took control of Germany in 1933.
Prior to the rise of the Third Reich, Germany had been a proudly Christian country. Hitler had been preying on that Christianity for close to a decade before he was made Chancellor of Germany. In fact, many of his early beer hall speeches, especially those that were made in the winter, were circulated around condemning “the cowardly Jews for breaking the world-liberator on the cross”. However, fascists don’t actually believe in anything and will say any old shit to get attention.
The truth was that the Nazis were stirring up the Christian citizens of Germany in order to impose a regime that would strip the country of its very religion.
How did the Nazis celebrate Christmas?
The tradition that the Nazis wanted the country to return to was a pagan one. A form of worship completely free of any supposed “outside influence”.
In other words, “You’ll worship your government and nothing more”. After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the changes were pretty much immediate. After all that rhetoric about “the world-liberator”, among the first decrees the Nazis put in place was that, effectively, Christmas was cancelled.
It was replaced with Julfest, a holiday in line with the pagan tradition of the Yule. However, the supposed holiday was little more than Christmas that had the Christian bits copied and pasted over with either Norse mythology or, later, Hitler himself. Originally, anything that depicted Santa Claus was doctored to depict Odin instead, but the illusion that this had anything to do with Germanic pagan traditions went out the window within a few years. This also leads to the creation of images that would be hilarious if these events didn’t actually happen.
Biscuits, wreaths, and even Christmas tree decorations were all in the shape of swastikas, as well as chocolate SS soldiers being sold in shops. By the start of the Second World War, any idea of Christmas celebrating anything other than the Reich was gone. Instead, you had Christmas Carols that had been rewritten to remove any mention of the coming of Jesus Christ and replaced with the coming of Hitler instead.
A chilling reminder of what fascists really want to do when they start slithering up to something you love. Remove everything that makes it great and replace it with them instead.