The 30th of January 1933. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party,
is appointed chancellor of Germany by the German President Paul von Hindenburg.
Following his appointment, the Führer begins laying the foundations of a Nazi
state based on racist and authoritarian principles and in less than six months,
Germany is transformed from a democratic state into a one-party Nazi dictatorship.
Nazism as a totalitarian ideology tries to penetrate, dominate,
and control all spheres of human life, promoting the myth that the state is creating a national
community open to all "Aryan" Germans, regardless of class, region, or religion.
However, Jews, Blacks, and Roma people are excluded from this new community as racial
outsiders. Authority in government, the party, economy, and family flows downward from Hitler
and is to be obeyed unquestioningly by the community of obedient Germans.
Christmas must not be an exception to these totalitarian efforts.
In December 1921, Adolf Hitler gave a Christmas speech to his party members and sympathizers
in Munich. In a raised, aggressive voice, with spittle uncontrollably bursting from his mouth,
he declared that "the cowardly Jews have crucified the savior of the world to the cross."
Approximately 4 000 sympathizers, who were present, applauded hysterically and shouted
in agreement. Hitler promised them he would "not rest until he has put all the Jews in
the ground." Later, when the electrifying atmosphere of Hitler's speech had worn off,
the attendees sang Christmas carols around the Christmas tree, and the poorer members
of the Nazi Party from the ranks of the working class were given charity gifts.
Nazism, as a totalitarian ideology, tried to penetrate, dominate, and control all spheres of
human life. It wanted to reshape the Germans' thinking, the world of values and mentality,
and create what they called a "Volksgemeinschaft" - a single obedient national bloc of all Germans.
After the Nazi Party came into power in January 1933, Nazi ideologists and
propagandists almost immediately proceeded to "Nazify" Christmas. It was the most popular
holiday in Christian Germany and thus had considerable propaganda potential.
The Nazis, therefore, wanted to 'subtly alter' it, to adapt traditions, add new symbols and rituals,
and thus bring National Socialism directly to the Christmas table of every German.
Nazi ideologist Hannes Kremer wrote of "the necessity to create new customs
for a new political worldview and its ideals" because "celebrating Christmas
based on events that people today do not understand does not benefit us but harms
us. It inspires distrust of our goals instead of the certainty that we can lead the nation
spiritually as well." He was aware that Christmas could be a dangerous weapon.
He warned that "we must be careful because it works. And if it does not work according
to our will and ideals, it can easily work without us and even against us!"
The fact that Jesus was a Jew was both a problem and a provocation for the Nazis. Christmas did
not fit into their racist worldview and Christ had to disappear. Therefore, the cornerstone of their
entire effort was to redefine Christmas as an old Germanic pagan holiday. Party ideologists wrote
about the Catholic Church's conspiracy, about how it had been trying all along
to manipulate everyone and present what were really old Germanic traditions as its holiday.
After the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the Nazi Christmas Guide was found in an archive in Dresden
with precise instructions on celebrating Christmas and decorating the tree. The 20-page leaflet for
the Nazi Party members was published in November 1937 by the Saxon branch of the party. It prided
itself on promoting Saxon Germanic culture as representative of pure, true "Germanness". This
pamphlet was never to be published, and it was only for the internal use of the party members.
They were then to disseminate the fundamental ideals from it further in the form of education.
According to the handbook, Christmas Eve had nothing to do with Jesus Christ. It was
the winter solstice holiday, the Nordic Yule (or Jule, also known as Midwinter or Alban Arthuan).
Yule was the darkest day of the year, but after it,
the days began to get longer and longer. It was the sacred night when the sun was reborn.
Moreover, Christmas had nothing to do with "Weihnachtsmann", the big fat bearded gentleman
who brought presents. The Catholic Church stole that one, too, according to the Nazis. In fact,
it was the Norse god with the thick grey beard - Odin - who, according to legend,
rode across the sky on a white horse, heralding the arrival of the winter solstice.
The Nazis replaced the nativity scene with a Christmas Garden with wooden reindeer and
bunnies. They substituted the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus with a German blonde mother and child,
the Archangel Gabriel became an Aryan god, and the Three Kings became German workers and peasants.
The biggest problem for the Nazis was the traditional star on top of the Christmas tree.
It was either a six-pointed star, the Jewish Star of David, or a five-pointed star, the symbol of
Bolshevik Russia. The Nazis, therefore, replaced it with the swastika. The latter was, according to
them, the ancient symbol of the sun, representing the heroic struggle for the Great German Empire.
An alternative to the swastika was the various Nordic runes,
also used as symbols by the Waffen-SS. Nazi propaganda always put a lot of emphasis
on songs. The Nazis reworked the notorious "Silent Night, Holy Night" – “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht”
and removed all hints of God, Christ, and religion from the lyrics. Later, they even tried to insert
a Führer into the song. Instead of the coming 'Christ the Saviour', the 'Führer the Saviour'
was to come. This absurdity, however, was too much even for the otherwise well-handled German
people by propaganda. They, therefore, postponed it until later. Fortunately, that time never came.
The Nazis also changed the lyrics of other songs, such as another well-known one “Es ist für uns
eine Zeit angekommen” - "Our Time Has Come". But by far the most preferred song was “ Hohe Nacht
der klaren Sterne” “Exalted Night of the Clear Stars' by Hans Baumann, who wrote it in 1936
when he was 22 years old. Instead of Christian themes, the text was full of Nazi racial theories
about the superiority of Germans. The Nazi Party leadership even decided to include it
in the directives for the Christmas celebrations of the Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS and, for
example, the National Socialist Teachers League. This carol was reprinted in Nazi songbooks,
broadcast in radio programs, performed at countless public celebrations - and sung at home.
During the war, the Nazis tried even harder, and Christmas became a race among the Reich's
inhabitants to see who would send the present to the soldiers at the front. The Nazis hailed the
war as a cleansing of the nation, and Christmas was to be spent by the German family, remembering
"those who sacrificed themselves for the nation." Christmas, however, was not meant to be a holiday
for everyone. It belonged only to those with true German blood and especially to the soldiers
who had fought for the greatness of the Reich. As early as December 1939, Wilhelm Beilstein,
an otherwise almost insignificant Nazi ideologist, explained it: 'When we celebrate Christmas,
we include in the circle of the family all those who have German blood and who have affirmed their
German ethnicity, all those who came before us and who will come after us, all those whom fate
has not allowed living within the borders of the Reich, or those who are doing their duty abroad'.
The war touched the celebration of Christmas in other ways as well. On the orders of Heinrich
Himmler, the head of the SS, the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp had to make
unique Christmas lanterns, the so-called Yule lanterns and these were then given to
some SS members as a reward for their loyalty. Whether consciously or not,
they then spent Christmas with their families by the light of lanterns which had been made
by the slave labour of people who may no longer even have been among the living.
At the end of the war, the Nazis tried to recast
Christmas as a celebration of those killed in battle.
Women were a crucial part of Nazi ideology and, therefore, of Christmas as well. In the
Nazi conception, women – or even better mothers, the birth givers of the new Aryan warriors - were
an essential part of the new racist German empire. All the tasks that propaganda ascribed
to them as their duty, such as cooking Christmas meals, decorating the tree, wrapping presents,
organizing family gatherings and so on, were also portrayed as sentimental ideals
of Nordic or Aryan nationalism. A proper Aryan woman was supposed to sit at home,
take care of the household and give birth to new warriors for the front. And the more, the better.
At Christmas, women and children were supposed to bake cakes in the
shape of SS runes or swastikas and "bring the spirit of the German home back to reality".
Propagandists called them 'priestesses' and 'keepers of the home and hearth'.
The tradition of lighting candles on the tree was transformed into pagan demonic magic.
At the end of the war in 1944, at a time when the Germans had
almost 5 million dead and missing, and there was nothing to celebrate,
the most fanatical ideologists tried to rework Christmas into a massive celebration
of those who had fallen in battle. But these efforts went entirely
unnoticed among a public preoccupied with completely different set of problems.
We will never know how many German families
willingly accepted the efforts of Nazi propagandists and decorated
their trees with swastikas and sang racist Christmas carols at home.
However, there are records of the Nazi SS Security Service SD which speak of
the reluctance of a part of the population to such radical interventions in family traditions.
Similarly, it is possible to trace a report by the National Socialist Women's League,
which speaks directly of a split in the membership over a new form of
Christmas celebration. According to some women, the propagandists pushed
for these changes too hard and wanted them very quickly and they did not like that.
Similarly, a section of the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, opposed the Nazis,
and refused to allow them to mutilate one of the most important Christian holidays.
The priests often urged Germans not to join Nazi organizations,
not to succumb to the propaganda, and not to celebrate Nazi Christmas.
Even the priests have not been able to reverse this development.
The new Nazi holidays were celebrated above all the family,
which seemed harmless to many. That they also celebrated racial purity at the same time,
and that Christmas was only for Aryans, many did not see or did not want to see.
It should also be noted that the more significant part of the population seemed according to SD
reports to have quickly identified with the new traditions, and the Nazi secret service reported
on the popularity of the new holidays. It is, of course, questionable how the Nazi "secret
service" arrived at their findings and whether ordinary people told them the truth when they
were being interviewed. It was often known, or at least suspected, who the "informer" was.
The Nazis, also through Christmas, tried to enter the private lives of the German
people and take control of them. Even a banal thing like singing Christmas carols
and baking Christmas cakes could express resistance and threaten the regime which
was something the Nazis could not afford. Any expression of freedom had to disappear.
Interestingly, the Nazi-altered lyrics of some of the songs were still in use long after the war,
especially in the communist East Germany where efforts to "de-Christianise" Christmas
continued even after the fall of Nazism. Christianity and a Christian Christmas were
not even compatible with communism. Communist ideologists even made an enormous effort to
replace the birth of Jesus with the birth of Stalin who was born on the 18th of December.
Some of these Nazi-promoted and adapted songs are still sung in this version in Germany today,
for example, the aforementioned Our Time Has Come.
Despite Nazi attempts to take over Christmas traditions,
only one tradition survived the end of the Third Reich: the most famous Nazi carol,
"Exalted Night of the Clear Stars ". It was still sung by some families,
at least through the 1950’s and is sung as part of some public performances even today.
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