Ben White in Sacred Fire Magazine
March 3, 2011 Back to News
"Santa’s Gone Wild"
The venerable Christmas visitor carries an ancient shamanic lineage along with his bag.
While Christians celebrate the birth of their Savior and consumers seek salvation by cash, check or credit, the icon of the season undoubtedly remains that hoary old elf Santa Claus himself. For the faith- ful, Jesus never goes out of style, but because Christmas is the only time of the year for him to appear, it’s Santa’s time to shine.
Peel the wrapping paper from the veneer of Santa’s image, however, and you’ll find yourself on a sleigh ride back through time witnessing the twists and turns of a fascinating figure with a colorful— and surprising—personality.
In popular belief the origins of today’s Santa are traced to Saint Nicholas, the 4th-century Greek Bishop of Myrna (modern-day Turkey) and patron saint of children revered for his generosity as a secret gift-giver and his power as a miracle worker.
Dig a little deeper, however, and you might find family roots far less genteel.
One entertaining place to start is with Phyllis Siefker’s Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men (Jeffer- son, NC: McFarland and Co, 1997), which finds in Santa’s ancestry one or more earthy Norse gods, including Odin and his son Thor. While both were winter-night, sky-flying, long-white- bearded dwellers of the North, Thor especially was portrayed as cheerful, elderly and stout. He was said to come down the chimney into his element, the fire. Odin was famous for his eight- legged horse, Sleipnir, and during Yuletide, says the author, pagan kids would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw or sugar for Sleipnir, next to the chimney. (And remember, Santa originally had eight reindeer.) In return, Odin—known to reward good kids and punish the naughty—would fill their boots with gifts and candy during the night.
After peeling away much of his modern persona, Siefker ultimately sees in Santa an American incarnation of an ancient, pan-European fertility deity. A dark, sooty, hair-covered “Wild Man,” he is perceived “as a priest to some, a god to oth- ers, and the personification of evil to still others.” The premise of the book, in fact, is that this archaic Wild Man is the father of Santa and Satan alike. Chew on that awhile, Mr. O’Reilly!
This same Wild Man apparently made quite an impression on artist Jeffrey Vallance who, upon arriving to accept a three-year professorship in northern Sweden, found himself “puzzled by the enigmatic heraldic symbol of Lapland,
the Wild Man—a hairy, reddish, bestial character dressed in leaves, wielding a gnarled club.” One day while romping through the backwoods, he stumbled upon “a colossal statue of the Wild Man painted bright red and with a snowy white beard.” After his outback epiphany that Santa, the Wild Man, and Snomannen (a sort-of Swedish Bigfoot) must all spring from the same source, Vallance set about through the Land of Hoarfrost to prove his point. Interested readers can walk in his snow- prints and follow his adventures via the L.A. Weekly (http://www.laweekly.com/2002-12-26/news/ santa-is-a-wildman/).
Similar to Siefert, author Tony van Renterghem does a thorough background check of our jolly ol’ St. Nick and comes to a conclusion sure to delight fundamentalists and folklorists alike. He too tracks a dark, woolly, pan-tribal Wild Man into the hinterlands beyond recorded history, finding an archaic horned god he identifies as Herne—Spirit of the Great Hunt. In When Santa Was a Shaman: The Ancient Origins of Santa Claus and the Christmas Tree (St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995), he discerns a line from Herne to Pan to Cernunnos to Odin and, finally, to the cult of St. Nicholas.
Where Siefert sees the family tree diverging in two main branches, however, van Renterghem discerns a single, if somewhat motley trunk. For him, behind the sanitized and commercialized picture of shopping-mall manna we encounter today in Santa, there remains none other than “the ancient shamanic nature spirit of the Olde Religion.” Whether that assertion gives you the willies, lights your fire or simply makes you bellow “Ho Ho Ho!” you’re sure to be engaged with this tale. —C.S.
**Ben White is an artist and educator who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BFA from Florida State University in 2001 and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2003. He runs the Scene Shop and teaches drawing and design for the School of Theatre at California Institute of the Arts. He is represented by and exhibits at Blythe Projects in Culver City, CA.**
The venerable Christmas visitor carries an ancient shamanic lineage along with his bag.
While Christians celebrate the birth of their Savior and consumers seek salvation by cash, check or credit, the icon of the season undoubtedly remains that hoary old elf Santa Claus himself. For the faith- ful, Jesus never goes out of style, but because Christmas is the only time of the year for him to appear, it’s Santa’s time to shine.
Peel the wrapping paper from the veneer of Santa’s image, however, and you’ll find yourself on a sleigh ride back through time witnessing the twists and turns of a fascinating figure with a colorful— and surprising—personality.
In popular belief the origins of today’s Santa are traced to Saint Nicholas, the 4th-century Greek Bishop of Myrna (modern-day Turkey) and patron saint of children revered for his generosity as a secret gift-giver and his power as a miracle worker.
Dig a little deeper, however, and you might find family roots far less genteel.
One entertaining place to start is with Phyllis Siefker’s Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men (Jeffer- son, NC: McFarland and Co, 1997), which finds in Santa’s ancestry one or more earthy Norse gods, including Odin and his son Thor. While both were winter-night, sky-flying, long-white- bearded dwellers of the North, Thor especially was portrayed as cheerful, elderly and stout. He was said to come down the chimney into his element, the fire. Odin was famous for his eight- legged horse, Sleipnir, and during Yuletide, says the author, pagan kids would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw or sugar for Sleipnir, next to the chimney. (And remember, Santa originally had eight reindeer.) In return, Odin—known to reward good kids and punish the naughty—would fill their boots with gifts and candy during the night.
After peeling away much of his modern persona, Siefker ultimately sees in Santa an American incarnation of an ancient, pan-European fertility deity. A dark, sooty, hair-covered “Wild Man,” he is perceived “as a priest to some, a god to oth- ers, and the personification of evil to still others.” The premise of the book, in fact, is that this archaic Wild Man is the father of Santa and Satan alike. Chew on that awhile, Mr. O’Reilly!
This same Wild Man apparently made quite an impression on artist Jeffrey Vallance who, upon arriving to accept a three-year professorship in northern Sweden, found himself “puzzled by the enigmatic heraldic symbol of Lapland,
the Wild Man—a hairy, reddish, bestial character dressed in leaves, wielding a gnarled club.” One day while romping through the backwoods, he stumbled upon “a colossal statue of the Wild Man painted bright red and with a snowy white beard.” After his outback epiphany that Santa, the Wild Man, and Snomannen (a sort-of Swedish Bigfoot) must all spring from the same source, Vallance set about through the Land of Hoarfrost to prove his point. Interested readers can walk in his snow- prints and follow his adventures via the L.A. Weekly (http://www.laweekly.com/2002-12-26/news/ santa-is-a-wildman/).
Similar to Siefert, author Tony van Renterghem does a thorough background check of our jolly ol’ St. Nick and comes to a conclusion sure to delight fundamentalists and folklorists alike. He too tracks a dark, woolly, pan-tribal Wild Man into the hinterlands beyond recorded history, finding an archaic horned god he identifies as Herne—Spirit of the Great Hunt. In When Santa Was a Shaman: The Ancient Origins of Santa Claus and the Christmas Tree (St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995), he discerns a line from Herne to Pan to Cernunnos to Odin and, finally, to the cult of St. Nicholas.
Where Siefert sees the family tree diverging in two main branches, however, van Renterghem discerns a single, if somewhat motley trunk. For him, behind the sanitized and commercialized picture of shopping-mall manna we encounter today in Santa, there remains none other than “the ancient shamanic nature spirit of the Olde Religion.” Whether that assertion gives you the willies, lights your fire or simply makes you bellow “Ho Ho Ho!” you’re sure to be engaged with this tale. —C.S.
**Ben White is an artist and educator who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BFA from Florida State University in 2001 and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2003. He runs the Scene Shop and teaches drawing and design for the School of Theatre at California Institute of the Arts. He is represented by and exhibits at Blythe Projects in Culver City, CA.**
