Christmas: An anthropological lens

Abstract

Why does the festival of Christmas appear to be expanding worldwide while other festivals decline? Why do people emphasize their local rituals, given this is a global festival? Is this a religious festival whose values have been destroyed by materialism? What is the relationship between this family celebratory meal and the divine family to which it pays obeisance? These seemed to be questions that lent themselves to an anthropological perspective. For this reason in 1993 I brought together an edited volume Unwrapping Christmas, which was published by Oxford University Press. For that collection I also obtained permission from Claude Lévi-Strauss to include the first translation of his paper "Le Pere Noël supplicié. " Subsequently, on request from Suhrkamp Verlag, who had published several of my books in German, I submitted the following manuscript as part of their launch of a series of more popular academic works in a digital edition. This is the first publication of the manuscript in English.

Christmas markets – marketplace icon

“…Like other marketplace icons, for example champagne (Rokka 2017) or curry (Varman 2017), the origins of modern-day Christmas traditions are complex and pregnant with myth. Miller (1993Miller ( , 2017 introduces the two predominant myths of origin that have shaped the modern-day Christmas that we know today: (a) Christmas has emerged as an amalgamation of seasonal festivals and their traditions in Ancient Roman times and (b) Christmas became a predominantly Anglo-American "invented tradition" in the nineteenth century, as various rituals and practices merged to form the crystallised and homogenised global celebration that we know today. Both explications have fed into modern-day Christmas celebrations.…”

“…This syncretism has resulted in a distinguishable, yet open format, underlying worldwide Christmas festivities. It has facilitated an ability to adapt to changing societies and circumstances, meaning that Christmas has reinvented itself across contexts and time, while remaining relatively stable over the course of its history and global spread (Miller 1993(Miller , 2017Kimura and Belk 2005).…”

“…Until the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, Christmas markets were spaces in which social classes mingled relatively harmoniously (Perry 2010): lower classes could purchase boots and housewares, farmers, the equipment they needed; more affluent classes could pick up artisan, and often expensive, handcrafted jewellery, toys, wigs, wood turned items. They were spaces which facilitated utilitarian and seasonal consumption to a cross-section of society; this made them popular with a variety of stakeholders, who were further attracted to the situational inversion of societal hierarchies that these consumption spaces provided (Miller 2017).…”

“…In some ways, German Christmas markets provide consumers with an anachronistic experience of tradition, community as well as exotic but familiar festive spirit. Amid the rise in post-capitalist discourses, German Christmas markets create a simplified Christmas shopping experience that foregrounds sociality and community, while still providing a space for the material and commercial aspects of Christmas (Miller 2017).…”

“…Originating in Germany in the Middle Ages, these seasonal markets have over the centuries become established annual Christmas traditions with global spread, joining in with what had been, since the mid-nineteenth century, a rather stable configuration of Christmas traditions (Kimura and Belk 2005), including Christmas trees, presents, Santa Claus and Christmas carols and cards. Over the past few decades, Christmas markets have become part of the configuration of traditions that form the basis of global Christmas celebrations (Miller 2017). At present, Christmas markets in Germany, in several European cities and further afield, are major sites for consumption and tourism at Christmas (Jansen-Verbeke 1998) (Figure 1).…”