Celebrating the Winter Holidays, Part I

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, you’ve probably begun decorating your house for the rest of the holiday season. Whether it’s lights and inflatable snowmen outside or an “Elf on the Shelf” resting comfortably on the living room mantel, most of us are fascinated by holiday decorations. If you celebrate Chanukah, you have started lighting candles and spinning dreidels, and if you are celebrating Christmas, you have likely already got your Christmas tree up and have hung all the family's favorite ornaments on its branches. As we like to do around the holidays every year, let’s look at how our ancestors passed down these traditions to us.

In Jewish families, Chanukah is celebrated by lighting candles in a menorah for eight nights, symbolizing oil that miraculously lasted far longer than expected allowing ancient Jews to purify and rededicate their temple in Jerusalem after it had been defiled by enemies. Fried foods, like potato pancakes (latkes) or jelly doughnuts are often served to symbolize the oil that kept burning. Presents and games are part of the holiday, and probably the most common toy is the dreidel, a four-sided top with Hebrew letters on it. The letters are shin, hey, gimel, and nun, or S, H, G, and N, and in Hebrew many believe they stand for “A great miracle happened there.” 

However, the dreidel has nothing at all to do with religious celebrations. It has a much more secular origin. Around the early sixteenth century, the English and Irish played a game called “totum” with a spinning top. In Latin, “totum” means “all," and by the early nineteenth century, the top had four letters on it: T, H, P, and N, standing for “take all,” “half,” “put down,” and “nothing.” The game played in Germany had equivalent letters: N, G, H, and S, for Nichts (nothing), Ganz, (all), Halb, {half), and Stell ein, (put in). The Germans called the spinning top a “Torrel” or “Trundl,” and in Yiddish, it was a dreidel!

Christmas trees, the most ubiquitous symbol of the holiday, also have multicultural origins. The very earliest Christmas trees came from Germany in the sixteenth century. Called “Paradise trees,” they were small evergreens that were decorated with candles, fruits, and nuts. They were used mostly in church plays, but eventually they spread to German homes, and from there, the tradition of having a small tree decorated for Christmas was part of the holiday throughout Europe. In America, however, the dominant Puritan religion frowned on this kind of frivolity, so it wasn’t until German settlers arrived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that Christmas trees became part of holiday celebrations here. When Queen Victoria and her German-born husband, Prince Albert, adopted Christmas trees as part of their family Christmas, Americans finally relented.

Have you wondered why we hang mistletoe and then kiss under it? This tradition, too, is cross-cultural and dates back more than 2,000 years. The plant itself has always been used for its medicinal properties, even though it can be toxic. The Celtic Druids used mistletoe as a symbol of fertility. During winter when so many plants were dead, mistletoe was still green, giving it special properties of life. Hanging it over doorways became a way to fend off evil. Norse folklore refers to the god Loki using mistletoe wood to try to kill Baldur, the son of the god Odin. When Baldur was brought back to life, his mother declared mistletoe a symbol of love “and vowed to plant a kiss on all those who passed beneath it.” 

The word mistletoe comes from the Old English “mistletan,” meaning special twig, and over the centuries, it’s been a consistent part of winter celebrations. No one is sure when the custom of kissing under the mistletoe began, but it’s likely connected to the idea of fertility and making merry during the holidays. At one time, each kiss under a sprig was supposed to be followed by plucking off a berry. Once all the berries were gone, there was to be no more kissing, but that tradition seems to have been lost over time.

It's so easy to see the differences in groups of people, but as we do more and more family research, we begin to realize that we are all much more alike than not. Many of the things we do to celebrate our winter holidays are deeply rooted across cultures, and they bring us together a lot more than we realize. Next week, we'll take a look at how we got those festive ornaments on Christmas trees and explore the life of an immigrant who made very special keepsakes right here in St. Louis.

To Learn More . . .

“History of Christmas Trees,” History.com, 28 November 2023, https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees

“The Surprising Origin of the Dreidel,” by Rabbi David Golinkin, My Jewish Learning, 2023, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-origin-of-the-dreidel/?utm_source=mjl_maropost&utm_campaign=MJL&utm_medium=email

“Why Do We Kiss Under the Mistletoe?” by Evan Andrews, History.com, 3 August 2023, https://www.history.com/news/why-do-we-kiss-under-the-mistletoe#