The history of Christmas: Remembering the Rev. Beckmann and some of his best holiday lore

One of the most surprising — and saddest — occurrences of the past year was the sudden passing of William Beckmann, pastor emeritus at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Batavia.

For the past 30 years, Beckmann had created a holiday tradition through his annual Christmas history presentation to the Tri-Cities Exchange Club. I have written about each of those presentations. Beckmann’s interesting facts, fables and lore made for the perfect Christmas week column.

Beckmann’s passing was a significant shock because only a month after his 2023 presentation, he fell ill when traveling and never recovered. His death leaves a void for his family and church, but also for those who enjoyed listening to, or reading about, his Christmas stories.

In the holiday spirit, and in honor of Beckmann’s extraordinary passion for everything Christmas, I will again share some of his thoughts, observations and lessons about this most wonderful time of the year.

As a true pack-rat journalist, I kept the vast majority of the written versions of Beckmann’s presentations over these many years. He always made a copy available because he knew I would not fail to show up to listen — and share his stories in the Daily Herald.

At the start of some of his presentations in the late 1990s, Beckmann insisted I actually gave him the idea to do the presentation every year. After his first presentation, I did go up to him and say he should do it every year.

Over time, I think both of us forgot that part of the story. After all, it wasn’t that important. Certainly not as important as the holiday spirit he instilled in all of us each year with fascinating Christmas history.

So, of the hundreds of topics and nuggets of information he shared from his massive library of books about Christmas, here are a few that have stuck in my mind — whether I had a printout on the topics or not.

Santa’s jolly look

For hundreds of years, there were stories of Santa Claus or St. Nick, but no one knew for sure what he looked like. In 1863, Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist who invented the donkey and elephant for our political parties, was asked to illustrate the “Night Before Christmas” poem by Clement Clark Moore.

Nast created an elf-like figure in red, portraying kindness and jolly spirit. But the final touch for Santa came from the marketing folks at Coca-Cola. In 1931, the company released advertisements with Santa as a cheerful, portly fellow with, of course, a bottle of coke in hand.

That version of Santa has stayed with us since.

Creating the scene

The only record of the birth of Christ comes from what Matthew and Luke recorded in their Gospels.

To better tell the story, St. Francis, in about 1223, created the Nativity scene. The figures were likely made of wood, but he also used people for main characters when showing the scene.

That idea took hold, and we used to have Nativity scenes in front of city halls all over the country.

Truth be told, Jesus was probably not born in a manger, at least the kind we see on Christmas cards. Because Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to comply with a royal decree for a census, they likely had relatives there and stayed in a portion of a house, or possibly laid the newborn baby in a section of the house’s rock carved out for feed.

Wrapping those gifts

Prior to the 1860s, most gifts were limited to small presents for children, usually left in stockings or hung on the Christmas tree. Adults exchanged handmade items, none of which were wrapped.

Early wrappings were brown paper or white tissue. The Dennison Manufacturing Company of Massachusetts started making other options possible with colored, then printed, paper. By 1918, Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark, added wrapping paper to her card production.

But why wrap the gifts? Historians say that the transition from homemade to manufactured gifts called for wrapping paper to hide the commercial nature of the gifts. In other words, take off the price tag, wrap it in fancy paper and bows, and it becomes more personal.

A not-so-silent carol

Perhaps the best known of all carols is “Silent Night.” It’s been translated into at least 230 languages, first appearing in English in 1863 at Trinity Church in New York City.

But the song was all over Europe by the 1840s, years after the Rev. Josef Mohr wrote the lyrics in 1816 and Franz Gruber wrote the score two years later. Mohr was pastor of a Roman Catholic church in Oberndorf, Austria, and on Christmas Eve 1818, he asked his organist, Gruber, to compose a suitable melody for two solo voices with the choir, accompanied by one guitar.

The carol is sort of a miracle, as the words came from a simple parish priest, music by a musician unknown outside of the village, and no celebrity to sing its premier. Yet, it is now sung across the globe in more than 250 languages.

How Dec. 25 became Christmas

After reviewing the research of historians and biblical scholars on the topic, it seems most likely that Jesus was born in late September of 5 B.C.

They came to this estimate from the passages of Luke and Matthew, referring to shepherds hearing of the birth while they were “tending to flocks of sheep at night.” This is something they would usually do between April and October. In cold, rainy months, the flocks would be near the shepherds’ homes.

In addition, Luke reported that Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem to take part in the census. The census decree would not have been put into action during the winter months. More likely, it occurred during the autumn harvest. The Roman Empire took a census count in 20 B.C., 6 B.C. and 8 A.D.

Still, in terms of establishing Dec. 25 as the date to celebrate the birth through Christmas, Christians first had to recognize it as something to celebrate. For centuries, the important celebration was Easter.

In 245 A.D., a group of scholars tried to establish an accurate date for the Christmas celebration, but to keep it not so close to Easter, the date of Dec. 25 gained a lot of support.

In the middle of the fourth century, Pope Julius I decreed that Dec. 25 would be the date, in part because it would make it easier for Romans who were still pagans to assimilate the new Christian religion with their old pagan rituals.

Oh, those Puritans

In 17th century England, Oliver Cornwell and the Puritans tried to “purify” the church of Rome. When he came into power in 1649, he banned Christmas celebrations, had soldiers take down decorations, and fined people who celebrated or took the day off.

Years earlier, when Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth in 1620 aboard the Mayflower, they wanted to make sure there was no celebration and passed a law outlawing both Christmas and Easter celebrations. Also, there could be no worship of Christmas unless it actually fell on a day that was the Sabbath.

Is that true or false?

And finally, a few of the true-or-false questions of which Beckmann would quiz his audience on occasion — and his answers:

Q. True or false: There are no records of Joseph speaking in the Christmas story.

A. “True. I’m sure he said something, but there is absolutely no record of him speaking at all.”

Q. True or false: The star did not appear above the manger.

A. “True. It appeared above the house where Joseph’s family was living (Matthew 2:9-11).”

Q. True or false: Some of the shepherds doubted and refused to believe the message they heard from the angels about the birth of Christ.

A. “False. They went to see the baby right away, and they spread the word, and they praised God for what they had been permitted to see and hear. No doubt there. (Luke 2: 15-20).”

Q. True or false: Mary rode a donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, roughly a 70-mile journey.

A. “False. A donkey does not appear anywhere in the biblical account. She probably walked.”

Finally, a healthy and happy holiday season to all of my readers. I’ll return soon to provide my look back at “Talk of the Town” for 2024.

dheun@sbcglobal.net