Father Christmas Executed

In December 1951, an effigy of Father Christmas was hanged and set alight in front of Dijon Cathedral. These were the years of post-war France, a period steeped in the consumer culture that was sweeping in from the United States, and both the Protestant and Catholic churches were quick to protest against what they saw as the growing paganisation of Christmas. Claude Lévi-Strauss, the anthropologist and founder of Structuralism, decided to write a short essay on the figure of Father Christmas, taking this incident as his cue. Wry and perceptive, the article appeared in the politically engaged journal Les temps modernes and explores the deep cultural layers of the festivity and of this figure whom the anthropologist classifies not as a myth or a legend, but as an authentic divinity  –  with the curious distinction that, unlike all others, only children believe in him. Father Christmas’s cultural function has thus become that of separating yet binding together two social groups, acting as a liminal figure who marks the rite of passage from one to the other. Adults, who don the beard, red suit and sack, perform this ritual role, becoming overseers of childhood (one need only think of how children are disciplined through the promise of gifts for good behaviour) and ensuring their passage into adulthood and thus into society, through the initiation that comes when the truth is revealed. This kind of ritual function is not unique to Father Christmas, for it appears in comparable rites across the world, such as the spirits of the dead, the Kachina, in the traditions of the Pueblo peoples of the south-western United States. Ultimately, the pyre staged by the French clergy became a kind of auto-da-fé, in which the object of iconoclasm was not destroyed but transfigured, restoring Father Christmas to his ritual function and proving his enduring power.

Babbo Natale giustiziato
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Sellerio, 2024