Christmas in Nazi Germany
The holiday season in Germany was very different under Nazi rule. Christmas is the most widely celebrated festival in the world, but in few countries is it as deeply valued as in Germany. How did Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent leadership of Germany change this holiday?
In 1933, when Hitler achieved power, Nazis at first tried to co-opt Christmas. Party officials sponsored seasonal celebrations and appeared alongside Mary and Joseph in re-enactments of the Nativity, singing familiar carols along with their marching song, the “Horst Wessel Lied.”
Thousands of Nazi youth members and party volunteers collected money in Winterhilfwerke campaigns to be distributed to those families hardest hit by the Great Depression.
At its heart, Nazism was incompatible with the traditional German approach to Christmas. Like the Jacobins of the French Revolution and the Bolsheviks of the Russian Revolution, National Socialists wanted to reshape the calendar and the annual cycle of celebrations, including an attempt to alter Christmas, by replacing its Christian core with secular and neopagan elements.
To maintain morale during the holiday season Reichsmarschall Herman Goring supplied shops with plenty of extra food and consumer goods looted from occupied countries.
In the advent calendar sent out by the Nazi party to families to help with its holiday celebrations the emphasis was on the solstice, decorating with pagan symbols and celebrating military successes.
Image:“Bundesarchiv Bild 102-17313, Berlin, Weihnachtspakete für das Winterhilfswerk” from the German Federal Archives, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE via Wikimedia Commons.
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