How Hitler and the Nazis tried to steal Christmas

[space cadet]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/chris ... stmas.html

The Nazi Party tried their best to remove Christ from Christmas by paganising carols, producing glittering swastika, iron cross and toy grenade baubles for the fir tree, research for a new exhibition has found.

Many of the changes made under Hitler, put in place to remove the influence of the Jewish-born baby Jesus, are still in use today, much to the alarm of modern Germans.

The swastika-shaped baking trays and wrapping paper adorned with Nazi symbols have long gone, but traces of the Third Reich Christmas can still be found in the subtly rewritten lyrics of favourite carols.

“I always thought that Unto Us a Time Has Come was a song about wandering through winter snow,” said Heidi Bertelson, 42, a lawyer who visited the exhibit told Times. “I didn’t realise that Christ had been excised.”

The Nazi version, which removed the religious references and replaced them with images of snowy fields, remains in some song books and is sung in many households.

The same goes for carols referring to Virgin Birth and lullabies that invoke the Baby Jesus.

The rewriting was supervised by the chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler led the way in de-Christing Christmas.

Their plan was to remove the emotional ties of the Church and merge Christmas into a Julfest, a celebration of winter and light which drew on pagan traditions.

“The most important celebration in the calendar did not match their racist credo so they had to push out the Christian elements,” said Judith Breuer, who helped her mother, Rita, pull together the exhibition.

Rita started trawling flea markets in the 1970s in search of her childhood Christmas and turned up boxes of Nazi-era Christmas decorations complete with swastikas and grenades.

“After the Nazis had gone you could still find textbooks on Christmas that use exactly the same phrasing,” she told The Times.

[Hoffman Grink]

And you think Christmas is about the birth of Christ do you?

It's all about greedy self indulgence and "what do I get?" sentiments mate....... So perhaps 1920s/30s Germany had the right idea with regard to Christmas? (and with regard to Christmas Only I stress)

Where does it say "Thou shalt get fissed as a part, stuff thineself with rich food for 4 days and yea - vomit to thine heart's content then shalt thou rip open a myriad superfluous "gifts" - Shower thyself with riches - for verily - and I say unto ye - Jesus Got presents - Why can't I?"

No mate - I HATE Christmas - I shall be celebrating a gentle Yule - They can keep their Son of God.

[Brigardefuhrer]

You forgot to say Bah! Humbug Paul.

[John Wilson]

There was me thinking that pagans worshipped on the 21st as well Those silly Nazis and their wrongly printed calendars eh?
Good news for this year though, my birthday is the same day as hanukkah starts

[Hoffman Grink]

You forgot to say Bah! Humbug Paul.

Trust me JJ - I didn't - I chant it like a mantra from the 20th to the 28th!!!!!!

I don't mind those who use the time of year to celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus - each to their own..... I don't mind people having a festive time and getting together with family to share. I both lament the passing of another year and rejoice in the advent of a new one..... But I absolutely and categorically loathe, detest and HATE the shallow, booze fuelled, consumer dirven pantomime that is "Christmas" for the great unwashed............... One of the few things you will see me get publicly passionate about.......

Don't get me wrong - I don't go all Ebeneezer - I like to raise a glass - I like to see family and I like the warmth of a gathering with a celebratory meal or holding an open day for friends and family with a table of food and drink with which to provide hospitality - I don't expect to recieve a single present and I give presents sparingly (not JUST cos I'm a Yorkshrieman!) - Christmas and New Year for me is about being thankful for what I've got, and reflecting on those less fortunate than myself - And preparing to face what the next twelve months throws at me.

[Franz repper]

No mate - I HATE Christmas - I shall be celebrating a gentle Yule - They can keep their Son of God.

Herr Fwbl I hate Christmas too , One of the best I ever had was in Bosnia we all had feck all but some small gifts sent from home or we made each other . the other Good thing is it trebble time when I work

[PanzerMart]

odd considering christmas is actually a pagan festival brutalised by the earlier devotees of christ......oddly enough doing variations of what is stated above only to pagan folks

[Franz repper]

odd considering christmas is actually a pagan festival brutalised by the earlier devotees of christ......oddly enough doing variations of what is stated above only to pagan folks

Yes I think that the Christmas tree is left over from that .

[Reich Crispies]

And a hapy Saturnalia to all.

Christian holidays are holidays of previous religions.

As it said once in the Viz:
"Have you notice Jesus was born on a bank holiday, did stuff on bank holidays and died on a bank holiday? Now I dont wont to second guess the lord, but if there is a second coming, I bet its on a bank holiday..........."

[space cadet]

The Third Reich was not completely anti christian though, here is another interesting article.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 082418.ece

Priests plan jumble sales to help save Nazi church for posterity
From Roger Boyes in Berlin
Recommend?
A GROUP of German priests and parishioners have begun a politically sensitive fundraising campaign to save the country’s last Nazi-era church.

The Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin has embarrassed the authorities for six decades.

The image of a Nazi storm trooper side by side with Jesus Christ has been carved into the pulpit, the entrance is lit by a chandelier in the shape of an iron cross and the organ was used to stir the spirits at a torch-lit Nuremberg rally.

Throughout the church, consecrated in 1933, there are bare patches where swastikas, illegal since the end of the war, have been ripped out.

“There was a bust of Adolf Hitler in the nave,” Isolde Boehm, dean of the church, said. “A carved face of Hitler has been replaced by one of Martin Luther. There is even a rumour that the church was supposed to be called the Adolf Hitler Church.”

The Protestant church — smelling of damp and spine-chillingly cold — has been closed for the past year because tiles were falling off the tower.

The priests — Frau Boehm and the Reverend Malte Jungnickel — have applied to have the church declared a listed building and are lobbying the Government to come up with €3 million (£2 million) to fund the restoration.

“There is no other church in Germany that is so obviously fascist-designed,” said Ilse Klein, a parish councillor and local historian. Fundraising activities to preserve this fascist monument are likely to include bring-and-buy sales and sponsored runs.

“Look at the face of Christ on the cross,” Herr Jungnickel said. “It is the face of a victorious Aryan, with a bodybuilder’s frame, not the suffering Jesus.”

The exterior of the church was designed in the Bauhaus style in 1929, before the Nazis came to power. The problem, however, lies with the interior: the big fascist-style sweep of the nave and the Nazi iconography carved into every niche.

“So far, thank God, the neo-Nazis have not discovered the church as a place of pilgrimage,” Frau Boehm said.

The ethical dilemma of preserving Nazi iconography has been gripping German art critics. Debate has also been raging as to how much from the Nazi era should be cleared away or allowed to stay.

The World Cup final this summer will be played in the Berlin stadium designed for the 1936 Olympics. Part of the German Foreign Ministry used to be the Nazi central bank, while the Finance Ministry served as Hermann Goering’s air force headquarters with a roof so broad that he could land aircraft on it.

A Nazi church, however, is even more politically sensitive: it highlights how clearly the Protestant Church aligned itself to Hitler.

In 1932 Nazis were encouraged to become “German Christians” and joined their local parishes to undermine the Church’s power to resist the dictatorship.

By the mid-1930s, two thirds of the parish of Martin Luther Memorial were Nazi Party members. They baptised their babies in a wooden font, which still bears the image of a brown-shirted storm trooper, and they married to music played by an organ that helped to create the dark atmosphere of the Nuremberg rallies.

Until 1942 bells embossed with the swastika called the Nazi faithful to church on Sundays. Then the bells were melted down and made into cannon.

But Max Kurzreiter, the local priest in the 1930s, also gave shelter to members of the dissident anti-Nazi Confessional Church.

One prominent anti-Nazi believer, the writer Jochen Klepper, married a Jewish convert at the church in 1938. “That required a great deal of courage from the priest,” Herr Jungnickel said.

Klepper, his wife and one of his daughters killed themselves in December 1942. “The problem we will always have with this unique church is that whenever we stand in the pulpit and say something, we have to preach against our surroundings; that’s incredibly hard,” Frau Boehm said.

“Somehow we have to find a way of preserving the building, keeping its interior as a warning, but also supplement it with a documentation centre explaining the complicated history of the church in the Third Reich.”

[Hoffman Grink]

Ah Bauhaus - Now you're talking.......

[dagda]

Stop been grumpy! Christmas is great!

Bauhaus, band or architecture!? 'Bela lagosi is dead!!' please no, bad enough the first time round!! 80s retro! Whats that all about! Is was shite then and its shite now!!No you have me going too!!!

[Brigardefuhrer]

I think I feel the warmth of the true spirit of christmas corsing through me with this thread-yeah right,Im with Paul on this one,I used to work in a shop,christmas started in september and two weeks before the event all the decorations came down and the january sales started.killed it stone dead for me.

[Hoffman Grink]

Stop been grumpy! Christmas is great!

Bauhaus, band or architecture!? 'Bela lagosi is dead!!' please no, bad enough the first time round!! 80s retro! Whats that all about! Is was shite then and its shite now!!No you have me going too!!!

The Art Movement you philistine!!!!

I followed the band in the 70's/80s......... It was new..... and it's Lugosi..... and he's still Dead

JJ - mince pies, warm house - good company and the chav begging carol singers can get to f........inland! Roll n Jan2 2010!

[Casbah Rock]

I can't wait till Christmas ! I'm looking forward to Santa "coming to ma house, ma house a coming" and emptying his bulging red sack I'm all of quiver just thinking about it