{"id":60790,"date":"2014-12-22T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=60790"},"modified":"2017-07-09T01:14:30","modified_gmt":"2017-07-09T06:14:30","slug":"did-the-nazis-celebrate-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/12\/22\/did-the-nazis-celebrate-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the Nazis Celebrate Christmas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, but it was a weird thing you see.<\/p>\n

The Nazis were waging war and exterminating Jews. \u00a0Meanwhile, Christmas was about celebrating peace and the birth of Jesus, a Jew.<\/p>\n

Said the\u00a0Nazi propagandist Friedrich Rehm<\/a> in 1937:<\/p>\n

We cannot accept that a German Christmas tree has anything to do with a crib in a manger in Bethlehem. \u00a0It is inconceivable for us that Christmas and all its deep soulful content is the product of an oriental religion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Germans were largely Christian, so getting rid of Christmas was going to be tricky. \u00a0So Hitler turned it into a celebration of the Third Reich. \u00a0According to John Brownlee<\/a>, they re-wrote Christmas carols to extol the virtues of National Socialism. \u00a0Mentions of Jesus were replaced with “Savior F\u00fchrer.” \u00a0Since they well understood that Santa wasn’t white<\/a>, they re-cast the character; he was played by the pagan god Odin. \u00a0\u00a0And they changed the ornaments and placed swastikas atop Christmas trees.<\/p>\n

Here are links to a\u00a0Hitler ornament and Nazi tree topper<\/a>, swastika cookie cutter<\/a>, and swastika ornaments<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The last Nazi Christmas was in 1944. \u00a0Post-war Germany quickly “did with Hitler’s Christmas what they did with every other idea the Nazis had come up with: denounced it…”<\/p>\n

Photo by\u00a0Monado<\/a>\u00a0flickr creative commons.<\/i><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, but it was a weird thing you see. The Nazis were waging war and exterminating Jews. \u00a0Meanwhile, Christmas was about celebrating peace and the birth of Jesus, a Jew. Said the\u00a0Nazi propagandist Friedrich Rehm in 1937: We cannot accept that a German Christmas tree has anything to do with a crib in a manger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":65175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,2124,253,254,406,85,2128,304,285,1759,3875,42,133],"class_list":["post-60790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-foodagriculture","tag-history","tag-holidays","tag-propaganda","tag-politics","tag-fascismtotalitarianism","tag-the-state","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-jews","tag-religion","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/12\/21.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60790"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70413,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60790\/revisions\/70413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}