"Santa Claus executed", or the eternal return of an immortal rite

With an essay with a provocative title, "Santa Claus executed", Claude LΓ©vi-Strauss is inspired by a bizarre news event at his time - the hanging and holocaust of a puppet of Santa Claus by the Dijonese clergy - to arrive to the understanding of the "true meaning of Christmas", based on the reciprocal relationship between the world of children and that of the dead. The method used for this purpose is a synchronic and confrontational approach with non-European societies.


di Federica Zigarelli

β€Ήβ€Ή SANTA CLAUS HAS BEEN BURNED
ON THE SAGRATO OF THE DIJON CATHEDRAL
BEFORE THE CHILDREN OF THE PATRONATES β€Ίβ€Ί

"Dijon, December 24, 1951. Yesterday afternoon Santa Claus was hanged on the gate of the Dijon cathedral and publicly burned in the churchyard. The spectacular execution took place in the presence of several hundred children of the patronages. It had been agreed with the clergy who had condemned Santa Claus as a usurper and heretic. He had been accused of paganizing the holiday of Christmas and to have settled in it like a cuckoo, occupying an ever greater place in it. He is accused above all of having introduced himself in all the public schools from which the crib is scrupulously banned. On Sunday, at three in the afternoon, the unfortunate good man with the white beard paid like many innocents for a fault of which those who would applaud his execution were guilty. The fire set his beard on fire and he vanished in the smoke. At the end of the execution, a statement was issued, of which we report the essential passages: "Representing all the Christian families of the parish eager to fight against the lie, 250 children, gathered in front of the main door of the cathedral of Dijon, burned Santa Claus. It was not an attraction, but a symbolic gesture. Santa Claus was sacrificed in holocaust. To tell the truth, lying cannot awaken religious sentiment in the child and is in no case an educational method. Let the others write and say what they want and make Santa Claus the counterweight of the Castigamatti. For us Christians, the feast of Christmas must remain the anniversary that celebrates the birth of the Savior ”. The execution of Santa Claus in the churchyard of the cathedral was evaluated differently by the population and provoked heated comments even from Catholics. On the other hand, this untimely demonstration risks having unforeseen consequences for its organizers […] The case divides the city into two camps. Dijon awaits the resurrection of the Santa Claus murdered yesterday in the churchyard of the cathedral. He will resurrect this evening, at XNUMXpm, at the Town Hall. In fact, in an official statement he summoned, as every year, the children of Dijon in place de la Liberation announcing that he would speak to them from the roofs of the Town Hall where he will circulate under the spotlight. Canon Kir, deputy mayor of Dijon, would have refrained from taking a position in this delicate matter β€Ίβ€Ί.

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The article of 24 December 1951 in the French daily Β«France-SoirΒ» opens the short essay in which Claude Levi-Strauss, starting from the specific case of the news described in it, takes the opportunity to analyze the hidden meaning of the celebration of Christmas and the value that the figure assumes in it Santa Claus, on the basis of the observation that "it is not every day for the ethnologist to observe, in the society in which he lives, the sudden development of a rite, and even of a cult". The anthropologist notes first of all how since the second postwar period all over the world - and in the particular case in France - the celebration of Christmas has been strongly influenced by traditions imported from the United States, a phenomenon increased by the political and economic rise of this power and from the diffusion of American films and novels; "But all this would be insufficient to clarify the phenomenon. Some customs imported from the United States are also imposed on strata of the population who are unaware of their origin; the workers' circles, where the communist influence should, if anything, discredit everything that bears the made in USA brand, willingly adopt them like the others β€Ίβ€Ί.

Although the present form of the feast is recent - even the first mention of the Christmas tree dates back only to some German texts of the seventeenth century -, the presence of more archaic features, which seem to suggest that it is "an ancient celebration whose importance has never been completely forgotten β€Ίβ€Ί: already in medieval times the use of Christmas logs' made of a trunk so big that it burns all night is attested β€Ίβ€Ί - LΓ©vi-Strauss also mentions the tree of tales of the Round Table, entirely covered with lights - and candles; therefore the common paradigm of ancient and modern Christmas celebrations seems to be the adoption of symbols of light. However, the French anthropologist is skeptical of "continuistic" theories, which would claim to see real vestiges and ancient reminiscences in today's Christmas party [1], and recognizes that in its present form the Christmas tree is certainly a recent invention; nevertheless, this symbol certainly relies on more archaic elements inherent in European culture:

"If in prehistoric times there had never been that cult of trees which was then perpetuated in various folkloric customs, modern Europe would not have" invented "the Christmas tree. β€Ίβ€Ί

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In addition to the lucifer symbol of the tree, the other key element of the current Christmas celebration is the figure of "King with a white beard": for LΓ©vi-Strauss Santa Claus is a real one sovereign dressed in scarlet, personification of the benevolence and protection exercised by the world of adults towards that of children. Like the Christmas tree, this figure is also a modern invention "and even more recent is the sideboard (which obliges Denmark to have a special post office to reply to correspondence from all the children of the world) which makes it reside in Greenland, a Danish possession, and who wants him traveling on a reindeer sleigh. It is also argued that this aspect of the legend developed mainly during the last war, due to the permanence of American forces in Iceland and Greenland. Nevertheless reindeer are not accidental, as English Renaissance documents mention reindeer trophies exhibited at Christmas dances, and this precedes every belief of Santa Claus and, even more, at the birth of his legend. Very ancient elements are therefore mixed and remixed, with the subsequent addition of others; unpublished formulas that perpetuate, transform or revive ancient customsβ€Ίβ€Ί. LΓ©vi-Strauss focuses precisely on the intrinsic role of Santa Claus and on the reason that led adults to the creation of this figure.

He believes that the king dressed in purple should be classified - more than in that of mythical and legendary beings - in the category of divinities and this becomes evident if one looks more carefully at the true veneration shown towards him by that specific group of which he is patron, or the world of children: just like the faithful, they send him requests and prayers, offer him "sacrifices" in the form of food (think of the milk and biscuits left by the fireplace), consecrate promises and oaths, (in primis) "Being good" during the year "e the only difference between Santa Claus and a true deity is that adults do not believe in him, although they encourage their children to believe in him and feed this belief through a large number of mystifications>>.

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Santa Claus is ultimately for LΓ©vi-Strauss a figure implicitly connected to the sphere of initiation rites (simply think that the discovery of the nonexistence of Santa Claus is considered for a child a sort of watershed between childhood and adolescence), as a safeguard of a specific human group, children, known to be already understood in "primitive" and ancient societies as "other" individuals, not belonging to the social and civil organization of adults, classified through a series of negations: non-men, non-citizens and - according to the inverse symmetry scheme - assimilated to women and the dead. This explains the reason why a fundamental element of the rites of passage was the initiatory transvestism of young people who are not yet men, seen as real women, or in any case feminine beings, participating more in the female world than in the virile one; this condition could also be manifested externally through the use of women's clothes, but in "Santa Claus executed" the author focuses specifically on the other singular symmetry, that between children and the dead, also underlying the Halloween party.

To understand this analogy, it is considered useful to combine the Christmas tradition centered on Santa Claus with other non-European customs widespread among Indian populations in South-West America: LΓ©vi-Strauss recalls i katchina of the Pueblo, considered the spirits of the dead who would periodically visit the living to bring gifts to children or punish them. Perhaps like Santa Claus, i katchina could represent the link between the world of adults and that of children, a means through which the adult class would try to regularize and control the behavior of beings usually extraneous to the usual social and civil norms: through the promise of a prize - a gift - received on a festive and ritual occasion codified by adults, children undertake to appease the most "insubordinate" and irrational traits of their being and to submit to the authority of the elders:

β€œThere is no doubt that initiation rites and myths have a practical function in human societies: they help adults to keep their descendants in order and obedience. During the year we invoke the visit of Santa Claus to remind our children that his generosity will be proportional to their goodness; the periodic nature of the distribution of gifts serves profitably to regulate infantile requests, to reduce to a short period the moment in which they are truly entitled to demand gifts. β€Ίβ€Ί

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Hopi dancers dressed as Katchina

But it exists an important detail that unites children with the deceased and in some respects Santa Claus on Halloween: in the founding myth of the tradition of katchina, the latter are the souls of dead children, drowned in a river during an ancient migration that will bring the natives to their territories. At first they would have been totally evil, usual spirits kidnap children you live from their homes; for this reason, alarmed, the adults would have created a compromise with them: in exchange for the protection of their offspring, the natives would have periodically staged dances with masks represented katchina. In short i katchina are the dead "and the dead are the children": the contrast that i katchina and Santa Claus implicitly create not only between children and adults, but "a deeper contrast between the dead and the living":

β€œβ€œ Non-initiation ”is not exclusively a state of deprivation, defined by ignorance, illusion or other negative connotations. The relationship between initiates and non-initiates has a positive content. It is a complementary relationship between two groups: one represents the dead and the other the living. β€Ίβ€Ί

LΓ©vi-Strauss decides to use the comparison with extra-European traditions to demonstrate that the nucleus at the basis of today's Christmas celebration is not simply consisting of "historical vestiges" - this is impossible given "the absence of any conceivable historical relationship between their institutions and ours (apart from some late Spanish influences, in the XNUMXth century)" β€Ίβ€Ί - but from β€Ή β€ΉForms of thought and conduct that depend on more general conditions of social life β€Ίβ€Ί.

Evidence of the symmetry between children and deceased also comes from the people of Inuit (Eskimos), where it was believed that the souls of the dead were reincarnated in children and this regardless of biological sex: the case of a little girl named Iqallijuq is known, considered the reincarnation of the soul of her maternal grandfather and for this reason she grew up from birth to adolescence as a boy. It is no coincidence that the relationship between the world of the dead and the child breaks down when the latter begins to grow and integrate into the ordered and regulated society of adults, moving away from the state of otherness that distinguishes him: once I became a teenager, Iqallijuq was forced to abandon the soul-name of his grandfather and to conform to his biological sex and "while she reluctantly had to wear her first female clothes, her mother wept at seeing the reincarnation of her father subjected to menstruation>> [2].

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Once again it is evident that "the dead are the children" and on the other hand this correspondence is also well known in European culture. In the party of Halloween and in the folkloristic practices related to it (think of the children who during the party of Saint Martin walk 'They went from house to house carrying emptied pumpkins with a lighted candle inside. They kept them stuck on long sticks, made them look out the windows and people laughed pretending to be afraid and offered sweets and chestnuts to drive them away.>> [3]) it is not insignificant that it is children who have a central role and go door to door. In the period in which the temporary contact between the world of the living and that of the dead is celebrated, the latter are personified by the human group closest to the status of the dead, or children: like the dead, they too are not part of the social and civic order structured by adults, but while the children are non-initiates, destined to enter that world through rites of passage, the deceased have already experienced that passage and filled the role assigned to them by society and then take their leave.

In this respect there seems to be a strong similarity between Christmas and Halloween, both holidays based on need to create a positive dialectic between adults and children, between living and dead: "In the Middle Ages, children did not wait patiently for their toys to come down the chimney. Generally disguised and grouped in bands, which Old French designates for this reason guisarts, they go from house to house, singing and offering good wishes, receiving fruit and sweets in exchange. Significantly, they evoke death to enforce their belief. Thus in Scotland in the eighteenth century they sing these lines: "Rise up, good wife, and be no 'swier (lazy) / To deal your bread as long's you're here; / The time will come when you'll be dead, / And neither wants nor beal nor bread>>.

It is significant that the analogy between children and the deceased is also found in the story it raises San Nicola as protector of the former: the saint he would resurrect three killed children, torn to pieces by an innkeeper and his wife. Despite the reference to the patron saint of Bari, the "king with the white beard" may have a darker and more malign origin: Saturn [4]/ Chrono, devourer of his own children. The same celebration of Christmas was set for December 24-25 to Christianize the pagan feast of the gods Saturnalia Romans celebrated between 17 and 24 of the same month and whose features still seem to re-emerge - at least in part - in today's Christmas atmosphere.

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San Nicola

The pagan festival was distinguished by one momentary abolition of the rules of morality: the slaves were granted freedoms normally punished with death, they could give orders and be served by their masters, an almost temporary and circumscribed condition of chaos was created, based on the exasperation of practices linked to excess. The key to understanding the connection between Saturnalia and Christmas is the basic symmetrical inversion, as "such as Saturnalia Romans, medieval Christmas offers two syncretic and opposite characters. It is above all a question of reunification and communion: the distinction between classes and wealth is temporarily abolished, slaves or servants sit at the table of the lords and they become their servants; all are admitted to the richly laid tables; men and women exchange clothes β€Ίβ€Ί. What, therefore, in the pagan feast represented a ritual and role reversal characteristic, seems to have been transformed by Christians into a more shared attitude of sharing., of benevolent generosity and altruism towards the weakest (originally slaves and women; today the poor and marginalized).

Another feature in common between our "Christianized" Christmas and Saturnalia is the importance assumed by the cultic use of statuettes and small effigies: at the same time as Saturnalia the sealant, in which they were dedicated to Saturn of the seals, small pictures and figurines sold in annual markets. Once again, the important protagonists of the party are the children, who were given money "so that they could make their purchases at the market: the exchange of gifts between loved ones and the attention dedicated in particular to children [...] are just as many points. of contact between the sealant and the practices associated with Christmas in later culture>> [5]. The recall among the market of sealant and today's Christmas markets, of which Bettini remembers above all San Gregorio Armeno in Naples, whose shops "with their wonderful offer of shepherds and other statuettes seem to find a rather unexpected precedent in ancient Rome>> [6].

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Saturn with a scythe, Capitoline Museums, Rome

So nowadays i Saturnalia they come to life in part in the celebrations of Christmas and Carnival (the latter also linked to the rite of carus navalis of Isis), but in medieval times also on a widespread occasion in ecclesiastical circles, although it was not officially "canonical" for the Church: December 6 [7]:

"Seminarians used to elect a bishop from among themselves (episcopellus) and his chaplains who would have been protagonists at the feast of the Holy Innocents, on December 28 of a parody ceremony,episcopus puerorum o innocentium (bishop of children and innocents) which took place in the church. The beardless bishop wore the vestments and rose to the chair held the choir and imparted the blessing like a bishop. Clerics and priests were unleashed in a carnival merry-go-round of jokes and parodies during the divine service which they attended in masquerade clothes. They entered the choir dancing and singing obscene songs […] And after mass they ran, jumped and danced in church. >>

It is evident in this feast, celebrated by seminarians, the persistence of those paroxysmal and excessive elements inherent in the Saturnalia Romans [8], as well as the link between the rex Saturnaliorum (the king of Saturnalia - personification of the god himself - who was allowed to engage in anomalous and aggressive activities, outside of any social rule: rape, theft, murder) andepiscopellus, linked more explicitly to the protection of children, the innocent, and it is significant that the same day of the election of the bishop - December 6 - is also the day of St. days>> [9].

Over time there has probably been an alleviation of the more strictly terrorist and irrational traits of the party, thanks to theaction of the Church who succeeded in "expunging these excesses from the Christmas holidays in a long struggle that ended only in the fifteenth century β€Ίβ€Ί, even if already in Roman times the classical authors tend to hand down the traits of Saturnalia. This mitigation process may have led to transformations that are still evident today: (in primis) Saturn with his role as devourer of his own offspring and god of social disorder has become the benevolent Santa Claus, "patron" of children and whose giving of gifts represents the positive means of a contractual and regulatory dialectic between adults and children, therefore a guarantor of social order (it should be noted that in the iconography both are depicted with the appearance of an old man with a full beard).

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belsnickel

On the other hand, the more sinister aspects of Saturn / Kronos could have converged in the figures of the double negatives of Santa Claus, such as the Alsatian Hans Trapp, devourer of children; the French Père Fouetteard, according to the tradition to be identified in the host / butcher who would have torn to pieces the children then resurrected by Saint Nicholas, of whom he would have become an obscure collaborator armed with a whip; the German Belsnickel, also equipped with a whip with which he would punish bad children; or i Krampus of Austria and north-eastern Italy. That these are Santa's dark doubles is evident from the way they are represented, that is, with features similar to those of the king dressed in scarlet: old men with long and thick beards, bags on their shoulders, even the whip, used by Santa Claus to guide his reindeer and transformed instead in these figures into a tool of punishment for children. The difference between Santa Claus and his negative counterparts is the cruelty with which they stain or are stained towards the little ones (it should be noted that in the stories relating to some of these figures, once again "the dead are the children". ): this difference is reflected in some iconographic differences, as the double negatives of Santa Claus have a scruffy appearance and patched clothes, in short, a more malignant form that expresses their negative value.

Another evident change between the pagan feast in honor of Saturn and our Christmas is the phenomenon whereby the reversal of roles in Saturnalia and the most violent customs of this feast have been transformed into a more serene and controlled atmosphere of (apparent and ostentatious) benevolence and love for the "other": "let us not be surprised, therefore, to see foreigners, slaves and children as main beneficiaries of the party β€Ίβ€Ί. But if it is true that Christian Christmas is the feast of sharing and love for "others", it is also true that the feast of "others" is the feast of the dead, "since the fact of being other is the first close-up image we can get of death β€Ίβ€Ί:

"Who can incarnate the dead in a society of the living, if not all those who, for one reason or another, are only partially incorporated into the group, therefore partakers of that otherness which is the hallmark of supreme dualism, that between the dead and the living? β€Ίβ€Ί

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Krampus

LΓ©vi-Strauss remembers how especially in the Scandinavian world, the banquet on Christmas Eve was seen as a meal offered to the dead, "In which the guests play the role of the dead, like the children that of the angels, and the angels, in turn, that of the dead". The French anthropologist still writes [10]:

"Western culture has clearly distinguished life from death, delivering the latter to nothing, or representing it as a junction to other regions, variously prefigured in their location and destiny over the centuries. But in ancient societies the souls of the dead were not found in a space without dimensions, in a timeless time, as today we are inclined to think; but in a kind of antiworld that he needed the world to continue to exist as his own reflection in a mirror. In the event that this necessary relationship had suffered a rupture, the balance thus interrupted between the world of the living and the world of the dead would have transformed the souls of the dead into destructive demons.>>Β 

From this point of view, children become the connecting link and the fulcrum of the dialectic of mediation between the living and the dead, "healing the broken balance between death and life by re-proposing the contract between living and dead.β€Ίβ€Ί [11]: it is no coincidence that ritual death was foreseen in many rites of passage from infancy to adulthood, in which children had to die as such and be reborn in their new status.

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Krampus

Following the LΓ©vistraussian method of comparison with other non-European cultures, it could be emphasized how the excess inherent in Saturnalia and the link between life and death converge in the voodoo deity of Baron Samedi, psychopomp god, known for his debauchery so much that he is always represented with glasses of rum and cigars. He reappears the role of mediator between the world of the living and that of the dead, helping the communication between them and it is interesting that Samedi means in French '' Saturday '', exactly like Saturday in English from Saturn.

In the period between Halloween and Christmas, LΓ©vi-Strauss finally recognizes "the progress of autumn, from its beginning until the solstice, which marks the liberation of light and life, which is therefore accompanied, on a ritual level, by a dialectical movement whose main stages are: the return of the dead, their threatening and persecuting conduct, the determination of a modus vivendi with the living consisting in an exchange of services and gifts, finally the triumph of life when, at Christmas, the dead loaded with gifts abandon the living to leave them in peace until the following autumn>>.

Returning to the news case from which his reflection begins, LΓ©vi-Strauss notes Ironically is the holocaust of the "simulacrum" of Santa Claus, which occurred due to the will of the clergy of Dijon to destroy - metaphorically and otherwise - a symbol considered detached from the Christian tradition, did nothing but bring back to life an ancient pagan rite, since the king of the Saturnalia "After having impersonated King Saturn and having allowed himself any excess for a month, he was solemnly sacrificed on the altar of God β€Ίβ€Ί [12].

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The goat of Yule and the Holly King

This type of rite appears to be connected to the archetype of the sacrificial practices of sovereigns: the royal and sacred figures are closely linked to ritual death ceremonies, operated in order to celebrate their rebirth and consecrate their perennial youth; think of the ritual death of the Rex Nemorensis, the priest-king of Diana near Lake Nemi, or Baron Samedi, Loa of the resurrection as well as the "ferryman" god of the dead and moreover the month of December itself was intended as a period of transition and renewal, "when the sun goes through an apparent death to be reborn "new">> [13]. Another sovereign subjected to ritual death is Odin, who according to Scandinavian mythology would have hanged himself for nine days (so much so that he was remembered as "Lord of the hanged"), paying with the initiatory death the price necessary to obtain knowledge of the runes (symbol of magical art, of which OdinΒ [14] was master) and thus be reborn to a new one status, or that of king-magician: among other things there is one suspected analogy between the Scandinavian god and Santa Claus [15], given the strong iconographic similarity.

Just following this initiatory logic, Santa Claus, also a king (dressed in purple), would have gone to meet a ritual death, hanged from the gate of the cathedral of Dijon and his symbolic rebirth is represented by the "resurrection" at the place de la Liberation: in this way "the Dijonese clergy has done nothing but restore to its entirety, after an eclipse of a few millennia, a ritual figure, thus taking on the pretext of destroying it, of proving its perenniality>>.

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Note:

[1] Β«How necessary, in the face of such problems, to doubt too easy explanations by resorting automatically "vestiges "and" survivals "Β».

[2] F. HΓ©ritier, Masculine and feminine. The thought of the difference.

[3] E. Baldini, Children, spiders and other predators.

[4] At first Saturn was an Italic god, linked to agriculture, but was later identified by the Greeks and then by the Romans themselves in Kronos, perhaps because of the symbol of the sickle: it was intended as a symbol of the castration of Uranus by Kronos, but originally it probably represented the agricultural world of which Italic Saturn was considered protector and in general the litus, symbol of prophecy and royalty, cf.Β  A. Cattabiani, Calendar.

[5] M. Bettini, In praise of polytheism.

[6] Next to the Saturnalia and sealant i can also be mentioned Compitalia, celebrated on December 31 in honor of the Lares compitales, on the occasion of which the aedicules of the tutelary deities of the family were adorned with small dolls and statuettes called maniae: β€Ήβ€Ήin short, it would seem that in the period between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one, even ancient Rome (like the Christian Europe of the crib) was characterized by a flourishing of statuettes and figurines, around which a a religious, family and emotional system quite similar to the Christmas oneβ€Ίβ€Ί, cf. M. Bettini, In praise of polytheism.

[7] A. Cattabiani, Calendar, P. 59.

[8] Saturnalia and festivals marked by excess have a clear apotropaic function, since they "exorcise the risk, figuratively exhibited, of the overturning of the order of the world, of the cancellation and inversion of natural and social roles, of prevailing of the demonic signaled by the spread of masks. They recode in ritual forms, therefore endowing them with greater power, begging and gifts, games and collective lunches to reinvigorate the consumed energy of the cosmos through the ostentation of mental, physical and alimentary superabundance β€Ίβ€Ί, cf. A. Buttitta, Return of the dead and refounding of life. The moment of the anomaly, of the overturning of the order is very often paradoxically finalized in the ritual and initiatory practices to the strengthening of the established social and civic order.

[9] A. Cattabiani, Calendar, P. 67.

[10] A. Buttitta, Return of the dead and refounding of life. This is the reason why the ancients already considered important the burial of the dead, who otherwise would not have been at peace and would have wandered in a sort of limbo between earth and sky.

[11] A. Buttitta, Return of the dead and refounding of life.

[12] It should be noted that even today in the Carnival there is the king of Mardi Gras.

[13] A. Cattabiani, Calendar.

[14] He too was a psychopomp deity linked to the world of the dead, in which he led the souls of those who had fallen in battle on the back of Sleipnir, his gray horse: in Swedish folklore the so-called helhast, "Horse of death" is a gray steed that heralds the end to those who meet him, cf. G. Isnardi Church, The Nordic myths.

[15] According to the myth, even Saturn would wait asleep on the Isle of the Blessed the moment of his rebirth.


Bibliography:

  • C. LΓ©vi-Strauss, Santa Claus executed
  • F. HΓ©ritier, Masculine and feminine
  • J. Frazer, The golden branch
  • A. Cattabiani, Calendar
  • M. Bettini, In praise of polytheism
  • A. Buttitta, Return of the dead and refounding of life
  • G. Isnardi Church, The Nordic myths.

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