Christmas symbols bear multiple interpretations

santa-run.JPGView full sizeSanta Claus is an example of a Christmas symbol assigned multiple meanings.
The stories behind simple Christmas symbols are anything but. Consider the candy cane. Its red and white stripes might signify the sacrifice and purity of Jesus, or they're a 19th-century candy-maker's twist intended to dazzle his grandchildren. Both stories are alive and well on the Internet.

Is Santa Claus the imagined incarnation of a fourth-century saint, the vision of a 19th-century poet or the carefully rendered creation of a 20th-century ad man?


It seems that Christmas has become a hybrid holiday, a mix of sacred and secular significance depending on who is celebrating it. For some, the holiday is a religious occasion recalling the birth of Jesus. For others, Christmas signals the end of winter's darkness and the promise of returning light and the renewal of spring. Christmas may be a day devoted to family and memories of a shared past, or an opportunity to exchange gifts, even an opportunity to boost the struggling U.S. economy.

If Christmas has come to mean different things to different people it's not surprising that some familiar Christmas symbols bear the weight of more than one interpretation.

"Everything is open to interpretation," says Sharon Sherman, a professor of folklore at the University of Oregon. When a folklorist studies holidays, he or she looks at the origins of symbols, how their interpretations have changed over the years and what purpose they serve in a given culture.

Christmas poses a special challenge, she adds. "The great majority of Christmas tradition has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus."




"There's how something functions for you and how it functions for someone else," she says. It's less a matter of who is right and who is wrong.

Folklorists recognize that symbols function in different ways. Simon J. Bronner,  a professor of American studies and folklore at Penn State and author of "Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture" (The University Press of Kentucky, $40, 544 pages),  says symbols offer a way to deal with nostalgia, express inner anxieties or conflicts and encourage more intimate connections between human beings. Christmas symbols function all three ways: as links to a shared past (either real or imagined), expressions of deeply held values (sacred or secular) and as signs that others agree with one's own beliefs.

Arguments about the meaning of Christmas symbols are as old as the celebration itself. But practically speaking, here and now, does it matter if a candy cane is a religious symbol or simply a sweet and sometimes sticky treat? Whether Santa Claus is selfless as a saint or "a right jolly old elf," as Clement Moore described him in "A Visit from St. Nicholas."


"What's important in most people's minds is how a given symbol or tradition is explained within his or her own family," whether it's their biological family or a more intentional grouping. It's family that pulls us all "home" for Christmas, she adds, across the miles or in our hearts. And Christmas, whether one assigns it religious significance or not, is, after all, all about traditions, she says.

"Whether we're spiritual or not, traditions hold us together."

-- Nancy Haught