How Hitler and the Nazis tried to steal ChristmasIn 2001, Piatak quoted Father Gereon Goldmann's autobiography, The Shadow Of His Wings: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.
Published: 8:53AM GMT 17 Nov 2009
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. The discoveries have been highlighted by a new exhibition at the National Socialism Documentation Centre in Cologne. "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."
As a conscript in the SS, Goldmann was forced to celebrate not Christmas, but a bizarre winter holiday concocted by the Nazis:And it's starting again this year—see the Catholic League's latest list: WAR ON CHRISTMAS COMMENCES November 3, 2009. UPDATE: Check out the Google News on "War Against Christmas" and "War On Christmas." A lot of it is "War On Christmas Denial"—no such thing is happening, they say, they say."On Christmas Eve, there was a celebration, not a Christian one, but a pagan German Julfest. We were all together and had to sing some trash about the night of the clear stars and other sad substitutes for the true Christmas message."
As shocking as it may sound, the contemporary public observance of Christmas in America bears a much closer resemblance to the Nazis's Julfest than to the Christmas that enticed [Whittaker] Chambers. And this extraordinary transformation has occurred in a generation.[More]
