The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. The Yule Festival, the Symbols of Christmas, and the World-Historical Mood of the Anthroposophical Worldview

[ 1 ] The spirit through whose reception the human soul continues to develop further and further in the course of the world is an eternal one. But the way in which it takes root, the way in which it expresses itself in what human beings on earth are capable of feeling, loving, and creating—this way is always new from one epoch to the next. And therein lies precisely humanity’s task in the course of the world: to enable the Spirit to take on the many successive forms through which it ascends the ladder to those perfections that we sense, and that we are actually meant only to sense—perfections we do not wish to force into overly precise concepts. When we think in this way of the spirit and its becoming in the course of human history, then eternity and the transitory appear before our inner eye. And in the particular instances of life, here and there, again and again, we can see how this eternal emerges within the transitory, how it manifests itself in the transitory, only to disappear again and assert itself in ever-new forms. What surrounds us here as a symbol of our Christmas, we can already perceive today as something belonging to past forms: the eternal in the outer world as a symbol. For truly, when we go out in the second half of December in our present time, especially into the streets of the big city, and see out there the Christmas splendor and all that is meant to invite us into the houses to celebrate Christmas, then it must already be painful to an eye that can still perceive aesthetically to see the things of the Christmas market spread out and, whizzing right through them, that which, strictly speaking, cannot whiz through Christmas trees and Christmas symbols: automobiles, electric trams, or the like. In a certain sense, as they are perceived today, these things no longer belong together. We probably feel this even more deeply when we then bring to mind what this Christmas has become for many of the people in the big cities who want to be the bearers of contemporary culture. A festival of gifts, a festival in which little remains of the warmth, of the profound depth of feeling that existed in the not-too-distant past around this meaningful Christmas celebration: it has become a festival of gifts. Among the many things that seek to give us what we call our anthroposophical worldview, our anthroposophical way of thinking, there should surely be once again those very warm sentiments and feelings that permeated the human soul during the high feast days of the old church year.

[ 2 ] And we should learn once again to understand how necessary it is for us—necessary for our souls—at certain times to feel our full connection with the vast world from which humanity was born, in order to renew our intellectual, emotional, and moral powers. For such a festival, where all morality, where all humanity could be renewed, was once truly the Christian festival, radiating in its symbols a warmth of which today’s sobriety, today’s prose of life, can scarcely conceive. But for us, immersing ourselves in these symbols could be something that brings before our souls the sensations, the attitudes, the feelings that we ourselves may have toward that Resurrection, which we sense as the anthroposophical Resurrection of humanity, and which we may therefore also have toward the birth of the anthroposophical spirit in our own souls. And there is indeed a kind of connection between the older ideas of the Christian Nativity and the newer anthroposophical ideas of the birth of our anthroposophical concepts and attitudes, of the entire anthroposophical spirit in the manger of our hearts: such a relationship exists. And perhaps today it is the anthroposophist who is best able to immerse himself in what has been felt throughout the ages, particularly in the Christian Christmas celebration—a feeling that can be experienced anew when something similar is born from the atmosphere that already surrounds us today, from the atmosphere of contemporary materialism.

[ 3 ] But in seeking to experience Christmas in an anthroposophical way, we cannot limit ourselves merely to what the Christian Christmas was or is. Rather, wherever we look in the world and however far back into the past we gaze: something that can be compared, that can be brought close in thought and feeling to the Christmas spirit—something of this kind has, in essence, existed everywhere. We do not want to go far today; we want only to go as far as the feelings and sensibilities that a person might have had in our own regions—in the regions of Central Europe—before the introduction of Christianity, at times corresponding to those in which Christmas approaches today. Let us take a brief look back at those times before the introduction of Christianity in Europe, when, in a relatively harsh climate, our ancestors in Europe had to earn their livelihood primarily by living throughout the summer as a kind of pastoral or agricultural people, yet in intimate connection with the whole vast natural world through their sensations and feelings, in heartfelt worship of the sun’s rays, in fervent reverence that was not mere thought but feeling and devotion, in fervent devotion to the great world. And when the old shepherd or cattle breeder of Europe was out on his rugged pastures, often in the blazing sunlight, he did not merely perceive the outwardly physical and natural; he felt an intimate connection of his entire being with what shone out at him in the physiognomy of nature. He lived in nature with his whole heart. Not only did the physical rays of the sun reflect light in his eyes: in his heart, the sunlight spiritually kindled what was summer jubilation, summer exultation, and what, in essence, gathered in those fires that later became the Midsummer fires in summer. There, all of nature wanted to exult from human hearts; the spirit of nature wanted to resound from human hearts.

[ 4 ] That was how people felt throughout the year. And that was how they felt a deep connection with the animal world they tended. Then came autumn, then came the times when the winter grew harsh. I recall those times when harsh winters swept across the land, the severity of which today’s humanity can scarcely imagine. Then, with the exception of what was absolutely necessary, the last of the livestock had to be slaughtered. Then all outward life fell silent; it was truly the case that something entered people’s hearts that could be called a kind of death, of darkness, in contrast to the mood that had pervaded those hearts throughout the summer. Those were the times when an echo of ancient clairvoyant powers was still truly present, precisely through the very nature of the climate and nature in Central Europe. The people who had cheered and rejoiced in the summer, as if nature itself had cheered and rejoiced in their hearts, those same people were able, in the winter, especially in the face of the approaching winter, become still and calm within themselves, allowing something of the mood to arise within them that should overcome a person when, disregarding the entire external world, they withdraw into their own inner world to perceive and feel the inner divine.

[ 5 ] Nature itself thus gave the ancient European people the opportunity to withdraw completely from life in the outer world and immerse themselves in their own inner being. As November approached, this descent into death and darkness was experienced, for weeks on end, as a festive season; it was perceived as the dawning of what was called the Yule festival. And what followed this mood was something that can truly show us how long, in essence, the memory of the ancient clairvoyant states of all peoples has remained alive, particularly in Central and Northern Europe. What then followed in the time when our January and February approach was that people felt their inner beings permeated with harbingers of the new natural jubilation, the new natural resurrection. They now perceived this as a harbinger of what they were to experience in the outer world, since snow still covered the pastures, since ice still clung to the trees, since nothing in nature was yet visible of the announcement of the joyful power—which, prior to the announcement of the joyful power, is still a state of being wholly at one with oneself, wholly at rest within oneself. This transformed within the soul in such a way that the human being was able to detach from themselves.

[ 6 ] This intermediate state, which our ancestors experienced as what we now call spring approached, was perceived in much the same way as a clairvoyant perceives his astral body when that astral body is not yet fully purified and cleansed. It was experienced as a filling of the spiritual horizon with all manner of animal forms. And these people sought to express this as well. For them, this formed a transition from the actual deep festive mood of the approaching winter to the mood that would in turn take hold of the soul in summer. It symbolically imitates what the human astral body reveals, imitating in exuberant games, in exuberant dances, in animal masks this transition from resting entirely within oneself to the jubilant merging with the great nature. That is how it was.

[ 7 ] When we immerse ourselves in such a thing, when we consider that the national spirit and sensibility were completely immersed in such a mood across vast, vast circles, then we understand how, even there, on this ground, there existed the feeling of plunging into the outer physical darkness, into the outer physical death of nature; how, however, it was still fully felt that it is precisely in this immersion into the physical death of nature, into physical darkness, that the highest light of the spirit can be given. And how the mood of immersion into physical death is immediately transformed into the exuberant mood expressed in animal masks, in exuberant dances, and in exuberant music. How, however, the full sense was not yet present that when human beings are to find the outermost, the highest light, they must seek it in the innermost depths; yet how, through the intimate, devoted connection with all the forces, with all the weaving and life of nature, a foundation was created into which could be sunk what was to be proclaimed to humanity for its evolution through the Christ impulse. One needed, as it were, only to speak to the sensibilities and feelings of these people spread across the European regions—though not in abstract, dry, philistine words, but in such a way that what one wished to say spoke to the soul through symbol—one needed only to make it clear: Where you descend into darkness, into the death of outer nature, there you can, if you prepare your soul to perceive and feel in the right way, find an eternal, an imperishable light. And this light has been brought into human evolution through what emerged within that evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha and the events in Palestine.

[ 8 ] It is characteristic that, over the course of the following centuries, it became possible within Europe to experience the Christ impulse most deeply and most heartily through the childlike Christ, through the birth of the Christ Child. If one wishes to assign humanity a task in evolution at all, how must one perceive this human task? In no other way than by recognizing that humanity has its origin in the Divine-Spiritual, that it can look back upon its Divine-Spiritual origin, but that from this Divine-Spiritual origin it has descended deeper and deeper, becoming ever more closely related to and interwoven with outer physical matter, the outer physical plane. But then one must sense how humanity can once again take the path in the opposite direction through the powerful impulse we call the Christ impulse. How humanity can turn back and, by overcoming what led it into the physical world, once again take the path from below to above into the spiritual heights.

[ 9 ] When one feels this, one says to oneself: Just as this human self exists within the physical body, just as this human self is today, it has descended from divine-spiritual heights and feels interwoven and entangled in the world of the outer physical plane. But underlying this ego is another: the innocent ego, so to speak, in contrast to the ego that has become guilty. Where, then, do we first encounter—at least approximately—that ego which is not yet interwoven into the physical world? There where we—when we look back on our own life as it unfolds between birth and death—recall the moment when our sense of self first emerges at a certain point in the early years. The “I” is there, even if the person does not remember it; it is present and lives and weaves within us even where the concept of the “I” has not yet emerged, where this “I,” which looks around in the outer world, becomes interwoven with the physical plane, where the concept of the “I” is not yet there, but where the “I” is present in its childlike, innocent state; the “I” that can stand as an ideal to be attained once more, only through being imbued with all that a human being can experience in this school of physical life on Earth. And so the ideal can be felt in the human heart with inner warmth, even if the sober mind can only with difficulty put it into words: Become as your “I” is when it does not yet have the sense of self. Become what you could become if you were to take refuge in your childlike Self. In all that your later Self acquires, the childhood Self then shines. — And as we perceive it as an ideal, it shines in Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ was later incarnated.

[ 10 ] From such feelings, we can understand how a deep impulse toward human growth and development could have taken hold of the hearts of the simplest people throughout Europe at the sight of the embodiment of the human being who had matured enough to receive Christ within himself. Thus we see that it was a real advance, a tremendous advance, when the sentiments associated with the feast of Jesus’ birth were woven into the sentiments of the old Yule festival. It was a tremendous advance. We can perhaps describe this progress by saying: In that darkness, in which the soul first sought to gather itself to prepare for the rejoicing and exultation of the new summer, in that darkness the light of Christ Jesus was kindled.

[ 11 ] We can still sense an echo of what actually happened to the European population in what, for the 19th century—at least in its second half—was little more than a subject of scholarly research and collecting. We can still sense an echo in the old Christmas plays and nativity plays. Such Christmas plays were performed in a unique way as early as the Middle Ages around the Christmas season. Through them, all the emotional depth was evoked—all that the soul could experience at this time—along the same lines as what people of even earlier times felt as the Yule festival approached, as I described to you earlier. And when we turn our gaze from the ancient Yule festivals I described to the Christmas plays of the Middle Ages, we truly sense what a warm impulse Christianity brought to the European people. Yes, something very special has sunk into their hearts and souls.

[ 12 ] Things aren't the same as they used to be. In the 19th century, it was merely an object of scholarly interest for collectors. Nevertheless, there was something touching about it if one had known the older generation of German philologists, German linguists, and scholars of legends and myths, who did not approach it with indifference, but with love—with deep, heartfelt love—as they immersed themselves in what had survived from earlier centuries as Christmas plays in various regions. I myself had an old friend who was such a collector; he was a professor at a secondary school in Pressburg for a long time in the 1950s and of the past century, who had conducted research there for a long time on the Germanic population that had been driven from the west to the Hungarian east, and who was familiar with the peculiar charms of the customs and language of both the Spiš Germans—who were still living in northern Hungary at the time but had since been Magyarized—and the like. He also learned once that in a remote village near Pressburg, Christmas plays were still being performed. And he—I mean my old friend Karl Julius Schröer—went there and tried to get to the bottom of what from ancient times still lived on among the people. He later told me many things about the wonderful impressions he had gained there from the last remnants of Christmas plays dating back to much, much older times. There was an old man in one village. In his family, a custom had been passed down that when the Christmas season approached, they would gather those in the village who were suited to perform a Christmas play—a play in which the Christmas story itself was to be presented in a simple manner, the story that the Gospels tell us as the Christmas story, as the story of Herod and the Three Kings. But if one wants to understand what is so unique about such Christmas plays, then one must have some idea of what life was like among the common people in earlier times. That is now past, and it should not be brought back. If I were to describe what is at stake here, I could really say nothing other than: Does not the snowdrop have a specific time of year when it blooms, or the lily of the valley or the violet a specific time when it places itself within the entire macrocosm? Certainly, in a greenhouse you can make them bloom at other times, but it actually hurts when one is supposed to perceive the blooming violet out of place at a time other than when it is set within the entire macrocosm. There is little inclination for such things in our present time, but there was something similar among people in earlier times. What people were able to feel during certain periods of the Middle Ages, as autumn and the Christmas season approached, as the dark nights came—what people were able to feel then, that their heartfelt experiences were woven into everything living out in nature, that these experiences harmonized with the snow outside and the snowflakes and the icicles on the trees—what could be felt then could only be felt during the Christmas season. That was a very special atmosphere; it was something that gave the soul strength and healing power for the whole year. It truly renewed the soul; it was a real power. If, decades ago, one could still observe the last remnants of these feelings here and there, these feelings would already have met one. And I would like to say, speaking from my own experience on the physical plane, that one could still find the most wayward, the most good-for-nothing lads, who, when the days grew shorter, did not dare to be irreverent in their souls. Those who usually fought the most fought the least, and those who fought little did not fight at all during the Christmas season. It was a real power that lived there in their souls. And the period of the weeks surrounding Holy Christmas was steeped in this entire world of feeling.

[ 13 ] For what did one feel there? What one felt there was truly condensed into sensations and emotions: the descent of humanity from divine-spiritual heights to the lowest point on the physical plane. The reception of the Christ impulse, the reversal of humanity’s path, the ascent to divine-spiritual heights. — That is what one felt in everything connected with the Christ event. That is why people were likely eager not only to depict the Christian events, but also—just as the calendar links Adam and Eve’s Day on December 24 with Jesus’ birthday on December 25—to perform a Paradise play followed immediately by the Christ Birthday play, portraying the impulse of humanity’s ascent back up to the divine-spiritual heights. This was deeply felt when the name “Eve!” rang out from the Paradise Play—the mother of humanity from whom people descended, who then descended into the valley of physical life. One heard this on one of the days, and on the next day, the reversal of the human path. This is already hinted at in that sound intended to express this reversal: “Ave Maria!” “Ave” was perceived as the reversal of “Eva”: Ave – Eva. This touched people deeply when they heard such things, such as the words that rang out countless times to their ears and hearts from the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries onward, and which they understood.

[ 14 ] So we would say something like the following:

Hail, Star of the Sea Dei mater alma Atque semper virgo Felix coeli porta. Sumens illud Ave Gabrielis ore Funda nos in pace Mutans nomen Evae!

Hail, Star of the Sea, Divine young Mother And eternal Virgin, You blessed gate of heaven. Receiving that Hail Mary As a gift from Gabriel, You became for us the foundation of peace, By reversing The name of Eve!

[ 15 ] And in what was performed as the “Paradise Plays,” one sensed something that must have been steeped in a Christmas-like, sacred atmosphere. Yes, one felt this deeply, and one may well say this among anthroposophists: Does it not remind us somewhat of the way in which—admittedly, this is something greater—one faces the mysteries of truth, when we hear descriptions of the way in which the participants in the Christmas plays rehearsed, prepared themselves, and behaved before and during the Christmas plays? We know: the Mysteries are conceived in such a way that one does not receive the truth in a sober manner, which can be permeated by any human mood. It is absurd for anyone who senses something of the holiness of truth to believe that the truth could truly be found in the prosaic, sober lecture halls of the present day. There is no longer any concept there that the truth must be sought with a purified, pure, and prepared soul; that a soul does not find the truth unless it is first sanctified in its innermost being, unless it prepares itself for it through its feelings. Today, when truth has become the most prosaic thing for materialism, there is no longer any concept of this. In the Mysteries, one approached the truth after the soul had undergone trials of its purity, its freedom, and its fearlessness. And one might say: Does it not remind us of when the old man whom Karl Julius Schröer met demanded that his singers, whom he gathered, adhere to the old rules? Anyone who has lived among the people in the village knows what the first rule means. The first rule was that during all the preparations that were to be made, none of the participants was allowed to go to a girl. In the village, that means something tremendous; it means being immersed in the piety of what one had planned. No one was allowed to sing a roguish song while rehearsing; that was the second rule. No one was allowed to desire anything other than to strive for a good, honorable way of life; that was the third rule. And the fourth point was that in all things, one had to follow the person in whose hands lay the tradition of the Christmas play, a tradition one was reluctant to relinquish.

[ 16 ] In the second half of the 19th century, people collected these things because those old sentiments had simply faded away. Later, however, I once again encountered something of that deep reverence, of the immense devotion with which those scholars who were still somewhat connected to the people—and who, for example, had remained in the scattered linguistic enclaves of Hungary—collected the old games and songs. When I was in Sibiu around Christmas time—where the Sibiu high school teachers had been very busy collecting such plays—I encountered the Herod play. And so, in the second half of the 19th century, one could still, so to speak, get to know the collectors of what was alive on the ground that I have characterized in relation to the Yule festivals. Let us not imagine something theoretical, but rather this warm, magical breath of Christmas spirit as it lived in these Christmas plays. Through this, we also gain an understanding of the regeneration of the human being, of the human being’s faith in the divine-spiritual through the Christ impulse. Such rehearsals of Christmas plays—oh, that was something that could truly be very instructive for us today, when the concept of how art grows out of piety, out of religion, out of wisdom, has long been lost. Today, when people in art are so eager to see something detached from everything else, when art has degenerated into formalism, for example, today we could learn a great deal from the whole way in which art was a flowering of humanity. As simple as it appeared in these Christmas plays, it was a flowering of the whole essence of the human being. First, the boys who performed the plays had to be devout; first, they had to absorb into their whole being something like an essence of the entire Christmas spirit. But then they had to learn to speak rhythmically in a strictly regulated manner. Today, when the art of speech in the old sense has been lost altogether, when we no longer have any idea of the immense role that rhyme plays and the role that rhythm plays, how every movement of these men—who otherwise wielded flails—how every gesture of these men was rehearsed down to the very last detail, how they were fully immersed in it for weeks in rhythm, in intonation, in devotion to what they were meant to portray—one could learn an infinite amount from this for a true understanding of art, especially today, when, for example, we have forgotten artistic speech to such an extent that we hardly speak of anything other than meaning, whereas back then, in these Christmas plays, the very charm lay in the fact that rhythm, tone, gesture—the whole person—spoke. It was truly still a grand thing, even to see the last ruins.

[ 17 ] Once the Christmas holidays were over, the Three Kings would go about their rounds, at no other time than the period following Christmas. I still remember seeing the Three Kings walking around the villages myself. They went from house to house. They had a star attached to a pair of scissors. It was flung far and wide by pulling the scissors apart. This flinging was in harmony with the rhythm of these Three Kings, who were dressed in the most primitive manner, but who, through the very way they carried the relevant items among the people at the right time, and through their selfless immersion in the moment, created a full festive atmosphere. Our time can no longer understand this at all, unless a mood can once again be awakened for it, so that from what is to awaken within us as a life of the spirit, through anthroposophy, is translated into art and may come before us—something in the nature of plays transcending time, as they must be in relation to the present, yet which cannot rely on festive seasons, but must deal only with the eternal, with the eternal in the human soul that is bound to no season of the year.

[ 18 ] What became a reality for those souls could come alive within us: the Christ impulse at a specific time. Indeed, in a certain sense we are already deeply immersed in an age in which materialism has so thoroughly taken hold of all spheres of the outer world that entirely different impulses are needed to renew this Christ impulse than the simple impulses that were at work in the Middle Ages. A renewal of the human inner life is necessary, as anthroposophy should strive for it—a summoning of the deepest forces of the human soul, forces quite different from those we encountered in the Christmas symbols and customs. And just as we can learn through our anthroposophy to feel what passed through our hearts like a magical breath during the performances of the Paradise and Christmas plays, in all that moved our hearts during these festive seasons—just as we can feel this through anthroposophy— so sincerely must we face the other fact that the eternal Spirit must express itself in ever-new forms throughout human evolution. Therefore, the sight of the Christmas symbols should inspire us to embrace, in the spirit of Christmas, what the world-historical mood of the anthroposophical way of thinking can be in our hearts.

[ 19 ] For whoever perceives the mysteries of Christmas Eve in the right way looks forward with hope to what is to follow Christmas as a second festival; they look forward to Easter, the festival of the Resurrection, where that which is born at Christmas is to be victorious. And so we are convinced of the necessity that all spiritual life, that all cultural life in general, must be permeated and saturated by what we call anthroposophical imagination, anthroposophical feeling, thinking, and willing. In the future, my dear friends, there will either be a spiritual science, or there will be no science at all, but only an external technical practice. In the future, there will be a religion permeated by anthroposophy, or there will be no religion at all, but only external churchgoing. In the future, there will be art permeated by anthroposophy, or there will be no arts at all, for arts that seek to be detached from the life of the human soul will have a short, ephemeral existence. Thus we look upon something that shines before us with the same certainty as the prophecy given to us by Theodora in “The Portal of Initiation” concerning the renewal of the vision of Christ. With just such certainty stands in our soul the resurrection of the anthroposophical spirit in science, religion, art, and all human life. The great Easter festival of humanity stands before our foreboding soul.

[ 20 ] We can understand that there are once again nativity scenes, once again there are lonely, still quite lonely places where that which is to rise among humanity is born in the form of a child. In the Middle Ages, people were led into homes and shown the nativity scene, a representation of the stable with the ox and the donkey, with the infant Jesus, his parents, and the shepherds. They were told: There lies the hope for the future of humanity. — Let us allow what we nurture, what we strive for within our anthroposophical workplaces, to become the modern new nativity scenes, in which, under the guidance of the one we call Christ Jesus, the new spirit arises—still in the form of a child today, still at the stage of being born in the individual anthroposophical branches of work, in the nativity scenes, yet carrying within itself the pledge that it will be victorious, that we as human beings may celebrate through it the great Easter festival of humanity, the festival of humanity’s resurrection in a new spirit, in the spirit we wish to sense, the spirit we strive for as the anthroposophical spirit.