Across southern and western Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and parts of Latin America, children writing their holiday wish lists do not address their letters to a bearded Santa Claus living at the North Pole. Instead, they wait eagerly on Christmas Eve for the silent, winged arrival of the Christkind—also known affectionately as the Christkindl—an angelic, golden-haired spirit who rings a tiny silver bell to signal that the Christmas tree has been lit and the presents have been placed beneath its branches. Surprisingly, this cherished figure who reigns over Europe’s most Catholic Alpine valleys today was actually invented five hundred years ago by the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther.
Martin Luther’s 16th-Century Alternative to Saint Nicholas
Throughout the Middle Ages across German-speaking Europe, the primary gift-giving holiday for children occurred not on December twenty-fifth, but three weeks earlier on December sixth: the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas of Myra. On the eve of December sixth, children put out their boots or plates to receive nuts, apples, gingerbread, and small toys from the fourth-century Greek bishop, who was celebrated as the patron saint of children and sailors.
When Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation in Wittenberg in 1517, he and his fellow reformers sought to abolish the Catholic veneration of saints, arguing that praying to or celebrating intermediaries like Saint Nicholas distracted Christians from the direct worship of Jesus Christ. Yet Luther, a warm family man with six children of his own, had no desire to take the joy of receiving holiday presents away from German youngsters. In the 1530s, Luther proposed shifting the date of children’s gift-giving from December sixth to Christmas Eve, December twenty-fourth, and telling children that their gifts came directly from the “Holy Christ” (der Heilige Christ) or the Christ Child (Christkind)—redirecting children’s excitement straight to the birth of Jesus in the manger.
How the Infant Jesus Turned Into a Golden-Haired Winged Angel
Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the visual identity of the Christkind underwent a fascinating folkloric metamorphosis. Initially conceived literally as the newborn infant Jesus, parents and village parishes soon realized that it was difficult to imagine a helpless baby in swaddling clothes carrying sacks of wooden toys through the December snow, and impossible to have an infant perform speeches at town pageants.
Gradually, the figure of the Christkind merged with the lead angel—often the Archangel Gabriel—who walked at the head of traditional Nativity plays (Krippenspiele) announcing the birth of the Savior. Because these Christmas angels were traditionally portrayed in church pageants by adolescent girls wearing flowing white and gold robes, golden tinsel crowns, and feathered wings over long blonde curls, the popular image of the Christkind transformed from a male infant in a manger into an ethereal, angelic, sprite-like maiden who served as the heavenly messenger of Christmas Eve.
The Irony of Catholic Adoption and the Birth of Kris Kringle
In one of the richest ironies of European cultural history, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Protestant regions of northern Germany that had originally invented the Christkind gradually abandoned the figure in favor of the secularized, bearded Weihnachtsmann (Father Christmas or Santa Claus), while the devoutly Catholic regions of Bavaria, Austria, and the Rhineland enthusiastically adopted Martin Luther’s Christkind as their own primary gift-bringer—keeping Saint Nicholas on December sixth as a minor warmup holiday while reserving the main Christmas Eve celebration for the Christkind.
Simultaneously, when eighteenth-century German Protestant immigrants from the Palatinate settled in Pennsylvania, they carried their dialect name for the gift-bringer—Christkindlein or Christkindl—across the Atlantic Ocean. To English-speaking American neighbors in Philadelphia and New York, the rapid German pronunciation of “Christkindl” sounded like “Kris Kringle.” Within two generations, Americans had completely forgotten that Kris Kringle meant the angelic Christ Child, applying the name instead as the beloved nickname for the bearded, jolly Santa Claus himself.
The Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt and the Post Office in Engelskirchen
In modern Germany and Austria, the tradition of the Christkind remains a vibrant sensory experience on the afternoon of December twenty-fourth (Heiligabend). While children wait excitedly in their bedrooms or attend the afternoon children’s church service, parents secretly lock the living room door, decorate the Christmas tree, light the candles, arrange the unwrapped or wrapped gifts beneath the boughs, and leave a window cracked slightly open so children believe the Christkind just flew out into the night sky. Then, a parent rings a small crystal or silver handbell; hearing the chime, the children rush into the glowing room to behold the tree for the very first time.
Nowhere is the figure more celebrated publicly than at the world-famous Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt, operating since the early seventeenth century. Every two years, the city of Nuremberg elects a local teenage girl between the ages of sixteen and nineteen to serve as the living Nuremberg Christkind. Dressed in a magnificent gold-and-white brocade robe and tall golden crown, she stands on the balcony of the Frauenkirche on the Friday before the first Sunday of Advent to recite the solemn opening prologue that officially launches the Christmas season across Germany. Meanwhile, children from over fifty countries mail more than one hundred and thirty thousand hand-drawn wish lists every December to the official Christkind Post Office in the German town of Engelskirchen (“Church of the Angels”) or the Austrian parish of Christkindl near Steyr, receiving an official stamped reply from the golden-winged spirit of Christmas.
