Christmas in Nazi Germany

[4] Early Nazi celebrations of Christmas occurred in 1921 when Adolf Hitler made a speech in a beer hall in Munich to 4,000 supporters.

The crowd then sang carols and nationalist hymns around a Christmas tree, with gifts being donated to working-class attendees of the speech.

[5] After taking power in 1933, Nazi ideologues initially sought to reject Germany's long-held Christmas traditions—renaming the festival Julfest, and propagating its Germanic origins as the celebration of the winter solstice.

Further, they perceived that Santa Claus was a Christian reinvention of the Germanic God Wotan, more commonly known in his name in Norse mythology as Odin.

Accordingly, holiday posters were made to depict Odin as the "Christmas or Solstice man", riding a white charger, sporting a thick grey beard and wearing a slouch hat, carrying a sack full of gifts.

[8] The traditional crèche was replaced by a garden containing wooden toy deer and rabbits;[9] Mary and Jesus were depicted as a blonde mother and child.

As a sign of appreciation, Heinrich Himmler frequently gave SS members a Julleuchter ("Yule lantern"), a kind of ornate Germanic candlestick, some of which were made at Dachau concentration camp.

Files from the National Socialist Women's League reported, "that tensions flared when propagandists pressed too hard to sideline religious observance, leading to "much doubt and discontent.