Catholic Christmas customs: "Kriskins"

[muckefuck]

If you have the misfortune to speak to me in the near future, expect an interrogation about a quaint custom from my childhood.

As a child, I attended two different parochial grade schools, one in St. Louis and one in a small town an hour's drive away. At both places, I participated in a Christmas tradition called "Kriskins". (Note that this is a [infelicitously-named] "phonetic spelling"; it's not a word I ever saw written in any authoritative context, only informally by fellow students.) At the beginning of the Christmas season (which, for Catholics, is basically coterminous with Advent, the "little Lent" of four weeks preceeding Christmas Day), all of my classmates drew each other's names from a box. Whoever got your name was an anonymous benefactor, expected to furnish small, thoughful surprises[*] in the coming weeks and a modest gift right around Christmas. It may sound like a customary gift exchange as practiced in situations where there are too many individuals involved for everyone to exchange gifts with everyone else, but there are two important differences: (1) Kriskins were strictly anonymous and (2) gift exchanges oblige participants to purchase only a single gift to be exchanged on or near Christmas.

My mother is one of eight children, so it should come as no surprise that her family eventually instituted a gift exchange. It wasn't the least bit unusual, however, for my mother to tell me, "Aunt Genevieve has your name this year and needs to know what you want." It would be strictly taboo, however, for someone to tell me, "Buster is your Kriskin and wants to know what to get you." Sure, people speculated and gossiped about who had who in grade school--even trades ("I don't want Stinky Robbins; I'll trade you for Buffy") weren't unheard of--but having your Kriskin revealed to you prematurely was simply not part of the game.

My final year of college, my dorm did "Secret Santas". The term struck me as a reasonable substitution since, having spent the previous Christmas in Germany, the likelihood that "Kriskin" was, in fact, an American corruption of Christkind[&] "Christ Child" hadn't escaped me. I remember being mildly surprised, however, to find what I considered a Catholic custom in a thoroughly non-denominational environment. No one else seemed to find it remarkable, so I concluded that it was a more widespread American custom than I'd realised.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find in the course of exchanging reminiscences with monshu that he'd never heard of such a custom under any name. He was born in Michigan but raised in California, which has got me wondering if about the regional distribution of Kriskins/Secret Santas. My working hypothesis is that it's of German-American Christian origin and ubiquituous throughout the Midwest but may not have spread throughout the Coasts. I'm working from very little data here, however, so anything y'all from your own experience could tell me would be helpful.


[*] Often--but not exclusively--gifts of small value. One Kriskin's surprise was a small treasure hunt through the library stacks. One year my "gifts" were poems by Celtic authors written out by hand and illustrated, tying in with a culminating gift of an English-language book of verse by Irish authors.

[&] Intriguingly, the Christkind as gift-giver is an invention of Martin Luther's, who found old St. Niklaus and der Weihnachtsmann ("Father Christmas") too papist bzw. too secular. As such, the term is associated with Protestants, making it a little surprising to find it being used in a strongly Catholic context.

Comments

[luckymarty.livejournal.com]

We never did Secret Santas when I was growing up, but I didn't go to Catholic schools. I don't recall when I first heard about the custom, but I'm pretty sure it was before coming to the U. of C.

I distinctly recall reading about the Christkindl custom in one of the Christmas columns of Alois Buckley Heath, one of the sisters of William F. Buckley, Jr., so that's a data point that's Catholic, German (since she used the term Christkindl) and not Midwestern.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Um, I believe that would be Aloïse Buckley Heath. (At first I did a double-take. Then I began to wonder if "Alois" is only the latest in a long line of originally masculine given names to be commandered for female use.) And this may be the column you had in mind. I suppose it's appropriate to appropriate Sullivanesque usage and call this the "money quote":

I really didn't see how the Christkindl custom could go wrong, though. I still don't. In the Trapp family, at the beginning of Advent, everyone writes his name on a piece of paper and the papers are put in a basket, which is passed around as soon as the children have finished singing "Ye heavens, dew drop from above." Everybody picks a name from the basket, and the pickee, if you follow me, becomes the picker's secret Christkindl, and the idea is, you do your Christkindl a good turn every day until Christmas without letting him know who you are. It sounds simple, spiritual, and also fun, doesn't it? And it works out beautifully in the Trapp family. In fact, through Advent until Christmas, the Trapp household resounds with the glad cries of Christkindlen[*] who have found their shoes shined, their dollhouses tidied up, or the table already set the day it was their turn.

Apparently, the reference is found in Around the year with the Trapp Family (New York, 1955) and so, presumably, represents a genuine Austrian custom. Good work, luckymarty!

[*] Obligatory grammar nitpick: Christkindl is a Bavaric diminutive of Christkind, equivalent to Standard German Christkindlein. As even snowy_owlet can tell you, it is invariable in the plural. One Christkindl, two Christkindl. There's a certain charm to swiping the English irregular plural -en from children and slapping it on a German word, so I forgive Ms Buckley Heath entirely her bit of poetic license.

[markusn.livejournal.com]

In my kids' Waldorf school there is the custom of "Wichteln". Each student is assigned a benefactee (don't know how they do it, it may be a draw as you describe), and they are supposed to do them small niceties all through Advent, being their "Wichtel".

I didn't know that custom before. Now Waldorf schools are based on Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, of course, and he's Austrian (Slovenian by contemporary borders, I believe), so there may be a link. I don't know if the custom is universal to the schools, though.