Ya'at'eeh Keshmish!

Miss Tsa-Ya-Toh Bear Clan Pow Wow Princess Allie Joe looks out from her float at the start of the Comcast Parade of Balloons on Coal Avenue Saturday, Dec. 6. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Karen Francis
Dine Bureau

WINDOW ROCK— Though the Christian celebration of Christmas or the mainstream version with Santa Claus are not a part traditional Navajo culture, the origins of Christmas on Navajo, or Keshmish, may have begun with an annual gathering every winter that used to take place long ago, or they may have begun with religious denominations coming onto Navajo lands to teach Navajo children.

Navajo medicine man Kenneth Maryboy, who is a Navajo Nation Council delegate representing Aneth, Montezuma Creek and Red Mesa chapters in Utah, said that long ago, groups of families would gather to tell stories and eat traditional foods every winter.

“There’s really no connection for Christmas for Navajo, but there is a similar type of ceremony and some other things took place during the winter time — a gathering,” Maryboy said.

Back then, people lived far apart so visiting another family was an overnight trip.

“So you’re talking about four or five families from a far distance all commuting to one hogan, everybody sitting around. That was the big joy was to see more people all at once while all these other kids are playing,” Maryboy said.

Each year, Maryboy becomes Santa Claus to deliver presents to needy families in the Utah portion of the Navajo Nation, but he pointed out that Santa Claus is also not a part of traditional Navajo culture.

While in popular culture, Santa Claus is the man who brings Christmas to the masses, the Navajo are especially close to the Holy People in the winter, Maryboy said.

“In Navajo, they used to say He-Who-Chases-You-In-The-Dark because they say that the Holy People — their spirits are very close nearby in the winter where everything is soft and quiet,” he said.

Maryboy added, “There were special type of foods that people used to eat.”

Such foods included the first Popsicle made out of corn and sweetener, he said. Children ate the traditional Popsicle during that time.

“They say that hungriness, poorness and poverty is out walking about at this time. So they used to put ash on that and put it outside. They said poverty is scared of that,” Maryboy said.

Nowadays, Navajo families will butcher sheep for many occasions but back then was different, Maryboy said.

“People butchered animals only on very special occasions and that would have been one of them,” he said.

Winter stories with Coyote, concerning the constellations, and about the beginnings of the twin warriors Monster Slayer and Born For Water were told at the gatherings.
“That’s what people got together and talked about, eating and drinking coffee all night,” Maryboy said.

Such gatherings were also a form of therapy for people to talk with one another and open up — “similar to what modern people do to go see a psychiatrist,” Maryboy said.

Gene Vecenti, Navajo history instructor at Diné College in Tsaile, said that the idea of Christmas was most likely promoted by the people of the different religions who came to Navajoland, especially as teachers for children.

A treaty between the Navajo people and the U.S government called the Bonneville Treaty was signed on Christmas day in 1858.

“You can have a sense that Navajos, with the Bonneville Treaty, they didn’t have any idea it was Christmas time,”

Vecenti said. “It would probably be until 1868 to 1887 which would be Presbyterian Church teaching Navajo children.”

With the signing of the Treaty of 1868, the Navajo people had to send their children to school upon returning from Bosque Redondo.

“(From) 1868 to 1887, the Presbyterians were given the authority to teach Navajo on the reservation. Probably some idea were being taught in the classrooms by that time,” Vecenti said. “The Presbyterian did not do a good job teaching Navajo and finally the government took over with the separation of church and state.”

By 1900, some church denominations returned, for example, the Catholic Church, which probably began including Christmas stories in education, he added.

While Vecente is not sure exactly what was taught in schools for Navajo children at that time, he said that most likely some Christian thought was being taught to Navajo children in the education system.

“I cannot say what was really taught but obviously inclusion of that type of knowledge,” he said.

His dad also said that as a child around the time period of the 1940s, he would do Christmas programs in school, Vecente said.

“They would get all the children and sing Christmas carols,” he said.