Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, the wisest of men, and for one year the official Christmas gift-bringer. As one of the most recognizable deities of the pre-Hispanic pantheon, there have always been attempts in Mexico’s modern history to bring back the importance this figure once had. One of these attempts happened in the thirties when a presidential decree named him the official substitute of Santa Claus.
The myth of Quetzalcoatl
Legend has it that after the arrival of Quetzalcoatl to Tollan, it became a prosperous city. Its inhabitants learned the art of corn cultivation, writing, cotton dyeing, and how to work jade, obsidian, and gold. All was prosperity, and the ruler was revered as a god. However, a real misfortune would fall upon him due to the jealousy of his brother Tezcatlipoca. The latter showed up one day in the city, dressed as an old man, asking to see the lord of Tollan. When his brother received him, Tezcatlipoca gave him a maguey tip dipped in pulque, a drink that was still unknown to humans. Quetzalcoatl was fascinated by the taste of the drink.
Intoxicated by the drink, the ruler took one of the priestesses of his cult, Quetzalpetlatl, and slept with her. When he realized what he had done, he felt unworthy of remaining in Tollan and left for the sea to build a boat made of snakes and set sail in the direction of where the Sun rises, promising to return to take revenge on his brother and regain his place among the Toltecs. The date he gave for this event was 1519, the year in which the Spaniards arrived in Tenochtitlan to exterminate the Mexica.
General Hernán Cortés, who commanded the Spanish expedition, had a similar physical appearance as Quetzalcóatl: he was blond, tall, white, and had long hair and a thick beard. The Aztecs believed at first that it was the ancient lord who had inherited so many teachings to the people of the past and themselves. That is why they received Cortes with such veneration and gave him easy access to infinite riches and privileges. It was the mistake that ended with the destruction of an entire empire because of the greed of an invader.
The time Quetzalcoatl replace Santa Claus as the official gift-bringer
However, the prophecy was fulfilled centuries later: Quetzalcoatl, in fact, returned to these lands to meet again with the people who worshipped him. Only that the events and the reasons were quite unexpected. It happened on November 27, 1930, by presidential decree of the then president of Mexico, Pascual Ortiz Rubio. The president thought that the country should recover part of its cultural roots and face globalization, which, at that time, was already beginning to threaten Mexico and the world.
So he decreed nationwide that the main figure of the next Christmas should not be Santa Claus, that obese nice guy that the United States had imposed on the world, but Quetzalcoatl. The news was given by the then Secretary of Education Carlos Trejo Lerdo de Tejada:
“Yesterday, I had the pleasure of having lunch with him (President of Mexico), and during the meal, we were agreeing, and he gave me the idea of substituting the foreign traditions of Christmas -which is not ours- by changing it for something essentially Mexican. Quetzalcoatl will replace the Holy Kings, Santa Claus, and Noel.”
Mexico had to recover its roots in the face of the avalanche of customs that began to arrive from the northern country. If Quetzalcoatl had been part of the religions and cosmogony of the pre-Hispanic peoples, this was a good time to take him up again and educate the population in customs that had been lost through the years and the influence of other nations.
It was a time when Mexico wanted to recover indigenous traditions and inculcate nationalist values in elementary schools throughout the country. The Department of Drawing and Manual Arts of the Ministry of Public Education ordered elementary schools throughout the country to instill in students a taste for the figure of the pre-Hispanic deity. Therefore, they would have to make drawings depicting the various figures that this character could embody.
The act where this decree was represented took place in Mexico’s National Stadium, located in the Roma neighborhood, on December 23, 1930. A pyramid was placed in the middle of the stadium, the national anthem was sung and a person representing the pre-Hispanic deity gave candies and toys to about 15 thousand children who gathered to worship the Feathered Serpent. Given the little repercussion that the act had, the government decided that Quetzalcoatl should get back on his boat and leave, once again, where he had arrived, just as he had done hundreds of years before when he said goodbye to the people he governed.
This is undoubtedly one of the strangest and most peculiar moments in the history of Mexican politics. Pascual Ortiz Rubio’s idea came at a time when the country and the new generations had completely forgotten what the old gods meant. Santa Claus was already, officially, the image of Christmas, and children sympathized more with him than with any other figure. A good attempt to recover a lost identity; however, was made in an unconventional way and an inadequate framework. Quetzalcoatl, returned just that Christmas.
Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
Photos from Wikimedia Commons