La Christianne and Santa

Today we know the jolly old elf who brings presents to good children on Christmas as Santa Claus. But he went by several names in Louisiana in days gone by, and Santa wasn’t one of them.
He was Père Noël or Papa Noël to most French speakers; Kris Kringle or St. Nicholas to folks of German heritage, and—according to one account—he was a she to some Cajuns.
Père Noël came to Louisiana from France. According to tradition, French children filled their shoes with carrots and treats for Père Noël’s donkey, Gui (French for mistletoe), and left them by the fireplace before they went to bed on Christmas Eve. Père Noël left small presents for good children.
A visit by Père Noël in early Louisiana varied a bit from that tradition, but he was still quite different from modern Santa Claus. In New Orleans and along the Mississippi River, the original Christmas celebrations included attending midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and while everyone was at Mass, Père Noël paid a visit and filled the stockings of the children with a trinket and some fruit.
Papa Noël became more Santa-like after 1819, when the familiar fellow who arrives in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer was created by author Washington Irving. “He couldn’t figure out a way for St. Nicholas to travel around the world in one night, so he came up with this idea of him flying through the trees,” according to notes from state archivist Florent Hardy. Clement Moore gave the reindeer their names— Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen — in his poem “The Night Before Christmas.”
That version took a comical twist after Howard Jacobs created the “Cajun Night Before Christmas” in 1992, and had Papa Noël arrive in a pirogue pulled by eight alligators — Tiboy, Suzette, Rene, Ninette. Pierre, Alcee, Celeste, and Gaston.
Families of German descent living in Roberts Cove in Acadia Parish still celebrate St. Nicholas Day, gathering at homes to await Kris Kringle and his sidekick, Black Peter, who was feared because he supposedly put bad children in his sack. St. Nicolas was a 4th century bishop who became known for his generosity, even though most of his gift-giving was done without fanfare.
He is said to have saved his province from starvation during a famine by persuading captains of grain ships to give him part of their cargo. They were reluctant, because their grain had been carefully measured, but eventually gave in, and were astonished to find that the part of their cargo that had been given away had somehow been restored when they unloaded their ships.
I was particularly intrigued by Hardy’s note that for some Cajuns the gift-giving figure was not Santa Claus or even Père Noël, but was a woman called La Christianne. I’d never heard of her and called him up. He said he got the story from an article by Hal Ledet in the Advocate in 1980 and sent me a copy of it.
That’s all it says: “Among the Cajuns, Santa Claus is always a female.” The headline of the article reads: “To Cajuns, Santa is La Christienne [sic].” Ledet made the comment in a story about a family of trappers who spent the season way down the bayou in Lafourche Parish and whose children worried that she wouldn’t be able to find them.
I asked some of my friends who are more or less steeped in Cajun culture about her, and one of them had a vague recollection of hearing something about La Christianne, but no specifics.
I wonder if it had a bayou connection, and prairie-reared folk might have had a different custom. I know that some trapper families waited until February 15 to celebrate “Trapper’s Christmas,” because daddy was busy in the marsh on the regular Christmas, and by February 15, when most of his pelts had been sold, he had a little money in his pocket to help out La Christianne, or whoever might have visited.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.