The Other Women Who Built Christmas
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When people talk about the “origins of Christmas,” they usually point to a mash-up of men: emperors, popes, kings, saints, and bearded mythic figures who allegedly decided how the holiday should look.
But Christmas — like most cultural traditions — didn’t survive because of decrees.
It survived because women carried it.
They sang it.
They told the stories.
They baked the rituals into family life.
They kept the light going when the official narratives shifted, collapsed, or outright lied.
Here are some of the other women and feminine figures responsible for the Christmas traditions we still practice — even if their names didn’t make the greeting cards.
Saint Lucia: The Girl Who Brought the Light
In Scandinavia, Christmas doesn’t start with Santa.
It starts with a girl in a crown of candles.
Saint Lucia (or Saint Lucy) is celebrated on December 13th, during the darkest part of the year. Young girls dress in white, wear candle crowns, and process through homes and churches bringing light, food, and song.
This tradition predates Christianity’s dominance in the region and merges Christian sainthood with older pagan solstice imagery — a female embodiment of light returning.
Lucia wasn’t about gifts or obedience.
She was about endurance.
About illumination.
About women physically carrying the light when the world went dark.
Which feels… extremely on brand.
Christina Rossetti: The Woman Who Wrote Christmas Sad
If you’ve ever heard “In the Bleak Midwinter” and felt suddenly reflective, slightly haunted, and emotionally unwell — congratulations, you’ve met Christina Rossetti.
Rossetti was a Victorian poet who redefined Christmas music by stripping away triumphalism and leaning into stillness, humility, and quiet devotion. Her lyrics focus on cold landscapes, emotional intimacy, and the idea that love — not spectacle — is the real offering.
While men were writing booming carols about kings and glory, Rossetti asked:
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
She gave Christmas its introspective soul — the part of the season that feels tender, fragile, and deeply human.
Queen Victoria (Yes, Really): The Woman Who Made Christmas Domestic
While Prince Albert gets credit for popularizing the Christmas tree in Britain, it was Queen Victoria who normalized Christmas as a family-centered, emotionally expressive holiday.
Her journals, letters, and public image emphasized:
family gatherings
children at the center of celebration
sentimental gift-giving
domestic warmth
This mattered because when Victoria did something, the entire British Empire copied it.
Christmas shifted from a rowdy public festival into a home-based ritual — one that women were expected to manage, curate, and emotionally sustain.
That shift gave us the Christmas we recognize today… and also saddled women with about 90% of the labor.
A mixed legacy, but a powerful one.
La Befana: Italy’s Christmas Witch
Before Santa ruled the skies, Italy had La Befana — an old woman who flies on a broom delivering gifts to children on Epiphany Eve.
She’s part witch, part grandmother, part pre-Christian earth spirit. She rewards good behavior, punishes bad, and doesn’t give a single damn about being cute.
La Befana represents an older feminine archetype:
the wise woman, the crone, the keeper of moral balance.
She reminds us that Christmas once had teeth — and that women weren’t just helpers in the myth, they were the myth.
Frau Holle & the Winter Mothers
Across Germanic and Alpine folklore, winter was ruled not by a jolly man, but by women.
Figures like Frau Holle and Perchta oversaw the cold season, spinning, snowfall, domestic order, and moral reckoning. These stories tied winter rituals to women’s labor: spinning wool, tending homes, caring for children, and preparing for survival.
These weren’t passive figures.
They judged.
They rewarded.
They punished.
Long before Santa’s list, winter goddesses were keeping score.
The Real Through-Line
What all of these women share — saints, poets, queens, witches, and folkloric figures — is this:
They shaped Christmas not through authority, but through practice.
Through songs sung again and again.
Through stories told to children.
Through rituals repeated in kitchens and living rooms.
Through women insisting that meaning matters — even when power says it doesn’t.
Christmas survived because women kept it alive.
So when someone tells you Christmas is “traditional,” remember:
Tradition is just women’s work done so well everyone forgot who did it.
✨ For more stories like this, listen to our episode “The Women Who Built Christmas (Whether You Know Them or Not)” on Bitchstory.
Follow us at @bitchstory.pod for weekly history, feminism, and festive rage.
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