A Magellanic Christmas: Celebrating Around the World

In the complex and varied story of the first circumnavigation of the world, religious life has received less attention than other aspects of daily routine. However, religious rites were very important for early modern sailors and seafarers. During the voyage undertaken by Ferdinand Magellan and ended by Juan Sebastián Elcano, which lasted three years, some important holy recurrences emerge from the sources. For example, the celebration of Easter 1520 in the Bay of San Julián, prior to the infamous mutiny. The celebrations of Christmas, however, go largely unnoticed, perhaps because of the exceptional circumstances in which they took place.

Christmas 1519, the first after departure, for example, was celebrated in the Land of Verzin (Terra del Verzin, today’s Brazil), where Magellan’s ships arrived on December 13th. Antonio Pigafetta informs us that the fleet left thirteen days later, for the feast of St. Stephen, on December 26th. In his narrative, Pigafetta makes no mention of Christmas celebrations. His attention was probably focused on the local populations, and their traditions. The tropical climate, so different from the cold European winters, did not contribute to the Christmas spirit, but surely the priests aboard the ships celebrated the holiday for all the crews, and it was no coincidence that the departure took place after December 25th.

The second Christmas, in 1520, was celebrated under tragic circumstances. In the month of December, Magellan's ships were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, facing death from starvation and scurvy. Also in this case Pigafetta does not mention celebrations or masses on board, but it is very plausible that religious rites were celebrated as the only comfort for the sailors in their dire hours. The third Christmas experienced in 1521 by the sailors, now few in number after the death of their captain and of many companions, was probably the loneliest and most uncertain. On December 21st, 1521, in fact, the two remaining ships, the Victoria and the Trinidad, had to separate. The Victoria left alone to return to Spain via the Indian Ocean, the Trinidad had remained in the Moluccas to repair damage, waiting to resume the route to the Pacific. By this time many of the religious who had left in 1519 had died, and the weary sailors probably remembered the birth of Jesus in their hearts alone.

At this point we can wonder why Christmas is never mentioned by Pigafetta, who instead mentions Easter and several times the apparitions of the holy bodies, as proof of the importance of the religious dimension in oceanic navigation. Christmas was considered less important than Easter, but this silence was probably due to the exceptional occasions overshadowing the celebratory aspect of Christmas in the eyes of the chronicler of Vicenza. The fact remains that for centuries religion remained an central aspect of life on board, a scansion of time, a tool for rationalizing the unknown, a way of making sense of the new. [David Salomoni]