Santa Claus is coming to town!
You better watch out. You better not cry. Better not pout. I'm telling you why.
Will we reach the point this Christmas when a certain red-suited, white-bearded, and well-padded individual is finally exposed for the fraud that he is?
I refer of course to Santa Claus - and his countless minions - now settling into “grottoes” and stores across the globe.
Perhaps the tipping point will be the news that, in Ireland in 2021, anyone taking their child to see Santa must produce a vaccination certificate before being allowed in. Or will people be alerted by the new Tesco Christmas ad showing a Santa-clone displaying a Covid-19 “passport” on his phone?
However, given the apathy with which the public are responding to the worldwide shakedown now stripping them of their financial independence and civil rights, I am not optimistic. That said, what follows below may persuade a few readers to think again about promoting the seasonal huckster to any young child in their vicinity.
Writers and commentators usually trace the origins of Santa Claus back to an early Christian saint named Nicholas of Myra (a town in modern-day Turkey). However, the connections between Nicholas, Christmas, and Santa are pretty weak. They revolve mainly around stories of the saint’s generosity towards children and his purported death in December 343 AD. Santa Claus, as we know him today, is a much more recent phenomenon.
The character was invented in the early 19th century by three members of New York’s elite. They were John Pintard (1759-1844), Washington Irving (1783-1859), and Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863). These men popularised a kind of Saint Nicholas/Santa Claus hybrid, most notably in Irving’s satirical novel, A history of New York (published under the pseudonym, Diedrich Knickerbocker), and Moore’s poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (or “The Night before Christmas”). Both these works concocted a new “tradition” of St. Nicholas as a supernatural benefactor who, according to Irving:
Came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same waggon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children.1
In his depiction of St. Nicholas, Irving not only conjured up many of our present-day customs, such as Christmas stockings and gift-giving, he also set the tone for subsequent portrayals of his “fairy godfather” as a political and commercial mercenary. So, in Irving’s novel, Nicholas is presented retrospectively as having been the protector, or patron saint, of New York’s Dutch colony in their conflict against the British.2
Robert Weir (1803-1889) was another New Yorker from the top tier of society. His painting of the revamped St. Nicholas was influenced by the descriptions provided by Pintard, Irving, and Moore. All four men probably knew each other through their membership of the New-York Historical Society. The sharp-eyed observer will note the carefully-chosen symbols and gestures in Weir’s painting.3
It was not until a later New York artist named Thomas Nast (1840-1902) depicted him in a series of magazine illustrations that the familiar image of Santa Claus as full-bearded and tubby was created. Nast’s very first drawing was published in Harper’s Weekly magazine in January 1863, and he continued the precedent set by Irving in aligning his subject with a political cause.
Drawn during the height of the Civil War, the illustration presented Santa Claus dressed in an outfit covered with stars and stripes borrowed from the American flag. From the bag on his shoulder, he busily distributes Christmas gifts to the Union soldiers at an isolated military camp.4
Given such a partisan rendering it is little wonder that President Abraham Lincoln hailed Nast as “our best recruiting sergeant”.5
As consumerism gathered pace throughout the late-19th and early-20th centuries, business interests were quick to exploit the commercial opportunities offered by Santa Claus and Christmas. Gift-giving was becoming a significant driver of retail profitability, and demand for seasonal products increased hugely as the year-end approached. But who would ensure there were enough goods for shoppers to buy in the run-up to Christmas?
On Christmas Eve 1909 the answer appeared in a newspaper report highlighting the darker side of the Santa industry.
It is in the box factories, the “card” factories, in the factories that turn out the stores of beautiful things for Santa Claus’s Budget that the masses of the child workers throng for the Xmas rush.6
While sweatshops today tend to be located in the poorer parts of the Third World, this article focused on the exploitation of children in American cities, such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. During the busy Christmas period, according to the writer, employees of one New York factory had to work from 7:30am to 9:00pm, seven days a week, making boxes to hold the sweetmeats, gewgaws, and other seasonal paraphernalia being sold in department stores and shops. The report claimed that, contrary to the labour laws of the time, most child workers were “well under 14”. They were also mainly young girls, because “little girls…work for nothing, they object to nothing”. The writer went on to state that girls were preferred over boys because they were “timid, so they do not cry out against hard conditions, nor complain when their fingers are caught and crushed in the machines”.
Images of Santa Claus could be used by vested interests to promote or sell virtually anything. For much of the 20th century Santa’s commercial potential was exploited by Coca-Cola, a manufacturer of a sweet, syrupy soft drink. Through a plethora of posters and magazine ads he was often shown glugging from a bottle of Coke while distributing presents in American homes. So ubiquitous and long-lasting was the company’s use of the Christmas icon in their ads that many people believe that Santa Claus was invented by Coca-Cola.7
Throughout Santa Claus’ history he has been seen by adults as a fictional character whom children were encouraged to accept, until eventually they would grow out of it. However, in Ireland at any rate, the line between fantasy and reality is fading fast.
In recent years, during the lead-up to Christmas, Irish broadcast and print media have been covering the “activities” of the chubby one as if he were a real person. A typical example is a “special report” broadcast by RTE television in its news bulletin of Christmas Eve 2013.8
The report focused on the logistical challenges Santa would have to face in travelling across the planet in a single night. The science behind this feat was explained by professors from the country’s top universities, UCD and TCD. The report also covered the vital role played by Dublin’s air traffic controllers in guiding Santa through the Irish leg of his journey. Finally Evelyn Cusack of the Meteorological Service reminded viewers that, because of Ireland’s proximity to the North Pole, they should have an early night because “we could be one of his first stops”.
Sadly the propensity of major news organs to engage in this kind of nonsense has been exacerbated during the current crisis.
In Christmas 2020 The Irish Times reported that Callum Thornhill, a six-year-old boy from Cork, had written to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer asking “if they could send Covid vaccines to Santa Claus and his elves”.9 Callum received a reply from Pfizer’s Irish division assuring him that Santa, his wife, and the elves “were safe and well”. News of the boy’s letter eventually made its way to Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla. He was sufficiently moved by the youngster’s plea to post a message on LinkedIn declaring that “we are doing everything we can to help bring hope to people around the world”. Bourla concluded his message by reassuring Callum that Pfizer would “take care of Santa and his elves too”.10
But there is a serious side to what might otherwise seem like ill-judged whimsy on the part of The Irish Times. According to a more recent report in that newspaper, sales of its Covid-19 vaccine are expected to bring in revenues of $33.5bn to Pfizer’s coffers by the end of 2021. The article went on to state that
Pfizer has more than doubled the 2021 sales forecast for its Covid-19 vaccine since February and predicted another bumper year in 2022 as it expands global distribution and begins shipping jabs for boosters and children.11
In other words the financial bonanza is set to continue if Pfizer can get its vaccine into the arms of millions of children around the world, children just like Callum Thornhill.
During the 19th century Santa Claus was transformed from an obscure Christian saint into an icon of modern capitalism. By invoking the fictional fat man during the Christmas period, Albert Bourla is following in the footsteps of earlier commercial interests for whom Santa Claus is the ultimate sales rep. Santa represents what might be termed the “acceptable face of capitalism”. That is, he promotes “kindness” and “altruism” while never mentioning the greed and acquisitiveness that lie at the heart of our materialist society.
As long as we support the brand of contrived benevolence that Santa Claus promotes, each new generation of children will be drawn into the consumerist ideology that now defines our world. But it is not just the endless consumption of useless stuff at Christmas that should concern us all.
Following the advent of the world-wide “pandemic”, those eager to push us into the “new normal” have already shown their determination to target children using the emotional appeal and cuddly persona of Santa Claus.
Don’t let them succeed.
Diedrich Knickerbocker, A history of New York: From the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty; being the only authentic history of the times that ever hath been published (London 1839), p. 83.
Jonathan A. Cook , ‘"Prodigious Poop": Comic Context and Psychological Subtext in Irving's Knickerbocker History’, in Nineteenth-Century Literature, 49/4, Mar. 1995), p. 486, fn. 7.
Lauretta Dimmick, ‘Robert Weir's Saint Nicholas: A Knickerbocker Icon’, in The Art Bulletin, 66/3 (Sep., 1984), pp. 465-483.
David Shirley, Thomas Nast: Cartoonist and illustrator (New York, 1998), p. 90.
Ibid., p. 42.
Evening Herald, 24 Dec. 1909.
Bruce David Forbes, Christmas: A Candid History (Berkeley, CA. 2007), p. 93.
RTÉ - IRELAND’S NATIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA , ‘Santa Claus is coming to town | RTÉ News Christmas 2013’, YouTube, 24 Dec. 2013.
Irish Times, 24 Dec. 2020.
Albert Bourla, Dec. 2020, ‘Letters like these – from children brimming with compassion and hope – remind us of why the work we do every day is so important.’, [Post]. LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/albert-bourla_letters-like-these-from-children-brimming-activity-6747178435912720384-X5XM], 16 Nov. 2021.
Irish Times, 2 Nov. 2021.