Santa Claus

by Gerry Bowler

  Some Santa Claus advertising campaigns are so ill conceived that they soon disappear from the air. In 2000, the famed ad firm of Young & Rubicam, working on behalf of Sony Electronics, dreamed up a series of television spots featuring cruelty to the gift-bringer. In the first episode, produced in the film-noir style of the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning movie Fargo, low-lifes kidnap Santa and stuff him into the trunk of their car. Their message: “We have Santa. Shop at Sonystyle.com or there will be no X-mas.” In subsequent episodes he is blindfolded, robbed, pummelled, and struck with golf balls before being released in a parking lot, where he finds his car booted and ticketed. Fearful that viewers might not appreciate the campaign’s “edginess and irreverence,” Sony pulled the plug.

  Such delicacy of taste may not last much longer in the world of advertising. As the Internet becomes an ever-more important part of commerce, it seems likely the old morality will become increasingly eroded and new lows of “edginess and irreverence” will be probed. Consider two campaigns that appeared on the Web in 2004, neither of which would get past the censorious forces that guard the television airwaves. Virgin Mobile’s “Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah” presents images guaranteed to offend members of every faith community – a black Muslim appears with a Jewish dreidel, the Jewish menorah is lodged in the antlers of Rudolph, who announces that she (yes, she*) is a Scientologist, and Santa Claus is portrayed as a multi-armed Hindu god seated on a lotus, playing the sitar and holding a corncob, a Christmas tree, and a dreidel. These characters, plus a sexually ambiguous elf, sing a merry little tune that neatly captures Virgin Mobile’s understanding of the spiritual aspect of the human condition: “Which religion is the right one / Is anybody’s guess. / What matters most is camera phones / For $20 less.”

  Conceding nothing in the bad taste sweepstakes is a series of Web spots produced for the Best Buy retail chain starring Kevin Kringle, Santa’s younger brother. Unlike his older sibling, Kevin has no talent for choosing the right gift (or any other discernible virtue either, if we are to judge by these ads). In the first interactive spot, the viewer, by clicking on parts of Kevin’s image, can keep him and his flying reindeer aloft (click the right location and you can make the reindeer fart). Inevitably the pair will plunge to the ground, prompting the message “Who wants jerky?” In the other spots, we can view a history of Kevin’s “krap gifts” or listen to an almost-nude old man urge him to buy a back shaver. The future of Santa Claus in this industry looks bleak.

  Did all of this association with the commercial world change Santa’s character? Despite his tens of thousands of appearances, few advertisements have actually added to the legend. Coca-Cola’s Santa Claus ads are often credited with changing Santa’s appearance, but we now know that that is not so. One of those that did succeed was a 1910 advertisement for Ivory Soap that spawned a short-lived custom. In this commercial, a boy in a nightshirt, sitting before the fireplace and stockings on Christmas Eve, notes: “Santa Claus will get very dirty coming down the chimney. I’ll leave a bowl of water, a couple of towels and a cake of Ivory Soap in front of the fireplace – so he can wash up.” For a time parents played along with this fancy; they would dirty a towel and water as if a soot-encrusted gift-bringer had availed himself of these conveniences and left them to be discovered the next morning by amazed children. Nowadays parents must assume that energy-efficient modern furnaces have rendered chimneys soot-free, for few, if any, follow this Edwardian fad in the twenty-first century.

  The one Christmas advertising campaign that did alter lastingly our perception of life at the North Pole was the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In 1939, Chicago’s Montgomery Ward department store commissioned its advertising editor, Robert Lewis May, to create a Christmas-themed flyer as a promotional giveaway. May, who had had a rough childhood, conceived the notion of a poem about a friendless young reindeer with a luminous nose* who saves Christmas, while Denver Gillen created the artwork for the booklet based on sketches he had made at the city zoo. There was some thought of calling the reindeer Rollo, or even Reginald, but May’s four-year-old daughter is said to have favoured Rudolph, and so it was. Montgomery Ward gave the go-ahead to the project and the public proved equally enchanted, with millions of the poetic flyers being snapped up during that first winter of distribution. After the war, the story of Rudolph became a veritable Christmas phenomenon, particularly after Johnny Marks put an abbreviated version of the tale to music and convinced cowboy star Gene Autry to record it in 1949. In an act of corporate generosity, Montgomery Ward gave May the rights to exploit his creation commercially and the writer made enough money from the book and merchandising deals that ensued to put his six children through college.

  Most people imagine that they know May’s work by heart, but few actually do. What has stuck in the collective consciousness are the lyrics to Marks’s song, whose first verse is “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose.” On the other hand, May’s much-longer poem begins “’Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills / The reindeer were playing … enjoying the spills.” May followed up his first Rudolph book with another much less-inspired Christmas tale, Rudolph’s Second Christmas. Written in 1947, this sequel lay in a drawer and was unpublished until 1991, when it was discovered by the author’s daughter. Like the original, it concerns animals who don’t quite fit in: a dog that meows, a cat that barks, a canary that could talk but not sing, a parrot that could sing but not talk, a slow-moving rabbit, and a speedy turtle. Again Rudolph saves the day and Santa Claus grants him his wish to guide the sleigh every Christmas. A final instalment in the series about the nasally advantaged reindeer is Rudolph Shines Again, where our hero’s nose loses its lustre and he is plunged into depression. When he ignores his own troubles and becomes involved in a search-and-rescue effort for two lost bunnies, his glow, and his usefulness to Santa, returns. Mays’s addition of a ninth reindeer is perhaps the only contribution to Santa Claus lore that the twentieth century produced. Santa’s story, despite all the flummery that the commercial world threw at it, remained largely impervious to change.

  It is fitting that a department store in Chicago had a significant impact on the life of Santa Claus. In a 1920 interview with a writer from Life magazine, Santa Claus announced that his operations had been taken over by the American department store. “In the old days,” said Santa, “children made my acquaintance in the churches and Sunday schools. They used to have Christmas trees there. And there were Christmas trees in the Home. In some backward communities, no doubt, children are still left to the guidance of the church and the Home. But in the more progressive centers the Department Store has taken complete charge of Christmas.” Whereas the American home was a shifting, changeable thing, the department store was permanent: “it is the real temple of Americans.… It is the Pantheon of your gods, the core of your being, the center of your civilization … the Department Store is, in fact, America.” Santa now had a good job in the toy department and he felt secure in this employment. Many Americans would make their first personal acquaintance with Santa in department stores.

  Merchants’ airy claims to be Santa’s agents were not easily substantiated, but the legend was first made flesh (or, perhaps, cardboard) in 1841 when J.W. Parkinson of Philadelphia produced in his department store “the real personage in the very act of descending a chimney.” Historians are uncertain whether this was a genuine impersonator or an effigy, but several Pennsylvania stores throughout the 1840s employed living specimens of the gift-bringer they called Kriss Kringle. One of these in 1845, Philadelphia’s Ladies’ Favorite Store, advertised the presence of Kriss Kringle ensconced in his own saloon for “the Gratification of the Little Ones.” This initial outbreak of the department-store Santa Claus phenomenon does not appear to have lasted very long. The next example we hear of is in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where Charles A. Sampson announced in 1869 that “Santa Claus and Sampson’s have this day entered into a copartnership in order to more fully m
eet the demands of parents as well as their children during the coming holiday season.… Parties residing in the city can bring their children’s socks to our Establishment Thursday or Friday the 23rd and 24th inst., and OLD SANTA will carefully fill them with the choicest Confectionery, Nuts, Fruits, Toys, etc.” Sampson’s arrangement with Santa seems to have been a successful one, as he expanded its operations over the next few years, going so far as to guarantee in 1872 that all goods purchased in his shop would be delivered by Saint Nick himself on Christmas Eve. The sainted gift-bringer, announced Sampson, would also be scouting his route on the evening of December 22, “probably about nine o’clock, and will drive through the principal streets for a short time to take a view of the chimneys in houses of those who do not wish him to call at the door.”

  In 1890, the Boston Store of Brockton, Massachusetts, hired James Edgar, a Santa who came supplied with his own rotund figure and white beard. Before too long, lines of children waiting to visit Santa had formed, and other stores soon copied the idea. By 1900, department-store Santa Clauses were common – lodged in grottoes, cottages, and workshops or on thrones, they presided over a never-ending stream of children. Since then numerous schools have opened up to train department-store Santas, and they have formed their own professional associations. In the 1990s, it was estimated that in the United States, 60 per cent of children ages one to ten will visit a department-store or mall Santa Claus – 23 million per year or 12,031 per mall. Approximately 7,500 Santas were employed in this industry part-time, leading to an average wait of fifteen minutes to see Santa. (In 1996, many malls were bringing in Santas earlier in November to cut down on this time.)

  The ideal Santa for department-store grottoes or workshops is described as middle-aged, plump, red-faced, and possessing his own beard with an ability to charm children and pass a police background check. Such candidates are scarce and becoming more so, according to those responsible for recruiting them. Modern healthy lifestyles have apparently reduced the number of suitably obese men, and head-hunting firms are paid handsomely, and advertise far afield, to produce the proper candidates.

  Female Santa Clauses do exist, but they are rare. In Chicago, the wartime shortage of suitable men led to the employment of women Santas, but store owners in Poughkeepsie, New York, resisted this. They vowed that if they were to bring Santa Claus into their stores, it would only be in male form. In 1995, a woman was hired to play the role of Santa for a Morganfield, Kentucky, Wal-Mart store, but children and parents found it hard to suspend their disbelief and the company reassigned her to her regular job as a customer-service employee. She soon quit that post, claiming ridicule from her co-workers, and filed a complaint with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, demanding $67,000 for lost wages, pain, and suffering. The commission ruled against her, saying that she had been given a fair chance and the store was correct in worrying about her impact on sales. In New York, Apryl Rivera has been trying for years, without success, to be taken on by a department store as “Ms. Santa Claus,” the gift-bringer’s liberated daughter. She feels that such a character would be more appealing than a woman dressed in a beard, but she has not been able to convince retailers of the brilliance of her idea. In the meantime, she is making far more money as “Ms. Santa” performing magic tricks. Should current difficulties in hiring male Santas continue, Mrs. or Ms. Clauses may become more common.

  Why should there be a shortage of imitation Santas for malls and department stores? Many veteran Santas complain of a new miasma of suspicion surrounding anyone dealing professionally with small children. Shopping centres fearful of litigation have imposed new rules or, in some cases, even forbidden Santas to hold children on their laps, preferring that they merely extend a handshake to the children who are brought to stand by them. Other stores have discouraged a jolly attitude, lest it be interpreted in an inappropriate fashion, and have insisted their Saint Nicks be more businesslike in their approach to kids. Santas are told to keep both hands visible at all times, wear white gloves to heighten that visibility, and have to undergo criminal background checks and in some cases even drug testing. In the United States, they have become targets of bomb threats and irate parents and have asked for police protection; in tropical countries they have had to go on strike to protest the suits they are forced to wear.

  Many of those who continue in this seasonal occupation say they do so largely because of the joy they can bring children and even some adults still looking for a little magic. One of them changed his middle name to Santa so that when a child asks if he is “really Santa,” he can truthfully say yes. Children bring Santas lists of what they would like, instructions on how to find their house, warnings about the family dog, and little gifts. Others are less sanguine about the value of this tradition to children. One social scientist observed 330 children as they approached Santa Claus in three New York stores and reported that only 1 per cent of them smiled or showed signs of happiness. None of the children was rated as “exhilarated” or “saddened,” 82 per cent were “indifferent,” 16 per cent were “hesitant,” and 1 per cent were “terrified.” (Perhaps, but look some time at the faces of the parents of a little child visiting Santa Claus.)

  It is common in North America for department-store Santa Clauses to be escorted to their places of honour on the first day of the shopping season by a parade. The earliest of these parades, dating to 1905, was held in Toronto for the Eaton’s store; the first in the United States was probably put on by Goldsmith’s Department Store in Memphis in 1913. Starting in 1916, Wanamaker’s of Philadelphia staged a Christmas parade every day in December at 10:30 a.m. when a brass band and a stream of storybook characters such as Jack the Giant Killer led Santa Claus on a palanquin carried by four Eskimos to his Royal Red Theater in the store’s Santa Town. Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York, which is famous for its giant balloons of cartoon characters, has been since 1925 the start of the Christmas shopping season in that city. Hollywood’s Christmas Parade dates from 1928 when merchants rented two live reindeer to pull a cart carrying Santa Claus and a movie starlet. Since that modest beginning, Hollywood Boulevard is renamed Santa Claus Lane every December and is the route for a parade notable for the number of film stars, sports heroes, politicians, and other luminaries who take part. In 1946, the singing cowboy Gene Autry rode his horse, Champion, in the parade and the experience led him to write the Christmas favourite “Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane).” A social historian has complained that Santa Claus parades show how the department stores have taken over the street festivals, calling them “spectacles that were eventually staged more for the consumption of television audiences than for the folks on the avenues,” but they continue to be regarded as an essential part of Christmas for most Americans.

  In 1948, Boston City Council debated a motion to limit the number of imitation Santa Clauses in the city to one only – and that lone Santa to be stationed on Boston Common. The impulse behind it is understandable, but the motion did not succeed and the world is still deluged with a flood of commercial Santas in every possible location. Nevertheless, the real Santa Claus has survived and lives to serve society in other ways.

  * See Molly Rockwell, ed., Norman Rockwell’s Christmas Book (New York: 1977); Karal Ann Marling says that Leyendecker’s Santa Claus was “as important to defining St. Nick’s twentieth-century appearance as Thomas Nast’s were to fixing his nineteenth-century attributes.” Merry Christmas!: Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday (Cambridge MA: 2000), p. 37.

  * So Santa Claus is “everybody”? Perhaps, but the illustration accompanying this insurance ad is even more mystifying: the Santa Claus depicted there is someone rather extraordinary: he has an odd number of legs. Count the number of left and right footprints in the snow leading to the chimney and note too that while there are tracks leading into the chimney, there are none exiting it. Presumably, Santa is still in the house.

  * Rudolph is not the only one of Santa’s reindeer with gender
identity problems. Though his team of Dasher and Dancer, et al., may have aggressive, male-sounding names (well, maybe not Prancer; or Vixen, come to that), male reindeer shed their antlers around Christmastime so the animals pulling the sleigh are likely females or castrati. Roger Highfield, The Physics of Christmas (Boston: 1998), pp. 25–27.

  * Norwegian scientists have stated that Rudolph’s nasal discolouration is probably the result of a parasitic infection of his respiratory system. Highfield, The Physics of Christmas, p. 24.

  V

  Santa the Warrior

  Santa Aids the War Effort: This 1942 poster encourages Americans to buy bonds. The artist has shifted Santa from one who encourages consumption to one who encourages saving. (photo credit 5.1)

  The spirit of war is so at odds with the spirit of Christmas that one might think the two had little commerce, but ever since the pagan Vikings caught King Alfred letting down his guard on Christmas Day, the one has intruded upon the other. Numerous attempts were made during the Middle Ages to outlaw fighting on Christmas. The Church tried to enforce this prohibition by threatening violators with excommunication, and for hundreds of years Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, and Estonians publicly proclaimed a Christmas peace. This produced moments of gallantry, and on Christmas Day 1418, the invading Henry v ordered that food be distributed to the inhabitants of Rouen, which he was besieging. But such generosity was unusual, as Pope Gregory VII discovered when he was forced to abandon Rome to the army of the German emperor on December 25, 1078.