Santa Claus
It's a terrible time to be
Santa Claus. Hollywood has Father Christmas dying ( The Santa Clause ),
killing ( Silent Night, Deadly Night ), and being kidnapped ( The
Nightmare Before Christmas ). On television, this season's two most visible
Santa ads portray him as an old lech (Victoria's Secret) and a clumsy oaf (Home
Depot). American parents, who suspect all strangers, see a pedophile lurking
under that bushy white beard. Mall Santas now must keep their hands visible and
touch kids only in "safe" zones. At least one mall has banned Santa from
touching children at all: Tots did get to hand Santa their wish lists--but
through a mail slot. It doesn't help Kris Kringle's cause that a 71-year-old
mall Santa Claus in Washington state recently pleaded guilty to raping and
molesting four children between the ages of 1 and 7. The mall Santa's real name
is--no joke--Ronald McDonald.
Animal-rights groups want to get rid of Santa's reindeer: Pressure from People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals forced the National Park Service to remove
reindeer from their annual Mall Christmas pageant. Fundamentalist Christians
want to get rid of Santa himself: He overshadows Jesus and profanes a sacred
holiday. In Holland, one of St. Nick's favorite countries, he's been assaulted
by teen-agers on the street and denounced by feminists. In Japan, a department
store recently stumbled into the yuletide spirit by displaying Santa
Claus--nailed to a crucifix. Why, mall Santas can't even say "ho ho ho"
anymore: It frightens youngsters. Santa, in short, is in trouble. Any day you
can expect to hear that fringe-right conspiracists have implicated him in the
New World Order. "Look, he sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when
you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good. And he's got a list with
the name of every child in the world! Tell me that's not suspicious ." Santa
needs a makeover.
It wouldn't be his first one. Santa Claus is one of
America's grandest fabrications. He is, as Stephen Nissenbaum puts it in his
excellent The Battle for Christmas , an "invented tradition." In
America's early years, Christmas was a rowdy affair: Manhattan's poor and
working-class folk ran wild through the streets and invaded the homes of the
wealthy. So in the early 19 th century, a group of rich New Yorkers
took it upon themselves to domesticate Christmas. Their chief accomplishment:
Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas," the 1822 poem that introduced
Americans to Santa Claus (of course you know it: " 'Twas the night before
Christmas ...").
Moore took
an arcane European tradition and neatly transformed it into an American one.
St. Nicholas was a real saint, a 4 th -century bishop from Asia Minor
famed for his generosity. The Dutch celebrated St. Nicholas on Dec. 6. On that
day, he visited homes and left gifts for children by the fireplace. The Dutch
St. Nicholas was an ambivalent figure: He was lean and solemn, and he gave bad
children birch rods. Moore moved St. Nick's visits to Christmas Eve; equipped
him with a beer belly, a sleigh, and eight reindeer; and dropped Sinter Klaas'
darker side. Moore's poem, Nissenbaum writes, was intended to help turn
Christmas from a public to a private holiday, to make it an event that rich
and poor families would celebrate around their fireplaces.
And it worked. By the mid-19 th
century, Santa Claus and the domestic Christmas were embedded in the American
psyche. Over the decades, the Santa myth grew by accretion, adding layer after
layer of sweet detail. In the mid-19 th century, Thomas Nast's
drawings defined Santa as fat, jolly, bearded, and red-suited. At the same
time, Santa's home moved from Europe to the North Pole. Mrs. Claus appeared in
1899. In 1939, a copywriter for Montgomery Ward added Rudolph to the reindeer
pack. The store distributed 2.4 million copies of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer" that year, and another 3.5 million when it reissued the story seven
years later. (Santa, of course, was a commercial figure from the beginning.
Store owners appropriated his picture for ads and posters.)
Throughout the 19 th century and for most of this century, Santa was
both beloved and respected. America repelled every effort to knock him off the
pantheon. In 1897, for example, a girl named Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter
to the New York Sun : Her friends had told her that Santa Claus didn't
exist. The Sun replied with one of the most famous editorials in
American history: "Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been
affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. ... Yes, Virginia, there is a
Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist."
(This year marks the centennial of "Yes, Virginia," and the editorial has been
much reprinted.) In the '20s and '30s, U.S. judges even issued court rulings
affirming Santa Claus' existence.
But we have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical
age. Or perhaps it's the irony of an ironical age. Santa hasn't disappeared,
but he's been made ridiculous. The assault by fundamentalists, Hollywood, and
paranoid parents has taken its toll. His public image has degraded. Our Santa
is unappetizing, a mall pedophile or a fat buffoon.
There should and can be
another kind of Santa for the '90s. In an age that valorizes family and
capitalism, Santa should be recognized as a champion of both. He has been
married to the same woman for 98 years. He operates a fabulously successful toy
factory. It has a package delivery system that makes Federal Express look like
the Pony Express. Long before the Americans with Disabilities Act, Santa
staffed his factory with undersized elves.
Santa is a role model for our
ambitious children, the perfect benevolent tycoon. Santa works all year round,
then gives away everything he made. This should be the Santa for our time: a
Soros of the North Pole, Santa the philanthropist.
