Say No To Christmas - [Articles]

Santa Claus - The Truth

Before I begin to tell you why you shouldn't buy into the crazy phenomenon of Santa Claus, first we have to establish one thing. Santa Claus is not a fake. He is an overblown, corporate advertisement that has been instilled into the hearts of children everywhere, but he is, or more correctly 'was', real. If you're rolling your eyes and thinking that I'm trying to convince you that the fat, red guy in the cheap suit can actually manage to fly around and visit all of the children in one night, then please don't stop reading here. I'll start from the beginning.

During the third century, in a small village in Turkey, a boy was born. His name was Nicholas, and he grew to be a Bishop, whole-heartedly embracing the giving side of the job. Little is known about the actual conditions and stories of his life, but one tale has managed to emerge. It is a story about a man with three daughters, who was so poor that he believed his only option was to prostitute his three girls. During the night, Nicholas crept to the man's house, and delivered three sacks of gifts, enough to be thought of as a dowry for each girl, and encourage money and marriage to follow. This kind of action ensured that after his death, Bishop Nicholas became a saint. The village he had graced was near the sea, a bustling port filled with sailors, and thus Saint Nicholas became the patron of seamen. His story travelled with these sailors all over the world and soon Christians everywhere had heard the story of the Saint Nicholas of Turkey, the secret night-time gift-giver.

As his name spread around the world and was translated into many different languages, it gradually became known as Santa Claus, a butchered version of Saint Nicholas, and the one that we use today. Pictures of Saint Nicholas were few and far between, and almost certainly black and white. They often depicted the Saint creeping through the living rooms of unknowing citizens and delivering them gifts. As time crept on to the latest century, and publications began to use colour pages, Saint Nicholas needed a splash of colour himself. One story tells of magazine Harper's Weekly asking their artist to create a picture of Saint Nicholas and deciding what colour he thought the man would be wearing. They decided on brown but realised it was a bit dull and didn't really suit the festive season issue, and so changed it to red.

The next step in the bastardization of Santa Claus came from the direction of Coca Cola. During the 1930s they asked illustrator Haddon Sundblom to make Santa a bubbly and cuddly character that loved guzzling down the bottles of coke. As America was slowly accepting the holiday as a commercial tradition rather than a religious celebration, the Coca Cola company timed their advertisements expertly. Of course, the campaign could be classed as too successful as Santa Claus actually became a figure in his own right, and we don't associate him with Coca Cola very much today. But you will still have seen the yearly Christmas ads, with the fat, bearded man, the red lorries and plenty of bottles of the brown stuff.

So, the idea that Coca Cola invented Santa Claus is giving them too much credit, but they certainly helped to recreate him as the commercial figure he is today. Primarily about giving expensive gifts to children, the original Saint's story has lost it's appeal of giving and helping others in their hour of need. Now Santa stands for nothing. He lives in Lapland, travels around the world and is simply a reason to try and persuade your children to be good for the weeks leading up to the festive season. Visiting Santa in his grotto, sitting on his lap, or even travelling to Lapland to see him is just another money spinning idea from the various companies that offer it.

Santa Claus is real - but he is not what he should be.