Santa is a capitalistic icon who promotes consumerism around a season that originally began to commemorate the birth of Jesus among Christians and later included sentimental gift giving; however, it has changed over time. The creation of Santa is one of the main reasons for this remarkable shift, along with cultural changes.
Let’s start with the creation of Santa. He developed harmlessly from Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas was a Greek Bishop who was notorious for giving gifts to poor children. He soon developed as Sinterklass in Dutch folklore.
Then, in 1823, a poem called A Visit from St. Nicholas, known more commonly as The Night Before Christmas, was anonymously published and Santa Claus became popular in the United States and Canada.
The last major influence on Santa’s image was by a cartoonist named Thomas Nast. His drawings showed a robust figure in the red and white suit we see today, along with the signature snow white beard.
Santa slowly began appearing in pop culture. The first time his name was used in U.S. press was in 1773, although he wasn’t widely acclaimed in most of North America until the early to mid 1800s. Soon, Coca Cola began to use him in advertisements, which is essentially his first venture into developing capitalism.
Over the last couple of decades, many large corporations have started to maximize their profit from the idea of Santa. A prominent example is Macy’s, which is known for its parades, having a gargantuan float starring ol’ Saint Nick in all his materialistic glory, which brings in consumers. Macy’s also profits from its popular Santa-land, where packages begin at twenty dollars.
Today, photography companies benefit from Santa pictures, malls and retailers benefit because of the influx of customers coming in for these pictures, yet the people portraying him remain with minimum wage. However, Santa pictures aren’t the only example of understated capitalism. There’s an ongoing production of Christmas movies with Santa at front and center. The Santa Claus movie trilogy made a worldwide box office revenue of 470,000,000 million dollars alone.
As time goes on, Santa has become nothing, but a marketing scheme for increased revenue. He feeds into the hands of big corporations, consumerism and capitalism.
