DECEMBER 22, 2024 – I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the sights, odors and cacophony of the marketplace. On the one hand, I’ve been drawn to the bazaar of commerce; to the grand combination of consumption, industry and trade and all the ancillary activities, from finance to economics to management to legal issues to technology to manufacturing and distribution processes to . . . what Americans are best at, namely, mega-marketing and advertising. Whenever I read about ancient peoples, I perk up at mention of “trade.” Trade goes with commerce, which generates wealth, which underlies all the things that make up civilization. And as far as humans are concerned, “civilization,” not running around in loincloths and living in primeval caves is what makes us interesting.
On the other hand . . . running parallel to my fascination with business and commerce is a deep-seated contempt for the ever-accelerating and expanding cycle of consumption and production of stuff and things, driven by our insatiable appetites for bright shiny objects. Much of what the global economy produces makes life easier, simpler, more enjoyable, even possible. But much of that economy clutters and degrades our lives, especially when inner peace and adverse environmental impacts of over-consumption are taken into account.
The Christmas season, of course, underscores our cultural addiction to materialism. There’s little I detest more than a December trip to the Mall of America, where Christmas consumption is in full swing. I avoided such a visit this year, but I’ve not been so fortunate in the past.
As I recall past expeditions to “Mauled in America,” however, I’m forced to reckon with the truth: our cultural affliction—and the key to a “healthy” economy—didn’t start with Macy’s, Marshall Field or Wanamaker’s. It started with . . . Santa Claus!
To be more precise, our consumption obsession was sparked by Santa’s previous version, Sinterklaas, himself a remake of the fourth century Greek Saint Nicholas, who was known for his generosity (he purportedly gave away his inheritance to the poor). Sinterklaas was imported to America by the Dutch in the early 17th century. The Dutch connection fits, since the Dutch of that era were the masters of European trade and commerce, which generated the profits that supported the Dutch Masters of art and architecture—crown jewels of “civilization.”
But given our nation’s (apparently) limitless resources and the unceasing influx of highly motivated immigrants hellbent on chopping down all the trees, plowing the virgin prairies and making big bucks faster than you can say “monopoly money,” this country went far beyond the “men of commerce” of both Old and New Amsterdam. America became a commercial juggernaut like none the world had ever seen. Nothing and no one escaped leverage for lucre, least of all the once avuncular Sinterklaas, formerly known as the saintly Saint Nicholas, now known as Santa Claus.
Thanks to that leveraging by the captains of commerce, what kid in this culture isn’t familiar with what Santa Claus does—showers the world with the stuff of commerce—not with what he symbolizes . . . namely, generosity? As one of those kids, I never made the symbolic connection. To the extent my sisters—being far less selfish and self-absorbed than I—were cognizant of the connection, their awareness never reached beyond a glass of milk and plate of cookies. I’m fairly sure my sisters never thought to give Santa a present. I know for certain that such a thought never entered my mind, fixated as it was on “What’s in it for me?” as far as Santa was concerned—and as life in America generally went. Nor did our parents ever think to introduce the concept, at least, of reciprocal generosity toward Santa Claus.
When I grew up, got married, had kids and celebrated Christmas with my in-laws, I was introduced to Santa on steroids. Spilling out from under the tree at my brother-in-law’s house were enough Christmas presents to stock a department store. I was astounded by the sheer volume of stuff, not to mention the cargo-ship quantity of associated packaging material that exploded across the room once the gift wrap was torn asunder.
Midway through the proceedings, a friend of my brother-in-law and his wife, would make a pre-arranged visit . . . impersonating Santa Claus. More stuff . . . I mean gifts . . . came out of his bag.
As a guest—and a dad—I went along with the fun. I wasn’t about to pull a “Bah, humbug!” on what was a generous gesture. But silently I took issue with two aspects of what was clearly a family tradition: first, of course, was the sheer quantity of presents, each not merely a tangible symbol of intra-familial generosity but an object of consumption; a piece of the global economy obsessed with growth and profit no matter at what cost to the planet or to our souls.
The second problem I had with this “Santa,” was that he punctured the beholder’s imagination. For me as a kid, Santa had been an immensely magical figure; one whom I could picture in my mind and who thusly assumed characteristics I was free to assign. For me as an adult, Santa remained a work of magic and imagination. He represented something far grander than a flawed human being dressed up in a cheap Santa suit and mustering a series of “Ho-ho-hos!” that didn’t match my construct of what was by then a symbol of the bigger aspects and larger truths of Christmas.
Here now where I sit composing this post, our handsome little Christmas tree presides over a modest stash of gifts. Some are from “Santa,” but trust me, I know, that if Santa this year, as always, was prodded by commercial interests, he didn’t succumb to them in full . . . (Shhhhhh! but I’m hoping my wife will appreciate my artwork announcing some gift certificates inside a properly wrapped box deceptively large enough to contain a sizable snow-globe or some other bright shiny object from the North Pole.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
