Santas

[cosmolinguist]

I only took a couple of pictures at the R.E.M. concert.



Two Santas! In June!

I guess even Santa needs a vacation, and Christmas is awfully far away so this is a good time for it. I didn't know he was an R.E.M. fan, though.

Once I got the camera out I couldn't manage to get a good enough angle to show this, but one of the Santas didn't have Santa trousers on but only a really long jacket, so you could see his black socks and his hairy legs.

I don't know why there are two of them, though. Maybe one is the Anti-Claus!

It looks like one of the Santas is doing something interesting to the other one here...

Comments

Two Santas

[j4.livejournal.com]

Clearly one of them is a subordinate Claus.

Of course!

[cosmolinguist]

It is evidence to my lack of sleep that I didn't think of saying that myself.

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

Only Holly could find a photo to disparage Santa...

[cosmolinguist]

Hey, I love Santa. I'm just reporting the truth as I see it.

[elrestodemivida.livejournal.com]

Oh man, how i hate that red and white costume. Makes me really sad and slightly nauseous. Fucking coca cola. But hold on... why Santa Clauses at an REM gig?

[cosmolinguist]

I didn't know they made you sad, or that you associated them especially with Coca-Cola. And I have no idea why there were Santa Clauses at an REM gig; I briefly wondered that myself, but decided to just enjoy it.

[elrestodemivida.livejournal.com]

I meant that thing about how Santa Claus used to be all different colours (purple, green, etc) but Coca Cola's advertising campaign fucked it up years ago. It does seem odd about Santa Clauses being at an REM gig in the summer. If it were anywhere near Christmas i could sort of see it. But maybe that was the whole point...

[cosmolinguist]

I have no idea why there were Santas at the REM gig especially, as you say, so far from Christmas, but that was part of the reason I wanted to take their picture. :-) Santas in December aren't that remarkable.

I thought I remembered reading on Wikipedia that Coke inventing or standardizing the red-clothed Santa was a myth, an urban legend, so I looked it up again and indeed it says

Urban legend has it that Santa Claus in his current guise (particularly his red and white attire) was created by The Coca-Cola Company, but this is in fact false; the modern image of Santa Claus was already established in the 1920s, years before the first Coke-promoting Santa was pictured

I like what Snopes says on the subject too:

It's simply mind-boggling that at the beginning the 21st century, historians are still egregiously perpetuating inaccurate information like the following:

So complete was the colonization of Christmas that Coke's Santa had elbowed aside all comers by the 1940s. He was the Santa of the 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street just as he is the Santa of the recent film The Santa Clause. He is the Santa on Hallmark cards, he is the Santa riding the Norelco shaver each Christmas season, he is the department-store Santa, and he is even the Salvation Army Santa!

As we just pointed out above, the modern Santa had "elbowed aside all comers" long before the 1940s, and well before Coca-Cola co-opted him as their wintertime advertising symbol. And we're at a loss to understand how anyone could have recognized the Santa of Miracle on 34th Street, a BLACK-AND-WHITE film, as the red-and-white Coca-Cola Santa.

All this isn't to say that Coca-Cola didn't have anything to do with cementing that image of Santa Claus in the public consciousness. The Santa image may have been standardized before Coca-Cola adopted it for their advertisements, but Coca-Cola had a great deal to do with establishing Santa Claus as a ubiquitous Christmas figure in America at a time when the holiday was still making the transition from a religious observance to a largely secular and highly commercial celebration.

Coke is still evill, for plenty of reasons, but Santa's fashions isn't really one of them.

[elrestodemivida.livejournal.com]

OK, i only vaguely heard the myth, and wasn't entirely sure about it or its details. Yeah, i still don't like Coca Cola, though this wasn't really one of the reasons. But i still don't really like the standard red and white Santa thing. I don't know, purple and gold and green and stuff (apparently this was how he used to be - a sort of pagan thing? can't remember) would be so much more fun and festive and, i dunno, there's something a bit sinister about him as he is.

[cosmolinguist]

The modern Santa Claus is a composite character made up from the merging of two quite separate figures:

The first of these is Saint Nicholas, a 4th century bishop. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they wouldn't have to become prostitutes. (Yay for that.)

The second character is Father Christmas. Some elements of this part of the tradition of Father Christmas could be traced back to the Germanic god Wodan (Odin). The appearance is similar to some portrayals of this god, who brought gifts in the winter season of Yule, and rides a flying horse through the sky. (The horse, Sleipnir, has eight legs, corresponding to Santa's eight reindeer.)

And there's lots more stuff, of course, but it seems that, Santa has definite pagan ties, as well as the Christian stuff (even though the Christians hate him now--serves 'em right for taking over pagan holidays and claiming them as their own in the first place!) because America, where the Santa stuff really took off, got the idea (and even the name) from the Dutch, who brought over the legend in the form of St. Nicholas's Eve, with him still dressed in bishop's robes and all.