Festivus is today!
Fans of the 90s sitcom Seinfeld know what I’m referring to, the celebration of Festivus which was featured in the ninth season. The show that was about nothing managed to make something out of nothing with the faux holiday celebrating the over commercialization of Christmas. Ironically, the celebration about commercialization is itself a well commercialized event, celebrated every year on December 23.
Learn all about the Seinfeld version of Festivus at https://youtu.be/rKdnqjnegEs.
You can learn plenty about Festivus and celebrate in a tongue-in-cheek manner like my family will be today. As explained by the character Frank Constanta, the person that started the fake holiday on the TV show, it was his way to act out against all the commercialization around the holidays. All that tinsel, as he says can be distracting.
While there certainly is a lot of commercialization surrounding Christmas, there are some really good things that have resulted from the commercializations that has taken place over the years. Many of them are now a beloved part of the holiday story for many of us. This may becoming an anti-Festivus post, because I choose to celebrate three of my favorite commercializations of the holiday with you, and the heartwarming stories of their origins.
I guess this might make me an anti-Festite.
When I ask you to conjure up an image of Santa Claus, pretty much everyone reading this will have the same description, and any any mall I visit across the US with a Santa in the commons area will also be the same. A jolly fat man dressed all in red with white fur trim, and a white beard is definitively what Saint Nick looks like, right? Well, that’s not always how the big guy has been described.
Prior to the Civil War, Santa’s depictions would often be a tall, skinny guy with a pointy hat. In 1863, Harper’s Weekly commissioned Thomas Nast to create an illustration which quickly became the inspiration for the modern looking Santa Claus. Later on that basic look became the starting point for the modern pitchman that solidified the modern look of Santa at Coke. Coca-Cola started using Santa in ads in the 1920’s. Santa has become synonymous with Coke ever since, and is now a staple of their ads every holiday season for the past almost 100 years. So much in fact that a lot of people think his image was completely invented by the soda giant. Not so; it was only used exceptionally well for generations, thus making Santa and Coke eternally linked. And besides, wouldn’t Santa look odd in Pepsi blue?
Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer is of course the lead reindeer for Santa’s sleigh on his journey each December 24. Yet Rudolph’s existence was actually a hustle play by department store Montgomery Ward to save money on a coloring book. The story of the story of Rudolph is really a story of redemption, of perservence, of dreams and despair and the author that struggled with the death of his wife.
Robert L. May was tasked with the job of creating a coloring book for the holidays. It was the summer of 1939 and May was dealing with a lot of things in his life. A wife with failing health, career frustrations and mounting debt hung over his head as he tried to be festive. May never wrote that great American novel that he thirsted for, yet he created a character that is a part of millions of kids who look in the sky each December 24 for a red light shooting across the sky. And of course, Montgomery Ward got a super nice coloring book for holiday shoppers in 1939.
While all kids may look to the sky for that red light, the official tracking of Santa and Rudolph is of course conducted by NORAD. Based in Colorado Springs, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) is the organization that keeps a watchful eye on our skies year round and protects us from attacks from foes across the globe. And since 1958 they have been the official tracker of Santa’s sleigh across the United States. Well, it wasn’t official in 1958.
The hotline in the bunker rang one night. In the midst of the 1950s Cold War, hearing that phone ring would have been a scary sound echoing throughout the control room. A wrong number in a newspaper ad, an innocent child wanting to speak with Santa and a quick witted colonel created a new high-tech tradition. There are a number of resources that tell the story of that night, with my favorite being Mike Rowe’s reading of his podcast The Way I Heard It, episode The Missiles of December.
So yes, some commercialization of the holiday and the creation of some beloved traditions. But for me, these three commercialized aspects of the holiday all make me smile, warm my heart and put me in the holiday spirit. So I say to you with Christmas approaching in the coming days — Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year. And in the spirit of Festivus, I have a lot of problems with you people!
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