Rave Radio: Offline (0/0)
Correo electrónico: Contraseña:
Anonymous
Nueva cuenta
¿Olvidaste tu contraseña?
Page: 1 2Rating: Unrated [0]
Kidnapping Santa
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» daFTWin replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 10:38pm
daftwin
Coolness: 276570
Yea, I wouldnt mind if I had a car but I gotta hit up places like walmart and also go downtown.
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 10:48pm
screwhead
Coolness: 685725
I am nice and stoned and alone, and for christmas, I'm getting phone calls.
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» djAmalgam replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 10:48pm
djamalgam
Coolness: 105925
we are going together. metro stylz. walmart too... its all good :P
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 10:51pm
screwhead
Coolness: 685725
yeah, ghetto stylEEz 'cause we be smokin' blunts! And doing thug-like thangs in gen'ral.
wheeee. The joint is ready and waiting. When do we smoke?
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» djAmalgam replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 10:56pm
djamalgam
Coolness: 105925
its up to you!
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» julie_eaves replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 10:59pm
julie_eaves
Coolness: 94410
hehe my dads gonna drive me to go finish christmas shopping :D
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» daFTWin replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 11:01pm
daftwin
Coolness: 276570
yea thats what im thinking im gonna do for walmart.. wait for my dad to be done work then drive me are the stroes open late tomorrow also?
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» julie_eaves replied on Mon Dec 23, 2002 @ 11:02pm
julie_eaves
Coolness: 94410
I think most close early..Im pretty sure anyways
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» mindset replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 2:11am
mindset
Coolness: 52680
[ www.snopes.com ]

Claim: The modern image of Santa Claus -- a jolly figure in a red-and-white suit -- was created by Coca-Cola.

Status: False.

Example: [Twitchell, 2000]

The jolly old St. Nick that we know from countless images did not come from folklore, nor did he originate in the imaginations of Moore and Nast. He comes from the yearly advertisements of the Coca-Cola Company. He wears the corporate colors -- the famous red and white -- for a reason: he is working out of Atlanta, not out of the North Pole.


Origins: Santa Claus is perhaps the most remarkable of all the figures associated with Christmas. To us, Santa has always been an essential part of the Christmas celebration, but the modern image of Santa didn't develop until well into the 19th century. Moreover, he didn't spring to life fully-formed as a literary creation or a commercial invention (as did his famous reindeer, Rudolph). Santa Claus was an evolutionary creation, brought about by the fusion of two religious personages (St. Nicholas and Christkindlein, the Christ child) to become a fixed image which is now the paramount symbol of the secular Christmas celebration.

In 1804, the New York Historical Society was founded with Nicholas as its patron saint, its members reviving the Dutch tradition of St. Nicholas as a gift-bringer. In 1809, Washington Irving published his satirical A History of New York, by one "Diedrich Knickerbocker," a work that poked fun at New York's Dutch past (St. Nicholas included). When Irving became a member of the Society the following year, the annual St. Nicholas Day dinner festivities included a woodcut of the traditional Nicholas figure (tall, with long robes) accompanied by a Dutch rhyme about "Sancte Claus" (in Dutch, "Sinterklaas"). Irving revised his History of New York in 1812, adding details about Nicholas' "riding over the tops of the trees, in that selfsame waggon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children." In 1821, a New York printer named William Gilley issued a poem about a "Santeclaus" who dressed all in fur and drove a sleigh pulled by one reindeer. Gilley's "Sante," however, was very short.

On Christmas Eve of 1822, another New Yorker, Clement Clarke Moore, wrote down and read to his children a series of verses; his poem was published a year later as "An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" (more commonly known today by its opening line, "'Twas the night before Christmas . . ."). Moore gave St. Nick eight reindeer (and named them all), and he devised the now-familiar entrance by chimney. Moore's Nicholas was still a small figure, however -- the poem describes a "miniature sleigh" with a "little old driver."

Meanwhile, in parts of Europe such as Germany, Nicholas the gift-giver had been superseded by a representation of the infant Jesus (the Christ child, or "Christkindlein"). The Christkindlein accompanied Nicholas-like figures with other names (such as "Père Nöel" in France), or he travelled with a dwarf-like helper (known in some places as "Pelznickel," or Nicholas with furs). Belsnickle (as Pelznickel was known in the German-American dialect of Pennsylvania) was represented by adults who dressed in furry disguises (including false whiskers), visited while children were still awake, and put on a scary performance. Gifts found by children the next morning were credited to Christkindlein, who had come while everyone was asleep. Over time, the non-visible Christkindlein (whose name mutated into "Kriss Kringle") was overshadowed by the visible Belsnickle, and both of them became confused with St. Nicholas and the emerging figure of Santa Claus.

The modern Santa Claus derived from these two images: St. Nicholas the elf-like gift bringer described by Moore, and a friendlier "Kriss Kringle" amalgam of the Christkindlein and Pelznickel figures. The man-sized version of Santa became the dominant image around 1841, when a Philadelphia merchant named J.W. Parkinson hired a man to dress in "Criscringle" clothing and climb the chimney outside his shop.

In 1863, a caricaturist for Harper's Weekly named Thomas Nast began developing his own image of Santa. Nast gave his figure a "flowing set of whiskers" and dressed him "all in fur, from his head to his foot." Nast's 1866 montage entitled "Santa Claus and His Works" established Santa as a maker of toys; an 1869 book of the same name collected new Nast drawings with a poem by George P. Webster that identified the North Pole as Santa's home. Although Nast never settled on one size for his Santa figures (they ranged from elf-like to man-sized), his 1881 "Merry Old Santa Claus" drawing is quite close to the modern-day image.

The Santa Claus figure, although not yet standardized, was ubiquitous by the late 19th century. Santa was portrayed as both large and small; he was usually round but sometimes of normal or slight build; and he dressed in furs (like Belsnickle) or cloth suits of red, blue, green, or purple. A Boston printer named Louis Prang introduced the English custom of Christmas cards to America, and in 1885 he issued a card featuring a red-suited Santa. The chubby Santa with a red suit (like an "overweight superhero") began to replace the fur-dressed Belsnickle image and the multicolored Santas.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the burgeoning Coca-Cola company was still looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter, then a slow time of year for the soft drink market. They turned to a talented commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who created a series of memorable drawings that associated the figure of a larger than life, red-and-white garbed Santa Claus with Coca-Cola. Coke's annual advertisements -- featuring Sundblom-drawn Santas holding bottles of Coca-Cola, drinking Coca-Cola, receiving Coca-Cola as gifts, and especially enjoying Coca-Cola -- became a perennial Christmastime feature which helped spur Coca-Cola sales throughout the winter (and produced the bonus effect of appealing quite strongly to children, an important segment of the soft drink market). The success of this advertising campaign has helped fuel the legend that Coca-Cola actually invented the image of the modern Santa Claus, decking him out in a red-and-white suit to promote the company colors -- or that at the very least, Coca-Cola chose to promote the red-and-white version of Santa Claus over a variety of competing Santa figures in order to establish it as the accepted image of Santa Claus.

This legend is not true. Although some versions of the Santa Claus figure still had him attired in various colors of outfits past the beginning of the 20th century, the jolly, ruddy, sack-carrying Santa with a red suit and flowing white whiskers had become the standard image of Santa Claus by the 1920s, several years before Sundlom drew his first Santa illustration for Coca-Cola. As The New York Times reported on 27 November 1927:
A standardized Santa Claus appears to New York children. Height, weight, stature are almost exactly standardized, as are the red garments, the hood and the white whiskers. The pack full of toys, ruddy cheeks and nose, bushy eyebrows and a jolly, paunchy effect are also inevitable parts of the requisite make-up.
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!1
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. In an era before color television (or commercial television of any kind), color films, and the widespread use of color in newspapers, it was Coca-Cola's magazine advertisements, billboards, and point-of-sale store displays that exposed nearly everyone in America to the modern Santa Claus image. Coca-Cola certainly helped make Santa Claus one of the most popular men in America, but they didn't invent him.
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» PitaGore replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 9:49am
pitagore
Coolness: 471940
That's interesting for sure...Do you believe it Ben ?? I wonder ....
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 9:56am
screwhead
Coolness: 685725
There's lots of diffrent sites with all the same information. Look up urban legends. There is SO much stuff that we "know is true" that is just propaganda from people that don't like "the man".
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» PitaGore replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 10:10am
pitagore
Coolness: 471940
Still,thisis interesting to see different perspectives
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» julie_eaves replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 12:01pm
julie_eaves
Coolness: 94410
haha Shut up
its Fucking Santa Claus
not a damn corporate conspiracy
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» PitaGore replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 2:09pm
pitagore
Coolness: 471940
Omg some real naive Santa lover....go sit on its knees then....
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Unknown User replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 4:53pm
unknown%20user
Coolness: 620
she's not the naive one in this case, did u even read what was posted?

jesus, that's a lot of fucking research. if you don't believe it, it should pretty easy to disprove one of those points.
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» julie_eaves replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 5:47pm
julie_eaves
Coolness: 94410
*goes and sits on Santas Knee*
HMF. We will just have to see WHO gets what SHE wants for christmas now wont WE!
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Tue Dec 24, 2002 @ 10:12pm
screwhead
Coolness: 685725
So now that your sitting on his knee, you gonna talk to him 'bout the first thing that pops up? ;)
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Continuum replied on Wed Dec 25, 2002 @ 10:25pm
continuum
Coolness: 44360
*pulls his beard to see if its really santa*
*sees that his not*
*get off his knees and kicks him in the ballz*
*kidnap his hot chix...*

some how, all the fat people have real hot chicks with them...
Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» PitaGore replied on Thu Dec 26, 2002 @ 3:17pm
pitagore
Coolness: 471940
Sorry guys, didn't meant to hurt anyone..... Ok, Santa"s good
Kidnapping Santa
Page: 1 2
Post A Reply
You must be logged in to post a reply.