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TYROLEAN ALPS |
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Europeans dread invasion
of Yankee Santa Clauses
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
Rampant Americanization is getting a rough ride this month, but not for the usual reasons. For once, the controversy does not involve radical Islam. It’s all about Santa, and the Austrians are hopping mad, their leather shorts in a twist and their hat-feathers all ruffled up. Much guttural harrumphing is heard around Tyrolean firesides.
Other European countries are feeling equally abused, but their anti-Santa campaigns have not quite gone public yet.
As if Colin Powell didn’t have enough on his hands with rambunctious Iraqis, dubious Yemenis and intractable Israelis, now he has to face charges of cultural imperialism by allowing the exportation of the American Santa Claus myth into other countries as we stomp all over their own favorite Yuletide myths, which may be just as silly but go much further back in history.
The Austrians can’t stand the fact that their kids are taking enthusiastically to the Santa image that was dreamed up by Coca-Cola’s ad agency in the 1930s or the Thomas Nast (German-born, incidentally) pipe-smoking figure instead of a Jesus figure called Christkind or the straggly-bearded, pointy-headed old fart in an ankle-length red bathrobe who has dominated many European Christmases for a couple of centuries.
The Austrian kids also like the American details--a sleigh and reindeer that fly (Washington Irving’s touch, 1812), a workshop at the North Pole (a poet named George Webster, 1869), and a ninth animal called Rudolph (from a schmaltzy 1939 song) who apparently has done a few too many lines for his own good.
The Americanized Santa has sneaked into young imaginations over here via satellite television and movies. There’s no stopping the homogenization of the planet.
Whatever one may think of the U.S. commercialization of Christmas--and I am not afraid to declare my violent opposition to it--it’s a holiday that works. My American grandchildren can be said to represent the most recent generation, and they are at least as jumped up about Christmas as their parents and grandparents were at their age. Eve, 2 ½ years old, treats every day in December as an experience, declaring as she gets up in the morning, “Today it’s Christmas…” Her brother Ross is rattling boxes under the tree to guess what’s coming his way in a week or so. Somewhere in there, the birth of Jesus figures, one hopes.
But according to a New York Times story, front-paged in the International Herald-Tribune, a campaign based in Innsbruck is attempting to ban the U.S. version of Santa’s fantasy exploits altogether. The invasion is part of the mixed blessing the globalization phenomenon brings to less fortunate peoples. And it’s not just a Christmas problem. American Halloween is creeping into England and other European countries, too. Merchants are finally waking up to opportunities they have been missing: crowded shops, bigger sales, more profit, earlier retirement.
The Austrian campaigners are focusing on the protection of their “Christkind” (Christ-child), another mythical figure, it must be said. This one, although inspired by the baby Jesus, deposits gifts under pine trees inside homes, trees that are often lit up with real wax candles actually on fire. That practice has not exported well to the United States where product liability lawyers would have a field day harassing the candlestick makers.
At least Christkind keeps Christ in Christmas. Signs are appearing in Austrian shops with the U.S. Santa image scored out in red ink, and the legend “We believe in Christkind” penned in below. Alas, it has the ring of another lost cause--not the first experienced by the older generation of Austrians.
As Chris Rock once said about O.J. Simpson’s assumed involvement in a certain violent crime a few years ago, “I don’t condone it, but I understand. I understand.” The Austrian Christkinders cannot win, but I understand. I understand. They have their own fantasies, much richer and older than ours.
Should Americans feel ashamed of this latest backlash? The answer is “No, but.” The “but” concerns the American tendency toward excess, and that’s one reason I choose to live over here. Europeans believe in moderation.
It would be too easy to adopt a frankly curmudgeonly stance and condemn the whole commercialized enterprise. So, instead, I am listing nine Christmas mini-commentaries that right-thinking Americans will surely agree with, once the small children are asleep.
1. As we grow older, Christmas easily becomes one of the most irritating seasons of the year. One more hearing of “We Three Kings” will cause me an onset of life-threatening arrhythmia, I am sure. As we survive more and more Christmases, repetition destroys all pleasure. Try Bach. It’s surprising how fresh and melodic he can be, and there’s a lot of it.
2. The backward creep of the starting date for Christmas campaigns must be stopped before it bumps into the 4th of July.
3. Competition for illuminating suburban homes with more whirligigs and strings of lights is out of control. Think of the national grid, for Christ’s sake.
4. Can someone please do something about the tacky ornaments coming in from China and India?
5. No need to go into debt to satisfy your children’s appetite for gifts. One little boy of my acquaintance burst into tears and ran out of the room last year when he suffered emotional overload halfway through the ripping of wrappings.
6. Don’t spoil it for the little ones. Let them enjoy the Santa myth while they can. Reality comes crashing in soon enough. In Maidenhead, England, last week a vicar got into serious hot water by referring to the “fantasy of Santa” in a letter to parishioners. Mothers rose up and the media hacks went after him as the real-life Grinch. Relax. I was at least six before I realized I was being had, country boy that I was, but somehow it never bothered me.
7. Eggnog has actual food value.
8. Keep an eye on your department store Santa’s paws if your child is going to sit on his lap.
9. Catch midnight mass on TV and hit the hay.
© 2002 by Michael
Johnson. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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