The true story of Santa Claus | DW Documentary

Dear Santa, I want to tell you a secret. Please don’t share this secret with anyone but Mrs Claus and the elves.

The secret is that I want to meet you. I know that at night you will come to my house and you will be in the living room. I promise I won't take long... I know that being Santa is not easy because you have a lot of work in December, and when you come down from the sky, you’re very cold and you're doing this partly for me.

I'd be sad if I didn't meet you. The magic of Christmas will cheer me up.

I'm making a big effort. I mean, I'm trying. I think you can guess why I'm writing to you...

It's to tell you what presents I'd like for Christmas. It’s the day before Christmas, a festive day the day Santa Claus fetches his reindeer. This is Comet, his old companion.

Today, Santa will load toys by the thousands onto his sleigh. The words of the children’s letters from around the world resonate in his ears as his sleigh takes off through the night sky... towards the many children excitedly awaiting him.

Santa is used to traveling the world, visiting many countries, where he is usually well received. But, one night in December 1951, in the French city of Dijon, in front of Sainte-Bénigne Cathedral, an effigy was burning of a mannequin representing him.

They were burning Santa, but why?

Soon a photo of the scene appeared in French newspapers with the following explanation:

It wasn’t an attraction but a symbolic gesture. For us Christians, Christmas must remain the anniversary of the birthof our Savior Jesus Christ.

Santa was being associated with a lie and portrayed as a figure in opposition to Jesus Christ and Christianity.

This is the story of a conflict that goes back millennia.

Santa Claus is famous all over the world. Basically, he's conquered the entire planet.

Here, for example, we have a Brazilian Santa from 1907, a classic, but he's got the hood in front. I don't know why.

Here’s a Canadian Santa, he's classic too, he's in red of course. As for the African Santa, I think he’s great, he’s made with flytox packaging, made to kill flies. This one is perfect.

I don't have the Japanese one here, but the whole world worships Santa Claus.

Among the thousands of representations of Santa Claus, one stands out.

The one of an early ancestor...

The first ancestor of Santa Claus is found in mythology. A thousand years before Christ, there was a God in the Scandinavian countries, in the Nordic countries, who was called Odin. And this god, Odin, was very peculiar because gods are usually worshipped.

We give money to people who take care of the gods and to the priests for protection.

We give material things to get immaterial things... And this god, the first of his kind, did the opposite.

He was the one who gave. So he had a throne in heaven with two wolves.

And he had two ravens, which he sent down to earth to find out whether the children were good or not.

And he would reward them at the time of the winter solstice. That's between December 17 to December 25.

And then, in Rome, it started in the fifth century B.C. until the fourth century A.D. There was a goddess called Strenia.

A very important goddess. And, at the time of the winter solstice,she wouldn’t bring gifts, but it was in her name that the Roman patricians, the people of the Roman high society, offered gifts to each other, such as sweets or gold objects.

Among all of Santa’s ancestors, there’s also a particular Roman god who is worshipped at the very end of the year, when the sun goes down on the horizon and seems to disappear forever.

During the month of December, there were very important celebrations in Rome, Saturnalia festivities. People gave feasts and parties in honor of the god Saturn, the god of agriculture.

During this period of transition, people would celebrate chaos, they would challenge the natural order of things. And for the festivities, a king was elected, the king of the Saturnalia.

But, he was an ephemeral king because he embodied the spirit of a feast that celebrates the end of a cycle. It was a ritualized moment during which the usual order of things was revoked.

It was staged with characters who - according to certain rites — were put to death symbolically, sometimes they were burned at the stake.

The King of Saturnalia is doomed to disappear, yet to be reborn the next year.

But, in time, such pagan rites would fade away, as a new God rises:

The God of the Christians. 2000 years ago in Palestine, a little baby was born, whom some followers came to regard as God. And over a period of time, they agreed that it would be a good idea to celebrate his birthday.

In 354 AD, the Roman Catholic Church decided to place Jesus Christ’s birthday on December 25th, during the pagan celebration of the winter solstice: The rebirth of the undefeated sun. This was a very smart move by the Christians,

leading more pagan believers into their new faith. The child in an animal stall attended by shepherds with angels in the background and mysterious visitors from the east bringing gifts.

And these three astonishing gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh - are the basis of giving at Christmas.

Among the many generous figures associated with Santa’s history, one is especially central: the one of Saint-Nicholas.

Here we are in Turkey in his hometown, Myra, now called Demre.

Standing in the church garden is a statue of St Nicholas. As you can see it looks a lot like Santa Claus. And, inside the church, a fresco recounts the moments when Nicholas’ life turned into legend. Over time, St Nicholas became the patron saint of a great many cities.

When he died, all kinds of wonderful mythology sprang up around him so that he became in time the most important saint in heaven, next to the Virgin Mary. He had the power of flight. He could magically fly.

He also had the power to be in several different places at the same time.

He’s the patron saint of prisoners, sailors, butchers, children, and of the French Province of Lorraine.

In France, everyone knows the legend of the three little children that a wicked butcher or a wicked inn keeper, depending on the version, wanted to cut into pieces and put in the salt barrel like pigs. And, after seven years, Saint Nicolas, came to the inn or the butcher shop and resurrected the three children.

In 1087 AD, faced with the invasion of Turkey by the Saracens, Italian sailors took Saint Nicholas’ coffin to the city Bari, enshrining his remains in the main church. Then, a French crusader brought his relics to a small town in Lorraine, named Saint Nicolas-de-Port. Here, every year on December 6th, his followers gather and sing to commemorate his birth.

In addition to resurrecting the three boys, Saint Nicholas’s life was marked by numerous acts of generosity.

He became the patron of children and a bearer of gifts. But be warned:

Although Saint Nicholas brings gifts, he’s also the one who punishes.

I grew up in a suburb of Luxemburg City. At night, we used to put our slippers in front of our bedroom door.

And then, in the morning, we'd look and sometimes we'd find a little stick, which meant we deserved a spanking and no presents. Of course, our father had a larger stick to spank us if need be. Then, we usually received a little marzipan pig or something like that, but the gift was small.

I remember when I was really little, I caught my dad in the garage with a neighbor, changing clothes, and I thought, What the hell is that all about? I didn't understand.

Because the big metaphysical problem for children is: Who is St. Nicholas?

We can think of St. Nicholas as a kindly man bringing goodies, but he was also very stern and in this he was also useful to the parents of Europe because he could carry a switch with which to beat children who did not know their catechism and were disobedient.

And sometimes, in this mission, he was accompanied by a rather terrifying figure.

There's always Père Fouettard with him. There was always someone who was dressed all in black, who was scraggly and unkempt.

He carried a bundle of sticks for whipping naughty children. In the French city of Metz, there’s a story about the origin of Père Fouettard, or Father Whipper.

One document recounts that in December of 1552, when the city was besieged by Charles the Fifth of the Holy Roman Empire, the city’s tanners formed a procession with a grotesque whip wielding effigy of Charles, which was set on fire and dragged through the streets.

Later, every year on December 6th, which was the feast of Saint Nicholas, locals staged a procession with an ash-covered effigy now called Père Fouettard.

For a long time, things were well separated. The field of religion was the one of baby Jesus, on the eve of December 24th.

And the field of St Nicholas, who later became Santa Claus, was on another date. But things got complicated.

What we have in the 1500’s is an astonishing religious revolution that we call the Protestant Reformation.

Puritans were very much against Christmas and Protestantism in general because a central to the idea of Protestantism is to strip away all of the accretions which Christianity got over one and a half thousand years, and to go back to the Christianity as it was in the Bible. And one of the things they agree on is that the cult of Saints has become dangerous, that the Saints are in, in peril of replacing God as the object of one's prayers. So they abolish the cult of Saints and with them go Saint Nicholas.

Saint Nicholas disappears as a Christmas gift bringer in many parts of Europe.

Bye bye St Nicholas! At least, they didn’t burn you. But you’ll be back.

Because, as the elves say: Hiding a Saint doesn’t make him disappear! So, at that point, traditions that were taking place on December 6 were pushed back. They were pushed back to Christmas, to the date when the baby Jesus was born. In Germany in particular, the figure of the baby Jesus, Christ Kindle as the Germans say, was invented.

In Strasburg, the rules of the Reform were applied. In 1570, a pastor spoke out against the practice of giving gifts to children on Saint Nicholas Day. The Saint Nicolas Market which is held on December 6 was renamed.

The order was to call it the Market of the Child Jesus or Christkindlemarkt in Alsacian.

The figure of the baby Jesus is wonderfully theologically correct.

But it's a difficult social act to perform, to imitate the acts of Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas was good, but he was also frightening. And nobody is going to be frightened by the baby Jesus.

Saint Nicholas can carry huge sacks or baskets of goodies. A baby can't.

And so we see in the 1500s the development, a change in the shape of the Christ child and the appearance of frightening helpers.

European folklore is full of beasts that appear at Christmas.

And you don't know whether they're going to kill you or give you a gift.

There were fairies, lots of characters... For instance you have Befana in Italy. She was an old witch.

Befana is portrayed as an old woman who’s a bit of a witch.

She flew in the sky on a broom, she had a hood on her back containing the presents with which she filled the socks that children left near their windows. If kids weren't good, Befana knew it, and she would give them ashes and coal.

If they were good, she would then bring something sweet, that looked like soft coal, but was made of black sugar.

Each country has its creature, meant to frighten children: Krampus, Knecht Ruprecht, Zwarte Piet, Gryla, Schumtzli.

The Protestant Reformation and its religious precepts now prevail in a large part of Europe.

In England, the winter figure referred to as Father Christmas was even the object of a trial. For some Protestants, the new doctrines were not respectful enough of the strict teachings of the Bible.

These Puritans decided to leave Europe and settle in a new land where they would be allowed to live in accordance with their faith. These pilgrims first set foot on the American continent in 1620 and started new colonies. According to their faith, Christmas was not worthy of celebration and was therefore abolished. It became a regular work day.

Anyone celebrating Christmas in the colony could be punished with a heavy fine. Any reference to the Saints, including Saint Nicholas, was forbidden.

But other migrants coming from other countries brought with them their own religious faith and traditions.

The situation in the cities at Christmas and New Year's had become a social problem.

It became dangerous to be out on the streets in Boston and Philadelphia and New York, gangs would take to the streets. They would bang on pots and pans and blow horns.

They would jostle decent Middle-Class Folk. They would interrupt church services at a time when police forces were just in their beginning and could not deal with this.

In 1800, the situation in New York City became dire. The city was flooded with new migrants.

The Puritans, considering them barbarians, abandoned part of the city. In Manhattan, barricades were erected to protect law-abiding citizens

from unruly gangs. Organizations such as the New York Historical Society were founded with the goal of creating a more respectable city. Since America had no shared history and no shared culture, this new historical society was looking for a common identity. And, surprisingly, its members decided to turn to Saint Nicholas.

John Pintard was the founder of the New York historical society. He was a member of a masonic lodge, made up by descendants of Dutch families. It was Pintard who rekindled the flame of the Sinterklaas, the Dutch Saint-Nicholas. He presented him as a grumpy bishop holding a stick, standing beside a hive, a masonic symbol... Santa is now a Freemason!

John Pintard tried to make Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of New York. So one thing Pintard was trying to do was to get a tradition that wasn't English.

There was another member of the New York Historical Society, his name was Washington Irving. And he was a comical writer. He was a satirist.

And he found Pintard's enthusiasm for St. Nicholas very, very funny. And so he wrote a spoof History of New York. And in his parody history,

St. Nicholas Santa Claus keeps appearing and helping the settlers to build the houses, appearing out of the sky, smoking a pipe.

Washington Irving's spoof history of New York was a massive bestseller. It was a hugely, hugely popular book in early America.

And people loved these stories and they started telling them to their children as truth.

And, for the first time, a new name appears in a drawing. Santa Claus, a name and a story destined for a bright future.

There was a third member of the New York Historical Society called Clement Clarke Moore, who wrote a children's poem called

Twas the Night Before Christmas, and it was a very, very popular poem. Santa Claus is on a sleigh which is drawn by reindeer, and he comes down the chimney himself and comes out into the fireplace with the presents and wishes everybody a Merry Christmas.

Twas the night before Christmas, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.

He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf.

Farewell Bishop Saint-Nicholas, here comes an elf.

Later in the 19th century, there's a guy called Thomas Nast who was an illustrator. And he's the guy who really sets down the Santa Clause that we know and that we still see on Christmas cards and that the Santa Clause that children imagine of the jolly fat man with the beard and the pipe.

And during the American Civil War in the 1860s, he drew a series of patriotic drawings for a magazine that featured Santa Claus on the side of the union.

And the face he gave them was that of the kindly grandfather that had been suggested by Twas the Night Before Christmas and whatever else Santa Claus wears around the world now whatever country he's in, he will look like the face that Thomas Nast gave him.

Another aspect of Santa Claus is very much that he's a house breaker. He's an old man who sneaks into your house and he actually breaks that family bubble to some extent.

It's very strange when you think about it, that we tell our children that there's an old man who's broken into their bedroom and that they should be happy about that.

When Christmas would come, Santa would always show up. He would come in the evening around 6:00, after sauna and dinner.

He always made a lot of noise, knocking on walls, knocking on the door. He had a cane and he would shake like an old man. Santa Claus would ask, Are there any good children here?And we were very scared, hiding behind our mother. Santa Claus would come and sit with us and ask if Katja had been good. And I would answer yes, I have been good... I wasn’t far from crying.

With the industrial revolution, Christmas and Santa Claus soon became associated with a profound change in the social order.

The bourgeois opposed lower class values.

The communal traditions associated with Christmas like wassailing, banging on people's doors, demanding alcohol, wearing masks. It's replaced by this inward looking family as opposed to community.

Your table, as opposed to the street, your far side, as opposed to the whole city. This new inward looking celebration.

The poor people were really being kept at a distance. People didn’t want to see them, or they wanted them to be more submissive, more amenable.

And the bourgeois family became a very important part of society, having grown rich at the expense of the working class that Marx described.

So for the bourgeois family, Christmas became one of the great annual gatherings. One during which people honored their own members, showcased their social success, and boosted their childrens’ ambitions.

In a way, there’s a shift from a religious celebration to a family celebration. Whether it was in England, in France or in the US, there wasn’t a family reunion at Christmas before that.

The Protestants banned Catholic religious songs and replaced them with New Testament psalms.

So when English writer Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, he describes a society that is divided between rich greedy misers and poor but generous people. The Christmas tale tells the story of how one of these misers becomes a better man, thanks to ghosts that visit him. They make him realize that charity and generosity can save him from doom.

He was doing readings of his tale in Boston, Paris, and in London of course. And people would rush to see him.

In Paris, people described a huge line in front of the British Embassy in the middle of winter. People were in tears.

In Boston, a wealthy businessman called Fairbanks showed up at a reading. After listening to the Christmas story read by the author himself,

he decided to offer a turkey to each of his workers for Christmas, and gave them the day off to celebrate Christmas.

It wasn’t a holiday at the time.

The goose club concept in England is a very interesting one because the bosses forced their workers to save money during the year

so they could celebrate Christmas with dignity and buy the famous goose, which was the English dish.

This notion of a Christmas that is reconnected to morality, reconnected to religion, and the American gift of a Santa Claus figure is going to combine in the 19th century. In fact, gifts were a part of this to begin with.

But there needs to be someone to bring the gift. At first, the character bringing the gifts depended on where you lived.

But gradually, it became the same one. It was Santa Claus who brought the gifts once he became known everywhere.

The American-style Santa Claus also became a major commercial figure who invaded the advertising sphere. Santa became universally famous thanks to... guess what?! The department stores!

They were becoming very popular at the time and they enrolled Santa as their number one sales clerk.

Between the two world wars, Santa Claus became the ideal partner to promote new products to adults.

And then he also became a bit naughty on the edges. A bit of a scumbag, who was used to push big cigars, liquors, and easy women.

This is a nice little figurine!

But for a long time, Santa Claus was controversial for another reason. For some caricaturists, in the 1920s or 30s, the Santa figure was ambiguous.

Santa was for the rich and not necessarily for the poor or under-privileged. Among the critical caricatures, one of the most beautiful is that of a child perched on a Parisian roof and surrounded by chimneys.

The title is Where the night disappears along with hope. The child sees Santa Claus on his donkey as a white shadow in the distance and says: He’s not coming here, he scorn the chimneys without fire.

Sometimes, this Santa was green, sometimes red. It was a gradual transformation. There were even gray Santas, so Santa changed color several times. Today, traces still remain:

The red Santa is the traditional one but in some places the Salvation Army has a green Santa.

In advertisements, sometimes red Santa is giving a hand to green Santa, as if not to forget anyone.

So, yes Santa Claus was indeed exploited by advertisers and brands, among which the best known is Coca Cola.

But Coca Cola certainly didn’t invent Santa Claus. The brand just used Santa Claus, and Santa agreed at the time because he wanted to be famous. Saint Nicholas was already very famous, but Santa wasn’t at the time.

Through Coca-Cola, he found a sponsor who boosted his celebrity. So, it served the interests of both.

This transitional period lasted almost until the 1950s, when Santa finally wins it all.

Santa Claus is so powerful, Christmas is so powerful, that they call forth enemies. And one of these enemies is totalitarianism. In the Soviet Union, after the revolution, celebrating Christmas was considered bourgeois... thus discouraged. So the Communist party decided to revive a non-religious figure Ded Moroz, the Slavic wizard of winter. Under the Soviets, Ded Moroz was made to look like a blue Santa who came to offer gifts

to the children, not at Christmas, but for the New Year’s holiday. Of course, Ded Moroz’s imagery was soon used to praise the revolution and glorify the working class of the new regime. Another totalitarian party that also decided to exploit Santa’s image for its own benefit was the Nazi Party. When the Nazis take power in 1933, their first thought that the Nazis had, is just to co-opt Christmas.

So they will try and associate Nazism with all of the good things of Christmas. And so the SS tries to paganize Christmas.

They want to move the celebration from December 25th to December 21st, the winter solstice.

This is met with a good deal of resistance by the German population.

When they sing Silent Night, they don't want to have that verse in which Hitler is mentioned.

Even before the 1940s, people used Santa to oppose the Nazis and Hitler, both in Germany and in French Alsace. Caricatures appeared in which Santa Claus carried Nazi insignia and Nazi propaganda in his sack.

After the Nazi invasion, occupied countries in Europe had to supply nearly 6 million prisoners of war to German factories as forced labor. In France, this was enforced by the conservative government headed by Marshal Pétain. Pétain wasn’t very popular because of his willingness to collaborate with Hitler.

In the 1940s, Marshal Pétain used everything he could. He drew on all available means including Santa Claus himself.

He did two things. First, he wrote to children in the name of Santa Claus.

He pretended to be Santa. And then he did something even more despicable.

In 1941, he organized a letter-writing competition aimed at the children of war prisoners.

There was to be only one winner per French district. The idea was simple:

Kids would write a letter to their father and if they won, their dad would be released from the prison camp and sent to France for Christmas. The problem was that afterwards, their fathers were sent back to the prison camps.

In the aftermath of World War II, department stores hired Santas by the thousands.

But first these Santas had to take classes at newly created Santa Claus schools.

In France, Santa Claus only really becomes important after World War II, with the adoption of a more American lifestyle.

After the war, people want to spoil their kids. For the first postwar Christmas eve, Tino Rossi sings a song that promises little children gifts by the thousands. Soon toy factories open up everywhere.

New industrialized production methods produce more affordable toys to spoil children with.

But, where does Santa live? It is rumored that he lives near the North Pole, but where exactly?

Is it in Canada, in Greenland or in Lapland? What is certain is that the official Santa Claus Village was opened in 1985 near the Finnish town of Rovaniemi, right on the Arctic Circle.

It’s become the largest Santa theme park in the world. More than 500,000 visitors come here every year from all countries and religions. Hello! Welcome inside.

Hello, please come here. Good morning. How are you today? Good.

Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, it's only me here. Take it easy. So let's start with the photo.

Am I on the naughty list? What do you think? I hope not, Santa, because I have a long list of... On the naughty list. OK, so I try to understand. So if you try a little bit harder, you might get on the nice list.

So I am on the naughty list. Maybe, you never know. What do you yourself think?

Well, I've been really good this year. OK. That's good. That's a good start. That's a good start. Continue the same way.

Santa himself seems to be on the naughty list as well. He was accused by the UN of causing neuroses in children, who were being forced to believe in an old man whose existence is doubtful.

So this is when the pagan and the Christian celebrations began competing with each other.

Priests addressed believers, asking them not to speak about Santa anymore.

In 1951, in an underprivileged parish of Dijon, France, a group of parishioners rejected Santa for his consumerist attitude

and for upstaging Jesus. So they dressed up a mannequin as Santa and set it on fire.

The gesture of putting Santa Claus to death in Dijon can be interpreted as an act of sacrifice.

It’s similar to the one carried out during Saturnalia festivities in ancient Rome, in the sense that Santa Claus is likely a ephemeral king of the Roman period.

And in the next 48 hours, these images were seen all over France. It caused a big scandal, a really big scandal.

Everyone saw that the Church had burned Santa. But as it turns out, the mayor of Dijon, Felix Kir, who was also a religious man, didn’t approve of the burning. So the next day he staged an opposing spectacle, in which Santa was lowered from one the tallest buildings in Dijon: The city hall rooftop. Then, Kir sent out a press release denying that Santa was dead and stating that the burning had been a farce.

This prompted a quarrel between intellectuals that lasted several years.

The Carrefour newspaper provided a forum for defenders and opponents.

The defendant, Santa Claus, may rise! In the pro-Santa camp there were French intellectuals like Jean Cocteau,

Gilbert Cesbron, or Claude Lévi-Strauss, who dedicated a special essay to Santa.

The debate became very heated. As long as a child believes in Santa, his soul is pure, he can see God.

My only regret in murdering Santa Claus is taking away the seasonal livelihood from those in the stores.

Do you want your children to confuse Christ with the man who brings the presents? I accuse you of mimicking Santa’s condemnation to be burned in public.

To burn Santa is to burn children as heretics if they believe in it and if they do not believe in it, to burn their dreams.

The point is not explaining why children love Santa, but rather why adults invented him.

Despite the controversies of the past, today the enthusiasm for Santa is undiminished.

Every year, millions of children send letters to Santa all over the world. Santa’s official post office in Rovaniemi received 17 million letters from 100 countries in 1985. Postal systems everywhere have had to adapt to this incredible situation.

But you know, Santa, I’ll tell you a secret. Being a kid isn’t easy either. Everyone wants their children to be good and to work hard at school...

Ask your elves not to forget the batteries because it is always annoying to receive a gift and not be able to try it out right away because the batteries are missing.

In France, the person, who was decisive in making it official to respond to letters to Santa is a minister named Jacques Marette.

When he was put in charge of supervising the postal system, he felt it wasn’t acceptable that hundreds of thousands of letters

were mailed to Santa and never reached their destination.

So he created Santa’s team of personal secretaries. And he asked his sister, Françoise Marette, to be Santa’s first secretary.

Françoise Marette is better known as the writer Françoise Dolto.

Françoise Dolto understood how important it is for children to develop their imagination.

By the way, that’s also the reason why Jean Cocteau had been so virulent and angry against François Mauriac and the opponents of Santa Claus.

He told them: You break the dreams of children. You don’t have the right to do that.

Here’s our adorable box of pacifiers, which children send us from all over the world. Because growing up is about taking a step, so the kids send Santa their pacifiers, their milk bottles, and their cuddly toys.

When little children don't need them anymore, they leave them here for me and we recycle them for the baby reindeer.

Recycling is very good. Well, another aspect of Santa Claus and Father Christmas is it's a rite of passage for children to learn that he doesn't exist and that he is, in fact, your father probably just bringing the presents.

At 6, we entered primary school, it’s compulsory, and that’s where the oldest students would mock us and say:

Haha, they still believe in Saint-Nicholas. And then, after a year or two, we found out the big secret: That it was our parents.

Sometimes on TV, there are commercials with toys on sale. So, I wondered: If Santa makes toys, why are they for sale?

Santa brings them, so there’s really no use in buying them, don’t you think? That’s when I started having doubts. I thought: If they’re on sale, that means that parents probably have to pay for the gifts.

And now, Santa’s facing a new barrage of criticism. Will he survive it?

The fight is on, he’s targeted. It’s Jesus versus Santa.

Who represents the true spirit of Christmas, the original one? Santa is the symbol of capitalism, the destroyer of the planet, with a terrible carbon footprint. Santa is all about junk food.

His health is catastrophic: Cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, possibly lung cancer because of his smoking habits...

People want to hang him, to crucify him... They criticize him of having waited years before introducing himself as a black Santa. What do you expect? He’s only the image of those who created him, a reflection of our society. It took him a long time to be accepted as a black man, especially in some parts of the US. In the Netherlands, a controversy has arisen around Saint Nicholas’ faithful companion, zwarte Piet or Black Pete. People criticize this Dutch tradition for being racist and portraying the mean guy as a black man. This has lead to demonstrations against this tradition.

The Dutch authorities have responded by making Black Pete less black. The new narrative is that he’s covered in ashes because he fell down the chimney.

But one of the absolute constants of the history of Christmas is people are always complaining that it's been losing its true meaning. People have been worrying that we've lost, forgotten the true sense of Christmas. And so Christmas is necessarily a nostalgic time when we look back and we worry that we have lost something. I don't think the interesting thing is that Christmas has become commercial.

I think the interesting thing is how worried we are that Christmas has become commercial because that is our worry about the way that society as a whole is heading.

From time immemorial, people have either tried to appropriate his image or get rid of him. He has been banned, forbidden, sacrificed, hanged, burned.

But Santa still returns every winter, sometimes under another name or with a slightly changed appearance.

As long as there are people who still believe in him, he will continue to survive in the hearts and souls of the child

within us all. There’s a lot of proof that shows that Santa exists

but none of it is a 100% ure. So, I don’t always believe in Santa, but I do think he exists.