Here are some excerpts from "The Santa Industry," but the whole is worth reading. We are trying to secure copyright permission to post the whole article on our website.
Every year, millions of children line up in malls across the continent to sit with a fat man in a red suit. It’s a bizarre ritual, this annual pilgrimage to hand our children over to appropriately attired strangers in the hopes they’ll smile while the moment is photographed. The weirdness is compounded by the fact that many of these scenes are played out on the turf of a small number of companies created with the express purpose of profiting from the emotional baggage of the season...
It was surreal to witness the Santa machine laid bare, systematically exposed in all its component parts. Every aspect of Cherry Hill’s Santa photo business is meticulously planned, from how to file daily reports, make bank deposits and treat customers, to what Santa’s helpers should wear, how to display merchandise and what to look for when hiring Santa Clauses...
...We are accosted by hundreds of Santa clones every year as they ho-ho-ho at us from posters, greeting cards, billboards and TV commercials in the weeks leading up to Christmas. This image of Santa Claus sells and hiring the most saleable Santa means gaining an edge over the competition...
Santa’s mall oasis of Christmas decorations and photo packages wasn’t always the happiest place at the shopping centre, but excited kids generally outnumbered those in distress and it was touching to witness instances of pure, joyful belief as a child encountered her bearded hero for the first time. For parents, these moments transcended the crush of frantic shoppers, parking-lot rage and the incessant blaring of carols they had been forced to overcome to attain them. For others, the liquor and drug stores were only metres away...
...I experienced my first Christmas hangover when I was seven years old. It had nothing to do with alcohol. It’s the feeling I got after I’d opened all my presents and sat surrounded by them, knowing I should be ecstatic but instead feeling hollow with disappointment. The mood seemed totally unreasonable and my sense of melancholy was compounded by guilt.
I now understand the hangover as a natural outcome of the tremendous emotional build-up to Christmas. To a child, Christmas is the ultimate holiday, complete with theme music, a parade, candy, decorations and a full day of unwrapping presents delivered by a magic flying elf. It’s no wonder that by the time Christmas morning dawned, I was so wired on impossible expectations reality couldn’t help but fall short."
She has a reflective ending (but I am probably already over copyright restrictions with this excerpt), so go ahead and read the original at The Coast.
No comments:
Post a Comment