Anti-Claus Art Contest LaunchedOn St. Nicholas Day

ASLaN announced the launching of the First Annual Anti-Claus Art and Photo Competition today. Here are excerpts from the Press Release:

December 6, AD 2007 -- 198 years to-the-day from when Washington Irving began the Americanization of St. Nicholas, the International ASLaN Society has launched an art competition that hopes to eventually knock Santa Claus from his cultural throne.

"We are calling on artists who are seriously sarcastic or sick of the Santamania that breaks out each year to step up and join the resistance in the War on Santa," said Walter Skold, the founder of the Anti-Santa Love Nicholas Society.

"Here is your chance to be the Thomas Nast of the growing anti-Claus movement," he said, referring to the 19^th Century German-American illustrator "whose work helped to convert St. Nicholas from a saint into someone who is now a fat red huckster from Hollywood."

It was almost 200 years ago that Washington Irving created so many of the modern myths associated with the Americanized Santa Claus, when he published Knickerbocker's History of New York, on St. Nicholas Day in 1809.

Submission details and examples of global anti-claus artwork can be found at http://www.aslansoc.org/AntiCPhot07-Details.html