A right jolly old elf

One of the Christmas traditions of the Clan Bradow is to watch Miracle on 34th Street on Christmas Eve. We’re talking about the one with Edmund Gwen, Natalie Wood, John Payne and Maureen O’Hara - not any of the more recent and decidedly inferior remakes.
This tradition dates back to the early days of television, when one of the Memphis tv stations would always play this yuletide classic as its Christmas Eve late movie. Obviously, this was in the days before Letterman and Leno befouled the airwaves.
At the end of the movie, the station’s weatherman (also before the days of meteorologists) would come on with a special bulletin. In excited tones, he would announce that radar had detected an unusual object approaching the area from the north.
Fortunately, adults in the audience anticipated this announcement. One must remember that this was also in the days when anything approaching from the direction of the North Pole was expected to be a Russian I.C.B.M.
The unusual object, the weatherman intoned, appeared to be a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. As always, it would arrive on schedule, after the children were fast asleep, and depart before they awakened the next morning.
Edmund Gwen’s portrayal of Santa Claus was the archetypical jolly old elf - lovingly kind and generous to a fault. I guess this is why I have always associated this movie with Clement Moore’s famous poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas. Both represent Santa Claus in a way that has become fixed in the American psyche, although Brother Moore doesn’t say anything about the fur, in which St. Nicholas is dressed from head to foot, being red with white trim. That color scheme, believe it or not, comes courtesy of the Coca Cola Company, who adopted the red-and-white Santa Claus for their print media and billboard advertising campaigns early in the 20th century.
Call him Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, or any of his other dozens of names from widely varying cultures around the world, his appearance is as familiar to all of us as anything could possibly be. Of course, if you happen to be of traditional English background, Father Christmas wears a long, hooded brown robe, trimmed in dark fur. And in some cultures, neither Rudolph nor any of the other the reindeer ever played a part. St. Nicholas rides a white horse and brings money, not presents, to young women who are too poor to have a wedding dowry.
Many people associate this loveable, generous character with a simpler time, when problems were less complex and children were all sweet, little angels who were so cute and adorable when they opened their gifts on Christmas morning. To my knowledge, all such associations are the product of convenient memories. Problems were never less complex (the Russian I.C.B.M.s merely replaced the widespread poverty of the Great Depression or centuries of European wars and turmoil), and there have always been rotten kids.
Other people identify Santa with the commercialization of Christmas. I contend that he is entirely innocent of this charge. He was merely too innocent to get a copyright on his gimmick, so everybody from Coca Cola to Macy’s and Gimbel’s has exploited it.
Still others despise Santa as a pagan image who denigrates the celebration of the birth of the Christ child. Be that as it may, I still like the old boy. Maybe I’m more than a little pagan myself. There certainly are plenty of people who think so.
So before I follow another of my pagan ancestors’ holiday traditions and attempt to invade Poland, I’d like to wish all of you, gentle readers (even those of you who think of me in pagan terms) a blessed and joyous Christmas.
And I was just kidding about invading Poland. I’ll probably just put on a loin cloth, paint myself blue and dance around an open fire, waving a spear.