Questions about corporate use of Santa in advertising highlight how Santa has become a manufactured symbol of consumerism. The figure is described as a completely invented corporate mascot that displaces the historical Saint Nicholas and masks the religious meaning of Christmas in favor of a monthlong veneration of shopping and consumerism. The modern Santa is framed as the 'Greed God' presiding over December avarice, built atop Christmas like a ghastly casino on a chapel's ruins. Imagining Santa promoting gambling, credit, or car sales underscores the moral absurdity and perceived depravity of such commodification of holiday imagery.
"It's funny to think of people getting up in arms about any capitalist appropriation of "Santa Claus," a 100-percent made-up corporate advertising mascot bearing the same relationship to the Christian historical figure of Saint Nicholas that Hannibal Lecter has to the murdered prison guard whose sliced-off face he wore as a disguise to escape confinement. This is a figure that exists pretty much explicitly to obfuscate the religious meaning of Christmas in favor of a Satanic monthlong veneration of shopping and consumerism."
""Santa Claus," the ruddy-cheeked Greed God presiding over the modern December avarice bacchanalia erected atop Christmas like a ghastly Trump hotel casino built on the ruins of a chapel, is in that sense as close to a figure of pure evil as our society now has. Imagine! A world where Jolly Old Saint Nick tells innocent children that the true meaning of Christmas is sports betting, instead of credit cards and Toyotathon. Truly a depraved, fallen place."
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