Bill Petro

MARDI GRAS

In French, Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday” and is celebrated the day before Ash Wednesday as a last “fling” prior to the 40 days of Lent which precede Easter. Lent is a word that comes from the Middle English word “lente” which means “springtime” - so named for the season of the year in which it usually occurs. While the practice of Lent is not mentioned in the Bible, it has been a tradition in the Christian world since the mid 4th century. It seems to parallel the 40 days of fasting in the wilderness that Jesus experienced following his baptism.

Historically, Lenten fasting became mandatory, especially abstinence from eating meat. While recommended by St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in 330 AD, by the Middle Ages Lent was enforced throughout Europe, especially the forbidding of meat during the final weeks before Easter.

The word “carnival” comes from an old Italian word that means to “go without meat” or “removal of meat.” Festivals like Mardi Gras sprang up throughout parts of Europe as a means to prepare for the coming times of self-denial. Venice especially was a “party town” for centuries with its Carnevale di Venezia and it’s elaborate masks. The three days before Ash Wednesday is also known as “Shrovetide,” where shrove is an Old English word meaning “to repent.” In England, the Tuesday just before Ash Wednesday is called Shrove Tuesday and is celebrated by eating of rich food, that won’t be used during Lent.

As the Protestant Reformation spread throughout Europe, Lent became regarded more as a Roman Catholic institution, and was increasingly ignored by Protestants as a traditional observance. This tendency did not reverse, especially in the US, until the 1980s. Today, more Protestant churches participate in Lent with devotions and Scripture readings, as well as special Ash Wednesday services.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF GROUNDHOG DAY

Groundhog Day comes from Candlemas Day, observed for centuries in parts of Europe on February 2 where the custom was to have the clergy bless candles and distribute them to the people. This seems to have derived from the pagan celebration of Imbolc — the Feast of the goddess Bridget, or in Christian Ireland St. Bridget’s Day and alternatively “The Purification of the Virgin” commemorating the time when St. Mary presented Jesus at the Temple at Jerusalem. It comes at the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The Roman Legions, it is said, originally brought the tradition to the Germans.

In more modern times, says the old Scottish couplet:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear

There’ll be two winters in the year

By the 1840s the following idea caught on in the U.S., particularly in Pennsylvania whose earliest settlers were German immigrants. If the groundhog sees its shadow on a “bright and clear” day, six more weeks of winter are ahead.

Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is the headquarters of the celebration where the groundhog “Punxsutawney Phil” regards his shadow at Gobbler’s Knob, a wooded knoll just outside the town.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr

Born on January 15, 1929, we celebrate a holiday in honor of a man who was not a president, nor an explorer, nor a saint, rather he was a Baptist minister and an American leader of the 1960s civil rights movement who was named after the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. Though he was awarded by President Carter the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1977, it was not until 1986 that a day was established on his birthday as a federal holiday.

The only other American federal holidays that honored individuals have been for Jesus, Presidents Washington and Lincoln, and Christopher Columbus.

Though Martin Luther King, Jr. had an earned doctorate degree, he was also an ordained minister, the son and grandson of ministers. From his biblical roots came many of the metaphors of his talks, the text of his presentations, and the cadence of his speech. He served as a minister starting in 1954 in Alabama, where after he led the boycott against segregation on buses that lasted 382 days. During this time he was arrested, his house was bombed, and he suffered personal abuse.

It was his involvement in the American Civil Rights Movement that gave him his greatest visibility, as he began in 1957 non-violent civil disobedience, not unlike Ghandi’s in India. Marches and protests were an effective means of accomplishing many of his goals, culminating in 1963 with the the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” and his most famous speech, entitled “I Have A Dream” which he delivered from the Lincoln Memorial in the Mall of Washington, DC.

The following year, in 1964 he received the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest recipient. Though initially successful in the South, King also brought his movement to the North, specifically Chicago in 1966, out of which grew equal opportunity programs.

1967 saw King deliver a comprehensive statement against the Vietnam War in his speech in New York City’s Riverside Church entitled “Beyond Vietnam.” This was met with criticism from many activists and newspapers, though he argued that he was not merging the civil rights and peace movements.

Nevertheless, he continued in speaking out against the Vietnam War and in 1967 he spoke in Sproul Plaza at the school I would later attend, the University of California at Berkeley where he told students,

“You, in a real sense, have been the conscience of the academic community and our nation.”

In 1968, King gave a prescient speech called “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” in which he said about God that:

“He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain! And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord!”

The next day, on April 4, 1968, King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee. National riots followed until five days later President Johnson declared a national day of mourning for King. 300,000 people attended his funeral. Since his death he has become a symbol of protest in the pursuit of racial justice, and as he said in his seminal speech “I Have A Dream” the majestic spiritual “soul force” rather than physical force.

As I write this on a snowy day from Colorado Springs, I am reminded of his charge at the end of that same speech,

“…from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado… let freedom ring.”

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

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HISTORY OF EPIPHANY

January 6 is known in the Christian calendar as Epiphany. It is sometimes called the “Twelfth Night” being the 12th Day of Christmas. It signifies the event of the Magi, or Wise Men visiting the baby Jesus, and is known in certain Latin cultures as Three Kings Day. In the Eastern (Orthodox and Oriental) churches it is known as the Theophany (God Manifest), commemorating Jesus’ baptism — recounted in all four Gospels — with the attendant appearance of the Holy Spirit as a dove and the voice of God the Father.

So, the 12 Days of Christmas don’t end at Christmas, Advent does. Instead, the 12 days start with Christmas, and end with Epiphany, sometimes called Christmastide. The “season” of Epiphany lasts from January 6 through the day before Lent.

Epiphany is a Greek word that means manifestation, appearance, or showing forth. Historically, Epiphany began in the eastern Church as the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus Christ. As the celebration of Christmas spread eastward, Epiphany changed to its present meaning. It is ironic, this year, as Chanukah overlaps Christmastide — that Epiphany is so close to Chanukah — as we recall that the villain in the Chanukah history was Antiochus Epiphanes IV, or “Antiochus, God made manifest.”

In the Western churches (Protestants, Catholics, and Anglicans) Epiphany commemorates the “adoration” of the Christ Child by the Magi as they presented their gifts, thereby “revealing” Jesus to the world as Lord and King. In some traditions, the “Twelfth Night” party on January 5 is followed by the exchange of gifts on January 6th. The Russian church’s “Feast of the Nativity,” Christmas, is celebrated at this time.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

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HISTORY OF CAESAR AUGUSTUS

Perhaps it is fitting that our last article on the History of Christmas should be about the first person mentioned in St. Luke’s story of the first Christmas. He was neither Palestinian, nor Jew, nor shepherd, nor wise man. He was in fact, 1500 miles away, the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. Were it not for his decision, Jesus would not have been born in Bethlehem, but in Nazareth, the home of Mary (and this would have messed up all the Old Testament prophesies). But because of Augustus’ decree Mary and Joseph, descendants of the often married King David, returned to Bethlehem, the city of David. It was here that Mary’s first born child was born, according to Luke, in a manger as there was no room at the inn. Certainly they had not called ahead, and there were a lot of travelers at the time, it being the Christmas season and all.

Some sixty years earlier, the Roman general Pompey had conquered Palestine and was at this time a “client kingdom” ruled by a local king, Herod the Great, who was directly responsible to the Roman emperor. Augustus himself, grand nephew and adopted heir to Julius Caesar, in addition to being emperor was a religious reformer, for he tried to revive the drooping interest in Rome’s state religion. By his day, the average Roman had abandoned his beliefs in the gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon and philosophical skepticism was growing, while the more credulous joined the foreign eastern mystery cults. Feeling that this neglect of the gods was demoralizing Roman society, he set about his religious revival with enthusiasm bestowing temples and shrines on the Empire, restoring eighty-two temples in the city of Rome alone. He became “pontifex maximus” (highest priest) in the state cult and tried to spark a moral renewal in society.

Many Roman men and women of the time were indulging in a very easy morality to escape what they called “the tedium of marriage”, and soon marital and birth rates had dwindled alarmingly. One day, August was disturbed enough to stalk into the Forum and devise a crude test of the situation: he told a crowd of men gathered there to separate into two groups, the bachelors on one side, the married men on the other. Seeing the handful of husbands he said:

What shall I call you? Men? But you aren’t fulfilling the duties of men. Citizens? But for all your efforts, the city is perishing. Romans? But you are in the process of blotting out this name altogether! … What humanity would be left if all the rest of mankind should do what you are doing? … You are committing murder in not fathering in the first place those who ought to be your descendants!

… and on to other such gems of imperial logic.

Augustus followed this with legislation designed to reverse the tide by making promiscuity a crime, while conferring political advantages on a father of three children. Bachelors who shirked “the duty of marriage” were penalized in their right to inherit, and they could not even secure good seats at the games! Bachelors trying to circumvent such penalties by “marrying” infant girls were quickly countered by setting the minimum age for engagement at ten for girls, with a two-year upper limit for the length of engagement.

Perhaps it was to gauge his success in raising the marriage and birth rates that Augustus was so concerned about the imperial census, for he took several, as in the Christmas story, during his lengthy reign. Such enrollments, of course, were also the basis for the Roman system of taxation, but the Emperor was pleased enough with the results that he proudly mentioned his censuses in eight place among the thirty-five “Acts of Augustus” for which he wished to be remembered, items that were later engraved on two bronze plaques outside his mausoleum. A subscription for the “Acts of Augustus” also appears at the Temple of Augustus in Ankara, Turkey, pictured here.

Some scholars have doubted that imperial Rome would require her subjects to return to their original homes for such enrollments. But this requirement has been supported by the discovery of a Roman census edict from 104 A.D in neighboring Egypt.

“Gaius Vibius Maximus, prefect of Egypt, says: The house-to-house census having been started, it is essential that all persons who for any reason whatsoever are absent from their homes be summoned to return to their own hearths, in order that they may perform the customary business of registration…”

Had Augustus ever seen these three names on the census returns from Bethlehem?

Joseph Ben-Iacob, carpenter
Mary Bath-Ioachim, his wife
Yeshua or Jesus, first-born son

It is very unlikely, and certainly he never learned the significance of what happened in Bethlehem because of his decision to take the census. And at the time of Augustus’ death in 14 A.D. Jesus was about 19 years old, an apprentice carpenter in Nazareth, and the Emperor still could not possibly have heard of him. Augustus would have been astounded to know that later ages would assign his own death to the year 14 A.D. (anno domini, “in the year of the Lord”) rather than the Roman date, 767 A.U.C. (ab urbe condita, “from the founding of the city”) all because of this unknown subject, born in Bethlehem. And as the years went by this “King of the Jews” would lead a kingdom far more vast than Augustus ever knew.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

from Paul L. Maier’s In the Fullness of Time

HISTORY OF MISTLETOE

We’ve mentioned previously that mistletoe was prominent in the traditions of the Druids and the lore of northern Europe. The Druids used the mistletoe of their sacred oak as part of their ritual five days after the new moon following the winter Solstice. In the middle ages it was hung from ceilings or placed above stable and house doors to drive off evil spirits and to insure fertility.

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows on trees. Phoradendron flavescens or Viscum album sends its roots into the tree’s bark and derives its nutrients from the tree itself, though it does engage in photosynthesis.

The word can be traced back to 2nd century Anglo-Saxon “mistel” for the word dung and “tan” for twig, mistletan being the Old English version of the word. This suggests the belief that mistletoe grew from birds, though we know now that it is the birds’ droppings in trees or the seeds’ sticky nature that adheres to tree bark.

Some would trace the tradition of kissing under mistletoe back to the Saturnalia, indeed the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman: Diana), patron of Ephesus (Acts 19:24-41) wore a crown of mistletoe as an emblem of fertility and immortality. However, the most fully developed myth regarding mistletoe comes from the Norse mythology of the Vikings. Mistletoe’s curative powers and its belief that it can raise humans from the dead relates to the resurrection of the Norse god Baldar.

The story goes as follows. Baldar, the god of the summer sun, saw in a dream his death. Frigga, his mother and the goddess of beauty and love — and from whom we get the name Friday — compelled the elements, plants and animals to not kill Baldar. But she neglected to extract this same promise from the unique mistletoe. The evil god Loki (brother of Thor), realizing that mistletoe grows on trees and has no roots in the ground fashioned a poisoned dart from mistletoe and with the aid of Baldar’s blind brother Hoder shot the mistletoe missile to kill Baldar. His death brought winter and his mother’s lamentation.

Frigga’s tears over her son changed the red mistletoe berries white and raised Baldar from the dead. From her gratitude she blessed with a kiss everyone who walked beneath mistletoe, declaring that the mistletoe must forever after bring love rather that death into the world.

Later Christian customs called it Herbe de la Croix or Lignum Sanctae Crusis for “Wood of the Sacred Cross” because of the belief that it was used to supply the wood for Christ’s cross. For its role, it was condemned to be a parasitic vine. Further penance for the plant was that it bless everyone who walked beneath it.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

SCIENCE OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE

As we’ve mentioned before, the Romans celebrated a holiday known as the Saturnalia beginning on the Winter Solstice. The word Solstice comes from the Latin “solstitium” meaning “Sun, standing-still.” This year it will occur on December 22 at 06:08 UT (Greenwich Universal Time.)

Earth enjoys different seasons because the planet is tilted 23 degrees and 27 minutes off the perpendicular to the plane of orbit. This means that the earth revolves like a tilted spinning top. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of sunlight as the Sun is at its lowest arc in the sky, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. The farther north one is from the Equator, the more pronounced this is in Winter. However, as the Earth continues its orbit, the hemisphere that is angled closest to the sun changes, and the seasons are reversed.

In the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice, so that it looks like the Sun is “standing still” until following the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

The “Twelve Days of Christmas” are the dozen days in the liturgical calendar of the Western Church between the celebration of the birth of the Christ Child (Christmas, December 25) and the coming of the Magi to visit at his house in Bethlehem (Epiphany, January 6). The Eastern Church celebrates during Epiphany rather than Christmas Day. In Hispanic and Latin American culture, January 6th is observed as Three Kings Day, or simply the Day of the Kings.

Question: Aren’t the Twelve Days of Christmas the days before Christmas, when you shop for presents?

Answer: No, the four week season before Christmas is called Advent, meaning the coming of Christ. The dozen days following Christmas are the Twelve Days of Christmas, sometimes known as Twelfth Night. The Twelfth Night is the holiday which marks the twelfth night of the Christmas Season, the eve of Epiphany. During the Tudor period in England, the Lord of Misrule would run the festivities of Christmas, ending on this Twelfth Night. Shakespeare’s play by the same name was intended to be performed as a Twelfth Night entertainment and was first performed during this time in 1602.

This festival was particularly popular during the Middle Ages especially in England, where some of the traditions were adapted from older pagan customs. Modern Neopaganism celebrates this time. This period is also called Yule or Yuletide, which while it serves as an archaic term for Christmas, hearkens back to earlier German and Norse traditions.

Question: But wasn’t this song used as a memory aid for catechism by Catholics in England during the period 1558 until 1829, when Parliament finally emancipated Catholicism there, who were prohibited from ANY practice of their faith by law - private OR public — where each gift is a hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith?

Answer: This is unlikely for several reasons:

At first glance, there is nothing in this song that is uniquely Catholic in belief as compared to Protestant catechism. Any of the items in it could be embraced by Catholic and Protestant alike. While Queen Elizabeth I’s “Act of Uniformity” truly did abolished the “old worship,” and the open practice of Catholicism was forbidden by law until Parliament passed the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829, nothing in this song would have been taken as particularly Catholic or offensive to Anglican sensibilities. Indeed, during the highly Puritan time of the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1660 under the Cromwell government, Christmas was not celebrated in England until the time of Charles I and the restoration of the English monarchy.

Secondly, while there are differences between Anglican (Church of England Protestant) and Catholic belief, none of those show up in the “hidden meaning” of the song, with the possible exception of the number of sacraments.

However, it may be possible that this song has been confused with another song called “A New Dial” (also known as “In Those Twelve Days”), which dates to at least 1625 and assigns religious meanings to each of the twelve days of Christmas though not for the purposes of teaching a catechism. During those days there was a custom of singing songs called a “memory-and-forfeits performance” in which people added verses to a song cumulatively until the loser of the game forgot the first verses.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

This week in 1843 saw the publication of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” No other book or story by Dickens or anyone else (except the Bible) has been more enjoyed, criticized, referred to, or more frequently adapted to other media. One of my favorites was catching Patrick Stewart doing his one-man version of the play at the Old Vic Theatre in London. None of Dickens’ other works is more widely recognized or, celebrated within the English-speaking world. Some scholars have even claimed that in publishing A Christmas Carol Dickens single-handedly invented the modern form of the Christmas holiday in England and the United States.

Indeed, the great British thinker G.K. Chesterton noted long ago, with A Christmas Carol Dickens succeeded in transforming Christmas from a sacred festival into a family feast. In so doing, he brought the holiday inside the home and thus made it accessible to ordinary people, who were now able to participate directly in the celebration rather than merely witnessing its performance in church.

Many of our American conceptions of what a “traditional” Christmas is, comes from this time in Victorian history. Indeed, Queen Victoria of England had just married a few years earlier, and her German husband, Prince Albert brought some of his native customs to England (including the Christmas tree), beginning some of the traditions of Victorian Christmas.

In the mid-seventeenth century, the Cromwellian Revolt abolished Christmas as well as the monarchy. However well the monarchy was subsequently “restored,” the traditions of the winter holiday never recovered. But religious prescription was not the only cause of the decline of Christmas. Even by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution, especially in the north, was changing the communities that still tenuously kept the customs of their ancestors.

By the time the Carol was written in 1843, the lavish celebrations of the past were a distant, quaint memory. Some still remembered them, and even before the Carol a few popular books attempted to record the celebrations of the past, such as The Book of Christmas by T.H. Hervey (1837) and The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall by Washington Irving (1820). But social forces beyond simple nostalgia were at work, rekindling the need for winter celebrations.

Dickens was one of the first to show his readers a new way of celebrating the old holiday in their modern lives. His Christmas celebrations of the Carol adapted the twelve-day manorial (Yule) feast to a one-day party any family could hold in their own urban home. Instead of gathering together an entire village, Dickens showed his readers the celebration of Fred, Scrooge’s nephew, with his immediate family and close friends, and also the Cratchit’s “nuclear family”: perfectly happy alone, without the presence of friends or wider family. He showed the urban, industrial English that they could still celebrate Christmas, even though the old manorial twelve-day celebrations were out of their reach. Dickens’ version of the holiday evoked the childhood memories of people who had moved to the cities as adults.

The Cratchit family, although quaint and sentimental to modern readers, was a familiar portrait of the lower-middle class families who originally read the Carol, familiar in fact to Dickens himself, who modeled the Cratchit’s lifestyle on his own childhood experience of when he himself lived in Camden Town. (Dickens’ own father was in and out of Debtors’ Prison.) Dickens demonstrates that even in poverty, the winter holiday can inspire good will and generosity toward one’s neighbors. He shows that the spirit of Christmas was not lost in the race to industrialize, but can live on in our modern world.

The publishing of his book was immensely popular, though in a time of great religious controversy, and its lack of babes, wise men, stars, mangers, and other icons of the Christian nativity inspired a multitude of sermons and pamphlets at that time. Although A Christmas Carol is generally associated with the Christian winter holiday season, for it does contain references to the Christian Jesus; its themes are not exclusive to Christianity and it inspired a tradition for decades in Christmas books and celebrations that appealed to many non-Christians.

Dickens’ preface to the book reads:

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D., December, 1843.

But the punch line to the book, is the very last sentence, which rarely fails to bring a tear to this historian:

It was always said of Scrooge, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed,
God Bless Us, Every One!

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

excerpts from Prof. Gerhard Rempel, Lectures in Western Civilization

HISTORY OF SANTA CLAUS

One of the traditions of Christmas is Santa Claus, a contraction for Saint Nicholas, who was born in the 3rd century, perhaps in A.D. 270. He became a bishop in Greece and gained distinction in the councils of the church, being especially famed for unexpected gifts, and later associated with the giving of presents during the season at the end of the year. “I am Nicholas, a sinner,” the old saint would say. “Nicholas, servant of Christ Jesus.” He was imprisoned during the A.D. 303 persecutions under the Roman Emperor Diocletian but freed by decree of Emperor Constantine. Thereafter, he served as Bishop in Myra for another thirty years. Nicholas participated in the famous Council of Nicea in 325. He died on December 6, about 343, and the Feast of St. Nicholas is now held on that day.

Many stories are told of his kindness, such as the one of the poor man and his three daughters. To save the daughters from being sold into prostitution for want of dowries, St. Nicholas dropped a bag full of gold down the man’s chimney. It landed in one of the stockings the eldest daughter had hung up to dry. Now she could be married. The other two daughters quickly hung up stockings for St. Nicholas to fill with gold, so that they, too, could soon be married. By the way, the three gold globes of the pawn shop are attributed to this story.

He seems to have been adopted by the Netherlands as the patron saint of children, and there, on St. Nicholas Eve, they leave their wooden shoes, or sabots, filled with hay for the Saint’s white horse. He is real to children the world over, under various names as Kris Kringle, La Befana, Yule Tomten, and Christkindli.

In 1809 Washington Irving, under the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker, wrote ‘A History of New York’, wherein Saint Nicholas, a jolly personage smoking a Dutch pipe, skimmed over the treetops in a wagon and dropped presents down the chimneys.

A few years later, in 1822, Clement C. Moore reputedly wrote a poem for his own children which is most often called ‘The Night Before Christmas.’ However, Don Foster in his book “Author Unknown,” makes a case that Henry Livingston actually penned it in 1807 or 1808, but whatever the case, the correct title of the poem is ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’. Many are unaware that never once was used the term Santa Claus, although the reindeer are there, a part of the legend undoubtedly developed in America, probably by Scandinavians in the United States. At last, during the Christmas season of 1862, Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, drew a picture of Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly during the Civil War. Nast combined his own native German traditions of Saint Nicholas with other German folk traditions of elves in creating the image, seen above. His various pictures of Santa Claus ran through 1866, firmly cementing the image in the American mind. The name Santa Claus also became more familiar to American ears than the German Sankt Niklaus or Dutch Sinterklaas.

Finally, in the 1930s that the now-familiar American Santa image solidified. The artist Haddon Sundblom began Coca-Cola Santa advertisements running for thirty-five years which finally established Santa as an icon of contemporary commercial culture. This Santa was not an elf, but a man — jolly, and wearing the now familiar white fir-trimmed red suit.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com