The History of a Corporate Christmas | Christmas History | Extra History

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: The Dinner Plan
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Felix the Cat
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
4. 15:00 – 18:00: The Dinner Plan

Notable quotes from " The History of a Corporate Christmas | Christmas History | Extra History"

• Santa or the Nutcracker. Nope. It was instead the popular animated character Felix the Cat. I know your punt for that one Zoe.

  about Felix the Cat · at 3:45

• Copywriters, Robert El May, to create a children's book to distribute for free to holiday shoppers. The result, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But while America was entwining…

  about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer · at 8:20

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Thomas Nast — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

• The Dinner Plan — Book · 2 mentions · first at 0:52
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — Book · 1 mention · first at 8:24

Companies & orgs

• Coca-Cola — Company · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Felix the Cat — Concept · 1 mention · first at 3:50

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 Every bean down in Beansville liked Christmas a lot. So the brands turned the day into something you bought. They monetized Christmas the whole Christmas season. So the beans hit the shops and surrendered all reason. But it wasn't just toys, trees, stockings, and ties. The grocerers all slung puddings, turkeys, and pies. They put aside all autuminal misgiving and hauled out holly weeks before Thanksgiving. They fine-tuned their methods of capital extraction. So each merry tradition involved a transaction. You might think that's wrong. You might claim to hate it. But really, did the brand steal Christmas or did they create it?

0:47 Today's holiday, excuse me, history is brought to you by the Nebula original film, The Dinner Plan. But more on Patrick Williams delicious comedic thriller after the episode. Happy holidays once again, extra historians. Today we're going to look at the history of Christmas in a very specific way. How the holiday as we celebrate it now has been shaped, filtered, and yes, in some ways, created by brands. And I find this topic just fascinating since it sheds light on how the forces of capitalism, modernity, and popular culture has shaped nearly every version of this ancient holiday. So, let's get started.

1:23 Around a 100 years ago, in my own backyard, November 27th, 1924, Herald Square, New York City, 6 miles from Harlem to Midtown, they have marched, bands playing, clowns waving to crowds, men dressed as knights, and ladies as fairies, passing along streets packed with people three or four deep. Behind them come parade floats in a nursery rhyme theme from the old woman who lived in a shoe, Red Riding Hood, and Little Miss Muffet. It is nearly a circus atmosphere, partially due to the animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo, which include monkeys, camels, bears, and elephants, all none too happy with the long walk and mining the road with feces the marchers behind them have to weave around. They're all going to the Macy's flagship store on 34th Street. A palace of consumerism that takes up an entire city block, the largest store in the world by square footage at the time.

2:20 And this November parade is designed to take a single individual there. He brings up the rear in a float topped with a sleigh pulled by reindeer. You guessed it, Santa Claus. A quarter of a million people have seen the parade along its route. And 10,000 gather in Herald Square to watch Saint Nick be crowned king of the kitties and to climb a staircase to the top of the Macy's Marquee where he sits on a golden throne above the store's entrance. There he unveils the specialist window displays, a series of motorized marionettes in a Mother Goose theme with conveyor belts replicating the parade. And so was born the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the traditional start of the Christmas season, and just as importantly, the start of the shopping season. Of course, Macy's was not the only department store hosting a Thanksgiving parade that year.

3:15 Another department store in Detroit also held one, and the Gimble Brothers in Philadelphia had been doing a similar, though much smaller, parade since 1920. But all of them ended by conveying Santa Claus to the store where he would meet with children and mark the beginning of the Christmas retail season. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, however, would grow yearly to become by far the largest in scale. Then in 1927, they added the first balloon. And I think it's telling to our tale that this was not a traditional holiday character such as Santa or the Nutcracker. Nope. It was instead the popular animated character Felix the Cat. I know your punt for that one Zoe.

3:54 Oop, sorry. Didn't know you had beef. Well, he would be joined by others only a couple years later, such as characters from popular comic strips like the Cats and Jammer kids. In 1934, Mickey Mouse joined the procession with a giant upright balloon, the largest in the parade up to that point that wobbled into Herald Square like a towering kaiju. Behind him came smaller Disney characters like Pluto, Practical Pig, and the Big Bad Wolf. Notably, these were characters that had, you guessed it, product lines. In other words, these balloons didn't represent Christmas so much as they represented things you could buy at Macy's. And look, Rob would love to do a whole episode on the parade itself, its various extravagances, and balloon disasters. Maybe next year. But it's important to note that this was not actually the beginning of Macy's entangling with the holiday. Let's take a step back further. Macy's had hosted a

4:48 live instore Santa since 1846, copying an idea started in a Philadelphia department store in 1841. Turns out the 1860s were themselves an important decade for Santa. Since it's at this time that Thomas Nass, an illustrator for Harper's magazine, began to codify the look of St. Nicholas that we know today. He drew on the fur clothing mentioned in the 1823 poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, better known as TW was the night before Christmas to show a Santa dressed in fur delivering presents. But Nast was also ethnically German and mixed in elements of the St. Nicholas figure from that region as well as tales of elves and sprites. And that all ties in really nicely with the next point that kind of baked my holiday noodle because y'all, I know this is mindbending to hear, but in the 19th century, Santa was small. Not like in popularity, mind you. Like Santa was literally one of the fairy folk. Think

5:44 about it. That's why he comes down the chimney. It's like a door to him. In the poem, he is a quote right jolly old elf who rides a quote miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer. Like the elves in the story of the cobblers elves, he comes at night and delivers things he's crafted in a workshop. One early illustration actually shows him at a workbench. Harpers also helped popularize the image of Christmas elves, publishing an 1854 poem, The Wonders of Santa Claus, which depicted Santa as having a workforce of elves, who baked treats and assembled the toys. In a lot of these early illustrations, he's only about knee high, not that much bigger than a child's doll he's shown delivering, while in others, he's more the size of dwarves in traditional stories. Furthering his elasticity in size, Nast also showed him much bigger in 1862. delivering gifts to the Union Army. Perhaps influenced by the

6:37 depiction of Santa in department stores where he was portrayed by a live actor which upsized him in the minds of the public. These Harper's illustrations were a major draw for people purchasing the magazine. People would clip them and put them in scrapbooks or hang them on walls. So, the magazines themselves were consumer products using images of Santa and Christmas to sell publications while also shaping the traditions that they themselves were depicting. Heck, a Nast illustration was the first appearance of the naughty and nice list. But it should be pointed out that a lot of these depictions were contradictory. Santa's exact look wasn't yet totally fixed. He might be drawn in a hood or with long hair, carrying a walking stick with a holly wreath crown, or wearing colors ranging from green to brown. Nast's illustrations were in black and white.

7:28 You see, what solidified our modern depiction, however, was the soda pop magnates themselves, the Saja Boys. Wait, Zoe, I told you to stop putting K-pop Demon Hunter references in the script. THAT'S NOT EVEN A HOLIDAY MOVIE. [screaming] SORRY, EVERYONE. She's a little obsessed like we all are. Let me start again. What solidified Santa's modern depiction was the soda pop magnets themselves, CocaCola, and their advertisements that began in 1931, drawn by artist Hadson Sunlum. He'd grown up in Michigan, but his Swedish Finnish parents regularly received Christmas cards from those regions depicting Nordic figures like Tom, which you can learn more about in our Ugo Coat episode. And that mashup and depiction is how we got the Santa that we know today. Well, actually with one more addition because in 1939, the department store Montgomery Ward asked one of their copywriters, Robert El May, to create a

8:22 children's book to distribute for free to holiday shoppers. The result, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But while America was entwining capitalism into Christmas, Christmas was also entwining itself into capitalism. The shopping season spurred by those parades and window displays started becoming a cornerstone of American retail. A lot of businesses depend on holiday shopping to keep them afloat. And not just toy and department stores. Grocerers too relied on the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas to boost foot traffic and sales. In fact, this became such a fixture of the American economy that it moved the date of Thanksgiving. See, in 1939, the depression racked American retail sector realized that the last Thursday in November, legally the date of Thanksgiving, fell on the 30th that year, which shortened the holiday shopping season. Under pressure from the business community, Franklin Roosevelt

9:19 declared that henceforth the holiday would be on the 4th Thursday in November, one week earlier on the 23rd. Oh, and this caused blowback and both dates ended up being celebrated that year with the 23rd sardonically called Franksgiving. I like that a lot actually. Christmas itself only got bigger after the Second World War as America emerged economically strong with a greater manufacturing base that lowered the cost of commercial goods. This combined with a new spirit in the country's young adults who had experienced economic stress through the depression and deprivation during wartime who wanted to give their children the kind of material comforts that they never had. So presents got bigger and more plentiful and there started to be the push back because there was a feeling the season was becoming just too long, too commercial, too focused on bye-bye. And I can get that, right? What about the good old

10:14 traditional aspects of the holiday? What about the wholesome Christmas of, I don't know, like the Victorian era? Oh, like how Charles Dickens showed it in A Christmas Carol. Huh? What do you mean the Victorians invented commercial Christmas? And Dickens DID A LOT OF IT PERSONALLY. Oh boy. Well, okay. Let's keep rolling that clock back then. We'll get to the bottom of this. I promise. While it can be tempting to lay all of the blame on American brands for mixing Christmas and capitalism, this really was a crossatlantic phenomenon. By the 1820s, shopping was becoming a major leisure activity for the British middle class to the point that several books complained about female customers who went shop to shop simply browsing goods without buying anything. The goal. By midentury, several major department stores had opened and the retail sector exploded, partially due to the widespread introduction of street lighting, which

11:09 extended the hours retailers could operate. Manufacturing, trade, technology, and empire also played a part, expanding the number of products available and lowering the cost of things like cloth. This was particularly true of drapers who made dresses and who saw surges of retail activity before Christmas both for gifts and social events. Printing too changed the experience of the holidays. One advent was wrapping paper which became more common in the 1880s. And while previously people had handwritten long and personal Christmas letters to distant family, companies instead began printing cards featuring traditional Victorian Christmas scenes such as Father Christmas, winter landscapes, cats, animals doing human things, anthropomorphized Christmas pies and puddings about to be eaten, a dead bird, a man being mauled by a polar bear, and yes, of course, a lobster attacking a small child. Yeah, Victorians had a

12:04 weird sense of humor. kind of just like us. Printers also turned out holiday literature meant for buying and reading during the cold nights of the season. Not only did A Christmas Carol fit this bill and help shape our idea of what Christmas should be like, see our episode on that here, but Sherlock Holmes himself even made his first appearance as a Christmas story character. In fact, the Christmas shopping season was so huge in Victorian London that it pushed well into November. Grocerers even offered something called Christmas clubs for lowerass workers, a type of credit where they paid in installments leading up to the holidays to ensure they could afford Christmas dinner. The holiday frenzy was often so intense that the shop employees, who often lived above their shops, would regularly work 18 to 20 hours with no overtime during the season. a thing so prevalent that an advocate for shop workers wrote a book

13:00 in 1884 called Death and Disease Behind the Counter, trying to raise awareness of how much the season impacted retail workers to the point that they actually missed the holiday and at times ruined their health. He closed it with an urge for people to shop early and understand how their consumer behavior impacted retail workers, something we should all really kind of think about today as well. And ironically, at the same time, while market forces were extending the British Christmas shopping season, contrary to that book's message, they were also shortening the holiday itself, the needs of the industrial businesses, causing the holiday to shorten from the traditional 12 days off to just three or four. Then later down the line, Britain also started to change its conception of Christmas based on American tastes.

13:49 While Dickens is famous for shaping the season, he leaned heavily on a series of stories by Washington Irving describing the Christmases of old in the English countryside that Irving admitted he pretty much made up. British Christmas cards also started featuring snow, which is uncommon for Britain in December and more a feature of the American Northeast and Midwest. Okay, so by now I imagine you're saying, "We get your point. Brands and commerce haven't stolen Christmas. Rather, they helped create what we know as Christmas today. But you're probably also asking, if that is the case, where do we find the real Christmas? Back before corporations and the market economy. I mean, there were no companies then, but like we said in last year's holiday episode, medieval Christmas was really into excess food and singing to extort goods. That's not capitalism, but it is still getting stuff. So, when if ever was there just a

14:46 simple Christmas without excess? Well, for one last ditch effort to find it, let's rewind the clock one more time. December, ancient Rome. Good old Saturnelia. The Roman December festival of Saturn, where slaves and masters were equal, where gifts were small and simple, perhaps just a comb or a book of poems, because a big gift would be considered bragging. A time of good cheer where the Roman writer Mccubius talked about how Saturnelia kept getting extended from 1 day to 5, but people celebrated it for seven. A holiday excessive enough that Plenny the Younger would lock himself in his room to get away from it. And the stoic philosopher Senica found the holiday so excessive with drunkenness that he struggled with whether or not to take part in it and quoted a popular Roman phrase about the holiday getting out of hand. Quote, "Once December was a month, now it is a year." Which, if I'm going to be

15:47 completely honest, is exactly how I feel when I see Christmas stuff showing up in October. So, when you look at all of this in context, the brands didn't exactly steal Christmas. While they did create many of the modern trappings, the commercial blitz they crafted was really just taking advantage of an existing human tendency to go overboard during the holidays, a pattern we can trace all the way back to ancient Rome. And so whether you decide to cut loose and go wild or keep it small like Senica, from everyone here at Extra History, we wish you and yours the very best holiday season and a happy new year. We're so thankful for all y'all. Thanks a million for watching. Now, come on, Zoe. We got to go wrap some presents. Well, you'll just have to wait and see when the holidays are done. Done done.

16:38 But if you, dear friends at home, don't want to wait until after the ule time to see our next Extra History episode on the origins of the flat earth movement. It is actually live right now, two whole weeks early, over on Nebula, a streaming service a bunch of my creator friends and I helped build. And for a bit of extra holiday magic this season, if you use our link go.nebula.tv/extrahistory, Nebula is now offering free 3-day trials. Now, granted, there is still way too much content on Nebula to watch in 3 days, but you know what? I dare you to try. You could start with some banger Nebula originals like the comedy series Abolish Everything which I was on season 1 for and will be back on season 2, Mad Kings, Amy's Deadend Dreamhouse, Scav, Jet Lag, and of course The Getaway, which I am also on. Then continue with some kick-ass documentaries and films that you can't see anywhere else, like

17:30 Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend, 17 Pages, The Prince, Boomers, Identities, and then why not top off your free trial with Nebula's newest original film, The Dinner Plan. My buddy Patrick Williams has put together a cast for this thing that would make any Hollywood casting director just go like cocoa nuts with jealousy and I loved this thing. It super delivers, especially if the audience reception at the NYC premiere was anything to go by. Congratulations, Patrick. Plus, you can watch tens of thousands of other creative, thought-provoking, and just plain fun videos from over 200 of your favorite creators early and adree. This, of course, does include our back catalog of over a thousand of our videos. And once your trial has convinced you Nebula is really the best deal in streaming, if you used our code to sign up, go.bula.tv/extrahistory or scanned the QR code right over here this December you'll get 50% off an

18:24 annual plan which clocks in at just $30 a year. And because you know t the season for Nebula's lowest price ever with that 50% off deal. You could even spread the love this holiday and snag a Nebula gift card to share all this great stuff with friends and family while supporting the creators you love. That if my math is correct is a winwinwin. Three of them. So to give yourself the gift of trying Nebula for free, click or scan here or stay on the YouTube machine and check out our next video here that I'm sure will have some very festive ads in it. Okay, stop me if you've heard this one, but Zelad's Architectures, Lotus Wolf, Kuya Koy, Joseph Blae, Hunter Eve, Preso, Van Stanton, Dominic Valenciana, and Angela Valenciana are the best legendary patrons. Hold for applause.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in " The History of a Corporate Christmas | Christmas History | Extra History"?

In order: 0:00 The Dinner Plan; 3:00 Felix the Cat; 6:00 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer; 15:00 The Dinner Plan.

What is mentioned in this Extra History episode?

5 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including The Dinner Plan, Felix the Cat, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Coca-Cola, Thomas Nast. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is " The History of a Corporate Christmas | Christmas History | Extra History"?

The episode runs 19 min; the transcript is about 3,226 words in 22 timestamped sections.

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