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Santa Claus

The origin of Santa Claus begins in the 4th century with Saint Nicolas, Bishop of Myra, an area in Turkey. By all accounts St. Nicholas was a generous man, particularly devoted to children.  After his death around 340 AD he was buried in Myra, but in 1087 Italian sailors purportedly stole his remains and removed them to Bari, Italy, greatly increasing St. Nicholas’ popularity throughout Europe. His kindness and reputation for generosity gave rise to claims that he could perform miracles and devotion to him increased. St. Nicholas became the patron saint of Russia, where he was known by his red cape, flowing white beard, and bishop’s mitre.  After the Reformation, European followers of St. Nicholas dwindled, but the legend was kept alive in Holland where the Dutch spelling of his name Sint Nikolaas was eventually transformed to Sinterklaas.  Dutch colonists brought this tradition with them to America in the 17th century and here the Anglican name of Santa Claus emerged.

Other countries feature different gift bearers for the Christmas or Advent season: La Befana in Italy, The Three Kings in Spain, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, Christkind or the Christ Child in Switzerland and Austria; Father Christmas in England; and Pere Noël, Father Christmas, or the Christ Child in France.

In 16th-century Germany fir trees were decorated, both indoors and out, with apples, roses, gilded candies, and colored paper.  In the Middle Ages, a popular religious play depicted the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Christmas Trees

It is thought that protestant reformer Martin Luther first adorned trees with light.  While coming home one December evening, the beauty of the stars shining through the branches of a fir inspired him to recreate the effect by placing candles on the branches of a small fir tree inside his home.

The

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The easy availability of credit has created what Robert Manning calls our Credit Card Nation, where we are encouraged to shop until we drop. In the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush made that point shamelessly when he told the American people that the best way to help in that traumatic period was to go shopping again. He knew, even if most Americans didn’t, that it is their non-stop consumption that drives the economy. Without it, I guess, the terrorists could have won.

”In fact,” Robert Manning writes in his seminal book on credit cards, “with the ascendance of the post-industrial economy, bank credit cards have become an essential technological and financial tool for commercial transactions as well as an increasingly important macro-economic tool for U.S. Policy-makers.”

Shopping is our real national pastime, but it comes, as he warns, at a price that is not advertised in the malls:

The idyllic wonderland of consumer credit too often belies a reality of unknown sacrifices and enduring debt… the credit card industry is playing a crucial role in transforming American consumer attitudes. The promotion of “immediate gratification” ruptures the cognitive connection between earnings/saving and credit/debt that has traditionally shaped consumer behavior. It is this “cognitive disconnect,” with its siren song “Buy, buy, buy. It could be free, free, free” that constitutes the cornerstone of the Credit Card Nation.

And so it is not surprising that holidays are used or created as national events to spur consumption. They have become rituals of shopping. None is as important as the first day after Thanksgiving, itself a day set aside for overindulgence at the kitchen table. That day now has a name, Black Friday, so called because it is supposed to be the day when the whole retail sector goes into the black financially. (This may not have been such a wise use of

References and allusions

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” was, in fact, an extraordinary three-way amalgam of Jack Kerouac, the Guthrie/Pete Seeger song “Taking It Easy” (‘mom was in the kitchen preparing to eat/sis was in the pantry looking for some yeast’) and the riffed-up rock’n'roll poetry of Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business”.

While Dylan was not a member of the original Beat circles of the 1950s, Kerouac’s The Subterraneans, a novel published in 1958 about the Beats, has been cited as a possible inspiration for the song’s title. Stretching further back, the title alludes to Notes from Underground, a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose works were popular with Beat writers such as Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.[citation needed]

The song’s first line is a reference to codeine distillation and politics of the time: “Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine / I’m on the pavement thinkin’ about the Government”. The song also depicts some of the growing conflicts between “straight” or “square” (40-hour workers) and the emerging 1960s counterculture. The widespread use of recreational drugs, and turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War were both starting to take hold of the nation, and Dylan’s hyperkinetic lyrics were dense with up-to-the-minute allusions to important emerging elements in the 1960s youth culture. According to rock journalist Andy Gill, “an entire generation recognized the zeitgeist in the verbal whirlwind of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’.”

The song also references the struggles surrounding the American civil rights movement (“Better stay away from those / That carry around a fire hose”). (During the civil rights movement, peaceful protestors were beaten and sprayed with high pressure fire hoses ). In spite of the political nature of the lyrics, the song went on to become the first Top 40 hit for Dylan in the United States.

Influence

Listed by Rolling Stone magazine as the 332nd “Greatest Song of All

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