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Christmas Presence: Narrativity and the Santa Claus Myth Adam Cantor McGill University, Montreal (Canada) Department of Art History and Communication Studies What is the nature of the Santa Claus myth? Is it an innocent remembrance of childhood past or is it an unconscious espousal of religious/corporate doctrine? If the latter, then is there anything to be salvaged from the myth? If there is anything to be salvaged then is it worthwhile to teach this myth to children (or to lie to them about anything like this?). Given the mass presence of Santa Claus in the media, can the myth even be avoided? Grounding itself in Bhabha's idea of performance and preservation and in discussion of narrative by Peter Brooks, Walter Ong and others, this work considers the process of the performance of the myth of Santa Claus from the initial childhood stage through to adulthood. Santa Claus' myth is realized through a series of life long repetitions, some imaginary some physical, that fit significantly into the larger pattern of North American life. The performance of the myth is fascinating in that it can only be created through an oral improvisation based on a limited number of key images existing in the public imagination (I identify these as: Santa in his workshop making toys/ Santa in his sledge flying over the heavens with his sack of toys/ and Santa going from the rooftop to the chimney to the Christmas tree to deliver presents…from these a story specific to each household and using the specifics of each household must be created by the teller for the specific child). The very nature of the telling, though, will lead to the destruction of Santa, as the child begins to pick out logical fallacies (here I shall describe my own tragic loss of the jolly fat man from my childish pantheon). Thus, it is in the very nature of the creation of the myth that its destruction is sewn. Yet the destruction is never total, the telling and performance of the myth is always reborn in the mind of the next generation. Truly, an individual merely goes from being a believer in the physical Santa to a believer in the idea of Santa.
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