Jesus or Santa? Who Is The Bigger Christmas Icon?
It’s that time of year kiddies! Christmas! Christmas means different things to different people. To Christians it’s a celebration of the birth of Christ. To shoppers it’s the season to give gifts, revive the economy, run up some new debt, and get a truly poor return on investment for every dollar you spend on someone else. Ah, the joy of giving!
It is also a confusing time of year as two massive icons compete for the spotlight. Is Christmas about Jesus and his message, or Santa and his commercial messages? What the heck does a fat Swedish Saint (with at best a questionable fondness for children) have to do with celebrating the coming of the Messiah? Well nothing actually. Despite that, somehow these two have existed together for years (probably because Jesus is so darn forgiving).
For a great deal of people, Christmas is both a religious holiday and retail shopping extravaganza. Unfortunately, you don’t actually have to believe in Jesus or Santa to participate. Bumble would like to point out, it is a little obvious to hop on the “Jesus bandwagon” just because you get stuff on his birthday. For the record, you are probably not fooling him! But sadly, all you need is cash or available credit to have a yourself a merry little Christmas thanks to Santa.
Don’t get Bumble wrong, Jesus is big this time of year. Church attendance soars on his Birthday. Little children do pageants about his birth in a faraway manger. Christians try very hard to keep him in the forefront of the holiday. Somehow in mainstream America he still ends up second fiddle.
Face it, Santa is bigger at this time of year. His impact is felt from main street to wall street. Little kids start getting reminded to be good around Black Friday. Otherwise Santa will give them just a lump of coal if they keep being naughty. Retailers plan their entire yearly profits around the Santa season.
So if the holiday was created to celebrate Jesus the question remains, why is the fat Swede bigger this time of year? His face is everywhere and it’s not even his birthday! The answer is simple…
Superior Marketing
Let’s take an unbiased look at the difference in how both are presented…
|
Santa
|
Jesus
|
Advantage | ||
|
Start of Busy Season |
Black Friday |
Good Friday |
|
It’s tough to promote yourself when Santa kicks off the shopping season with a Parade. |
| Knows when you are Naughty or Nice? | Yes | Yes | Tie | |
|
Bribes you for being good like a weekend dad? |
Yes |
No |
|
Giving out X-Boxes certainly makes you popular. |
|
Corporate sponsers |
Macy’s, Coke and many more |
None |
|
Yikes, not a lot of money behind Jesus on the marketing front. |
|
Visit him at… |
The Mall |
Church |
|
Face it, you spend more time at the mall this time of year. You can’t help but see Santa more. |
|
Image Stylist |
Coca-Cola & Haddon Sundblom, Norman Rockwell |
Renaissance Masters |
|
When it comes to image tweaking Michaelangelo is just a bit too artsy for Joe Sixpack. |
|
Pitch man for… |
Everything! Beer, Cigarettes and toys for kids too! |
Salvation |
|
The fat guy will sell anything to support his cookie habit and keep his name in the spotlight. |
|
Literary Origins |
Twas the Night Before Christmas |
Holy Bible |
|
The Bible is THE all time best seller. Finally one for JC! |
|
Sales Generated |
Billions |
Zero |
|
Seems kind of unfair since Jesus works for non-profit organizations like the church and only does grass roots marketing. |
This just goes to show the power of marketing. Clearly you don’t have to be the first to market with something to dominate the market share. Heck, Jesus invented Christmas, and Santa is still just better at self promotion and keeping himself in the spotlight.
Bumble can't make this stuff up!
He also has one crack marketing team. The modern Santa image was perfected by a gentleman named Haddon Sunblum for Coca Cola. Haddon also developed two other famous iconic images.
Aunt Jemima and the Quaker Oats man!
Talk about having a team of pros at your disposal.
Santa has also been constantly pitching products. Billy Mays pales in comparison. Bumble will close with just a few of the vintage ads featuring Santa over the years. Imagine the endorsement dollars it takes to employ all those elves.
Some of these are questionable at best.
MILF and Cookies for Santa?
Enjoy that beer little kiddies!
Somke up Johnny!
Santa is a media whore!
Rewards you if you are nice?
Might want to change the Jesus side to “Enternal life in heaven”.
Oops good point! Bumble really meant, “buys your goodness with bribes”.
This is fantastic! Right on!
Love it! (=
Well, the truth is no one really knows when Jesus was born. The Western Church of Rome, according to some accounts, decided to celebrate Christ’s Mass in December 25 of AD 336 in order to increase conversion efforts because the pagans celebrated dies natalis solis invicti at around the same time.
So, if you want, you can celebrate the fat sweedish saint day and be as commercial and material as you want. Help restore our economy and fatten CEO bonuses in the spring. We need the boost anyway. As for Jesus’ birthday, please celebrate it every day by helping a poor soul in need.
Now that’s the kind of PR Jesus needs. People should try to be good every day not just because they want a material reward. That was really the point I was making. Don’t we send mixed messages telling kids to believe in Santa and God? Whether you believe in the flying spaghetti monster, Jesus, Allah, Buddah or Muhammed you can be a good person every day, or at least try.
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