Christopher Wilson-Archer: Frosty and baby Jesus make curious stablemates

Opinion

I found myself pondering the other day why we continue to support Christmas. For many people it's just an excuse to stop work and start partying.

It is a chance to enjoy the summer weather, to forget the past year and to prepare to forget about the next one.

If we are shopkeepers, Christmas presents the last hope that our financial targets will be exceeded for the year. Yes, Christmas is definitely here to stay.

There are a few downsides to the Christmas season.

The old and lonely get lonelier, the poor get poorer, and we all get a doubling of our normal stress levels as we agonise over who we should buy presents for and what we can give people who already have everything.

Christmas certainly illustrates the principle that one person's misery is someone else's opportunity.

Despite all the tinsel and the jollity of the season, I cannot help thinking that we have bought into a dreadful sham that might yet become a nightmare.

Why this unseasonable depression?

I have seen Armageddon. Not the real thing, just a portent appearing in the guise of Tim Allen or, more specifically, his movie props.

Last week I went to see Allen's Christmas with the Kranks.

Before anybody starts laughing, let me say that I still have a grudging respect for this toolman turned philosopher. I suspect that my sympathy stems from having shared similar challenges in the area of home renovation.

The movie is about a husband and wife who, in the absence of their wonderful daughter, Blair, decide to boycott Christmas.

In breaking ranks and doing this they incur the disapproval and hostility of their previously wonderful neighbours.

Now, honestly, how many of us have thought of doing exactly what the Kranks attempted to do? I say attempted because the Kranks are destined to fail in their boycott.

Surely, most of us have made some half-hearted attempts over the years to retreat from Christmas extravagances.

I thought that I could escape from the trap when the children left home.

Many of us say that we are doing Christmas for the children. Really? For me the problem has become worse and I'm now putting together colour-co-ordinated Christmas trees.

I could blame others for instilling this recent habit in me, but I must confess that it already lay dormant just looking for an opportunity to waken.

The truly terrifying apparition of things-to-come was seen in the extraordinary decoration which was presented as normal in the Kranks' neighbourhood.

Along with kilometres of coloured lights, the decorations included an enormous, glowing effigy of Frosty the Snowman, which had to be put on the roofs of all the houses in the district.

How did Frosty get into the Christmas story?

Take a moment to reflect on the cast of the original story, set in Bethlehem. We have the Virgin Mary, the angels, the shepherds, the sheep and ox, the Three Wise Men, Joseph, the baby Jesus - and Frosty the Snowman.

This last entry does not fit the storyline. Even Santa comes with more credibility.

Father Christmas, alias Santa Claus, received his inspiration and name from Sinter Klaas, which was the nickname given to the 4th-century St Nicholas by Dutch settlers in New York in the late 17th century.

Popular author Washington Irving gave Americans their first detailed information about the Dutch version of St Nicholas.

This Dutch-American Santa Claus progressed towards his ultimate Americanised form in 1822, when he featured in the Clement Clarke Moore poem commonly known as The Night Before Christmas .

Moore invented such details as the names of the reindeer.

The Santa image was further elaborated on by Thomas Nast, who depicted him as a rotund, cheerful man with a full white beard, holding a sack laden with toys.

Nast, political cartoonist for Harper's Weekly from the 1860s to the 1880s, added such details as Santa's workshop at the North Pole and Santa's list of the good and bad children of the world.

He also gave Santa his red suit trimmed with white fur, a North Pole workshop, elves to do the work, and his wife, Mrs Claus.

Rudolph, the ninth reindeer, with a red and shiny nose, was invented in 1939 by an advertising writer for the Montgomery Ward Company.

Santa even became a political pawn.

During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln asked Nast to do an illustration showing Santa with Union troops.

So much for the traditional elements of Christmas. But what about Frosty, and, more importantly, what comes next?

More Christmas myths are being invented each year to support the merchandising emphasis.

This might be good fun, but what happens when we decide to drop the original cast? Some sort of Christmas redundancy agreement that leaves Frosty and Santa - and removes Jesus?

What if the original story is not just another myth but is, indeed, an extraordinary truth?

As singer Joan Osborne asks: "What if God was one of us?"

Religion is such an embarrassing thing. Perhaps that is why so many people try to restrict it to one or two time-spots during the year.

Perhaps that is why we need to invent reindeer and elves and Mrs Claus. Perhaps that is why we now need Frosty.

* Christopher Wilson-Archer is a Henderson teacher and writer.