Pictures from the North Pole

Since the weather has been getting nicer in our pleasant valley of the insane, I find that it’s time to start talking about Christmas. Well, at least, I want to talk about Santa Claus. Why, you might ask? Well, I believe that Santa is a parody of the holiday and of himself. He’s originally based on St. Nicholas, who is known for his charity. The character that is based off of him has transformed into a fat, cheerful, grandfather figure who gives out presents to all the good little believers. Today, however, Santa is more known for being in every commercial, in every storefront, on every bottle of Coke around Christmas. Companies and corporations are taking advantage of this image of charity and goodwill to coerce people to conform to consumerism.
There is a countermovement developing from this fact. That is, putting Santa in dress or situations that the character does not technically belong, but, because he is a public domain figure, can be in. Sexy Santa, Barbie Santa, Futurama’s evil robot Santa, all parodies of this parody. I guess one could say, in a sense, Santa Claus is veritable endless feedback loop of parody, doomed to float for a very long time in the mainstream consciousness.