Ah, yes...Christmas. An interesting story on that.
In the 19th century, Americans used to give gifts for New Years. Technically, if you want to get totally traditional, gifts should have been given on Dec. 6th, the feast day of St. Nicholas. In the 1890s, business successfully got people to change the tradition to Dec. 25th, because sales weren't going too well and they hypothesized that lumping gift giving with a religious holiday would guilt people into buying more. Hence, the origin of the commericalism of Christmas.
The modern image of Santa Claus originated from the Coca-Cola Corporation, whose depiction of Santa in a 1940s ad campaign has since stuck.
Commercialism...commercialism...
Melon
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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time
