Cold War Santa with Sarah Archer

Imagine if 17 on Fire Levitating Eyeballs appeared in front of you and were like, don't freak out! [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Welcome to your wrong about the podcast where we love to investigate the mystery that is Santa. And so of course this week we are joined by Sarah Archer, our Santa correspondent. We did a Santa episode last year, which I would love for you to listen to. We had a great time. And this time we're talking about a particular moment in Santa history. We're talking about the Cold War Santa and how the 1950s and the post-war era in the United States transformed what we make of Christmas and what Christmas has made of us. We've had many great past Sarah Archer episodes, including one on Martha Stewart and one of my favorites titled The Trad Wife Rises. And of course when we were talking about Santa we're talking about so much else. And I love getting into the back rooms where all of these ideas connect and somehow a lot of these ideas involve women doing more work, which I also find interesting. Also, as you may or may not know, I have an exciting new show out with CBC podcasts. It's called The Devil You Know. It's about the Satanic Panic. If you've been listening to me talk about the Satanic Panic for the past seven years, then this is a place where we get to interview people, learn about the nooks and crannies of North America, how this flourished and why and get into some of the questions that we just have not been able to explore in this show. But I would love for you to join us over there. And we will be putting out new episodes for the next couple weeks as well as bonus episodes. And you can find The Devil You Know wherever you get your podcasts, of course. We also have a very fun bonus episode coming soon. It is a little survivalism Q&A with our survival correspondent Blair Braverman. And more little bonus surprises are also coming over on Patreon. So we hope you join us over there or on Apple Plus subscriptions. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for continuing on into the wintertime if that's what's happening to you too right now. And here's your episode. Welcome to your wrong about the podcast where once again the holidays are happening to us. And with me today is Sarah Archer who is terror, I say it, our Christmas correspondent. Paul. And you are here with us today to talk about, I was reflecting on this this morning. There are some phrases you can only say in an Oprah voice. And this is one of them. Cold war center. It is perfect. It needs to be said in an Oprah voice. And it needs to be like arms extended. Yeah. Here tossing from side to side. Yeah. And either we deliberately put Santa Claus on pause in unintentional rhyme. At the end of the last episode. Santa Claus on pause sounds like a Disney movie. Santa Claus on pause. It doesn't. Yeah. From the 80s. It's about Santa Claus dying and being reincarnated as a corgi who's voiced by Bo Bridges. Can we make that happen? Is there a way that we can make that happen by December? I'm sure we're the eye we could, but please don't. We need the water. Someday your great grandchildren will fight to the death over a teaspoon of water. And we're throwing it away generating little videos of hot blondes doing God knows water. They don't like it. Obviously. It's only a nose. And not even myself. I know. But yeah, so you're right. We put a pen and Santa. Tell us about that. What was our episode? What's the prequel to this episode? So that's what I was actually going to ask you to reflect on what your impression was. Yeah. What's the hustler to this episode's the color of money? Exactly. That we left say, you know, we went we sort of tore through history from the ancient world to kind of the guilty age in the United States. But I wanted to get your sort of overall impression of kind of who and what Santa was sort of what is Christmas for in this era? What we left off? You know what I mean? And kind of who was he? What is he? What was he getting up to? Yeah, I'll try. I'm going to the interesting thing about making a podcast, I think, and maybe you experience this as well as that to me, like I'm focused so much as we're making the show on the conversation we're having in the present moment that it feels like my brain makes fewer memories because it's so focused on what's going on right now. And then I guess like release everything I just learned to make room for the next thing. 100% feels like. And so if I listen back to an episode, I often I'm like, wow, that's so interesting. Or I'll say, make an observation. I'll be like, oh, it's pretty good, you know, because I don't remember thinking that because I'm fortunate because some of my best revelations I have forgotten about. But luckily they were recorded in audio format and we have notes. Well, exactly, which is why Nixon maybe had the right to talk to him about so many things. Yes, that's well, certainly about cottage cheese. I mean, let's be honest. Yes, and great for it. Yeah. Nixon was the OG cottage cheese influencer, girly pop, I must say. Girly pops. Yeah. Nixon ate like a girly pop. It must be said. That's what was going on with him. When he was in law school, this is true. He was surviving on candy bars. Was he really? Just like a girly pop. Whoa. Nuts, nuget, little chocolate. I think Milky Way. I want to see. Okay, so no nuts. All right. All right. But I can't, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't testify to it on the right side. I like all candy bars. But I would never take one from a baby. People need to know if their podcast host is a crook. Yeah. Yeah, you do a good Nixon. I don't know if I've ever heard your Nixon before. Thank you. Yeah. Look, I'm not saying I'm great at it, but I do take some pride in my, no, I take pride pride with some people say too much. That's like they would. That's okay. But I take pride in my Nixon impression and my Ethel Merman impression as I think you know. I think, yes, I think I do know that. Have I done that one for you? Yeah. I think you have. Yeah. You're supposed to say no. I know. Do it again. Do it for the first time. Is there a song or perhaps a Christmas song you'd like to hear in the style of Ethel Merman? Oh my god. Can you do Santa, baby? Okay. Yes. Santa, baby. Say, blow under the tree for me. Wow. She's got learning. She's got a cold. She, but she's supposed to. Yes. Always. But I love her so much. Oh my god. That's really, I, I, now that you've done it, I think that might have been the first time I heard it, which is really exciting. Well, anyway. Okay. So the rule of Santa, as we had talked about it, and Christmas, I think was not so different actually from an episode I did with Kelsey WebRismith, a while ago on the show about the history of Halloween, which is this idea that it started off as something that was kind of like buy and for the people and became sort of co-opted and commodified and set in place as a certain type of much more controllable and less chaotic behavior where, you know, and kind of our originating Christmas traditions, we have, you know, what, like the wasailing, I guess, as a word, we're exactly wasailing. Tell us about wasailing. Right, which initially were wasailing was sailing. Yes. What, like, which I think nowadays, if you're familiar with the word wasail and wasailing, your association probably with it is like people and bonnets and kind of going from house to house and, you know, kind of when it's snowing, which it never does on Christmas, but it's that this kind of Victorian, you know, very cozy image. Did you hear the factoid that I probably mentioned in this previous episode that Dickens grew up during an unusually snowy sort of like weather period in England, and that's why he wrote about somewhere snowy Christmas stuff partly. Yeah. Maybe. Which might be true. I actually don't know whether that's true or not, but I believe it. And then, you know, and then to us in America today, Christmas is like Dickens, although we don't bother reading him because his books are too long. Right. But the idea of snow as a essential to Christmas feels like derived partly from his particular childhood, which is so interesting. But it's like an unattainable goal because we can't control it. And it never happens. Right. And because interestingly in places where it snows a lot, it seems to mostly do it in like November and March. Right. So it's like Valentine's day or like Arbor day. I don't know what, you know, what holidays are there? And well, like it's sometimes Easter. But we had kind of gone back in time to St. Nicholas, who was a real person, right? Who existed in the ancient world. Third century, what we now call turkey. He was associated with charitable acts toward a group of young women's sisters who he helped prevent from having to become prostitutes. And that was what he was famous for. So that was Santa Claus in the ancient world. He's associated then he gets kind of grafted onto European celebrations like UL and for the sort of figure of father Christmas, who's kind of associated in a general way with all these different kind of folkloric traditions throughout Europe. So the fact that Santa Claus has a lot of different names like he'll sort of be referred to as Saint Nick, Chris Cringle, Santa's and Clause, is a kind of a fossil record of the fact that he's sort of woven together from these different traditions. Right. Just like the word bimbo, which is equally etymologically fascinating. Exactly. Yes. And there was this group of prominent New Yorkers, which included, it was our three guys who we talked about merchant, John Pentard, the writer Washington Irving and poet and real estate heir, Clemen Clark Moore, who wrote a visit from St. Nicholas. And their works collectively in kind of thinking about this figure of Santa Claus and how Christmas could be celebrated helped transform Christmas from kind of a rowdy holiday that happened outdoors where a lot of like sort of youths would be like knocking on your door demanding alcohol. It was youth Sarah. It was youths on the street. They wanted everybody inside. They said like they wanted everybody indoors. They want it, you know, like play with a toy, be inside, have a nice feast, do something, be a pain in the neck, but do it inside and don't do terrorize the community. And this is the moment when Christmas bivots from being kind of this basically holiday sort of festival for grownups to being very child focused and kind of self-consciously so interesting. So it go it starts off as maybe something a little bit more like Marty Grau. Yes. Absolutely. It starts off especially in New York City. Right. We're or St. Patrick's Day exactly. We're today for like normal working people to cut loose. To cut loose, to have yeah have a cocktail be kind of like rousting about. Yeah. Puking the street perhaps. You can't just rest. Yeah. Once or twice a year. Better than indoors. And so the that poem which you read for us as I recall in the voice of broad surname is baby Jesus is intended. A visit from St. Nicholas basically sets the scene for the way that we envision Santa Claus now. Right. Although as we discussed as I remember now he's like a tiny little guy. He's a tiny little guy. So this is why we're going to look at your your fancy Cold War Christmas document because there are some nice images in this kind of transitional period of Santa from the Guild of Day actually. The first one is from Harper's Weekly incredible and describe what we're seeing. He's like it I would say not no he's got a nice red Mac on I would say or like a big sort of red one piece cloak with a nice pointed hood. Actually, it's kind of dressed like a cardinal isn't he? Yep. Yeah. And he's got like big kind of knuckily hands and a big and a big bushy beard. Exactly. And he's tall. And he's tall clearly based on kind of how he is in relation to the tree. He's next to I think. I see me gets a full size tree. Exactly. He's kind of next to what looks like it's probably a pine tree and that's kind of he's kind of towering over. Yeah. He looks like an old human man with a crinkly smiley face and a big white beard and white hair which is very familiar to what we know now although he's less stylized. Santa I think eventually begins to look like a drunk you know because he's a little bit too rosy at times. It's a little bit yes. Well actually and we're going to get to that because he's the next one if you scroll down is from the turn of the century about a decade or two later. And this to me this is kind of like classic or Santa like what he's wearing. Yes. This is like Coca-Cola Santa because he's got like a velvet coat with a white fur trim and white fur cuffs. Actually, it looks like he's got white gloves on which is interesting. It is cold out there you know and you're working with snow when you're getting into all those chimneys and a wavy very well conditioned white beard and white hair and the traditional I think red velvet Santa cap with the white fur trim and he's got a sack full of toys of course including a little toy drum which I think you see a lot I assume because we like to talk about the little drummer boy although I don't know when that showed up or because drums look kind of cool. And I think as you're getting at something that's actually like really key to the way that he's portrayed in this era which is that he becomes as we talked about Stephen Nissenbaum's wonderful book The Battle for Christmas which traces Santa's evolution kind of throughout the 19th century. And the way in which he becomes almost a figure I think it's possible to make the case that he's a figure of the arts and crafts movement in a way because he's depicted very often and we're going to look at this image again as a carpenter in a workshop using old-fashioned tools to make increasingly technologically complicated toys. And he's doing this really at the height of the industrial revolution right it's it's kind of a Victorian iteration of a medieval scene. And it's happening at the time when it I mean it is so weird to even contemplate the United States as not a consumer society it because we not have any living memory of that. But there was a time when this idea even like there was an op-ed ran in a New Hampshire newspaper in the 1830s called Think Before You Buy that was all about Nissenbaum quotes this in his book about you know are we are we spoiling these kids is it you know conspicuous consumption is it just you know is it sensible does it you know what is this all for so one of the key things to note kind of before diving in is that Santa's scene his mise en scène his workshop his outfit what he does the fact that he sort of toys get to you as a small child magically and not right at a cash register and not from a big department store and not like floating or shipped in on a big you know shipping container he kind of craft washes the whole consumer process that makes Christmas possible. And what's interesting and what we're going to look at today is three different Christmas visual extravagances if you want to call them one movie and two cartoons both of which have quite a lot of anti-consumerist sentiment built in even as they kind of revel in the splendor of it all so it's the other thing is that you may have heard Sarah that we're that there's a war on Christmas. Oh yes I have heard about that which I guess we should we should stay safe from the outset is a not true but be if it were true and is kind of fighting a battle against an assertion that isn't real which is that there was a time before you know sometime maybe in the 19th century maybe in the Middle Ages maybe you know some other kind of glittering candlelit time that is very pretty and you call it when Christmas was about the spirit of you know goodwill towards men and charity and you know being warm and cozy and having fun with your kids and it wasn't about buying stuff and it wasn't about consumption and in fact there is no version of that holiday that ever existed like when if you came child-focused is when it became retail focused so those two things have never existed separately and but it is it's easier to be nostalgic about something that never was because you can't recreate it right and also because it's like if you were nostalgic for the actual past you would have to let in all the stuff about it that was more complicated exactly exactly definition of sages like a selective emotion and you'd have to start becoming charitable yourself in the present day which like got for bid so there's so the the guilden ages when a lot of our our customs gel in in americans in 1870 it becomes a federal holiday Lewis Prang markets the first commercially available Christmas cards in 1875 that is roughly the time exactly right that's sort of like alternative crayon brand that's right isn't are they kind of they're like brocks candy yeah the ones that like that art crayon is like mom got me prangs yeah that's all right it's it's like it's it's a little do until you can get a real crayon you can get your real with a built-in sharpener yeah and this is also the moment when we start to have Santa present in department stores so instead of so there's this the same of the crime exactly like instead of sort of like hiding the commercialness of it Santa as a persona gets kind of woven together with the process almost as though you're going to see the wizard you know you're going to see the magical man who's in the fancy place and you it's kind of like confession it is completely insane by the way to have to have children pose annually for a meet and greet with Santa which I would never do as a kid I think I was one of the many kids who absolutely melted down to the lake which makes sense because aside from the whole stranger danger element of a meeting Santa is like meeting god based on the level of his pre lake it's kind of more important when you're a kid because presents are a lot more real to you than like damn nation or whatever oh yeah and yeah as we talked about it last time the Santa's should be smaller there should be approximately the size of Zelda Rubenstein and they should talk very quietly oh that's such a good idea yeah they should be like hello because essentially I mean in a strange way it's like it had there has has certain things in common with going to confession if that you sort of go to a special place and you see a man in a red robe in you know bishops red and you tell him your hearts desires and whether you were good or bad yeah and he takes notes and then you know I guess instead of you know having to say 800 Hail Mary as you might get a fire engine that's you know does it look like a different outcome but it's like strangely ritualistic about how all of that transpires and it's you know it's also it's like a guy in a beard it's sort of it I can see why kids melt down I think it's a pretty normal reaction yes beards are very scary even if you know someone who has a beard as a kid it's it's a it can be stressful if you scroll down you will see a Santa in a different ensemble yeah describe to us what we're seeing all right so in my best a league of there are a newsreel voice you'll text your size Santa Claus has gone to war your gift plenty of weapons the inland way for USA and you caption this wartime propaganda poster from the office of war information 1941 and Santa is wearing you know a nice kind of a fatigue of coat yeah yeah I don't know any of the correct terminology neither do I he's he's joined up he's got a helmet on his beard has been shorn to like regulation and he and we also are seeing the face of drunken Santa because exactly very truly as rad as two cherries and so the timing of this is interesting because they're one of the funny things that I discovered when I was researching mid-century christmas is that there are people who think and I don't think we can blame anybody for this because it actually kind of makes sense that Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus like just lock-stocking barrel like the Coca-Cola company what they did invent was a very recognizable depiction of Santa and a copy rightable one and a copy I think because it was designed by a just an artist named hadn't sunblum who lived in Michigan and he was you can google him he was really cool guy he often is shown wearing a Hawaiian shirt and he is the guy who sort of put you know pen to paper and created Coca-Cola Santa and did so in a way that what he wanted to try to do was not make it look like a guy dressed up but make it look like a real guy like kind of make it look like a kind of cozy older kind of grandfatherly you know rosy-cheeked guy which is interesting because the outfit has become so ritualized I know I know I feel like seeing somebody wearing like a conductor uniform or something or like an airline pilot it's like not a person it's an identity exactly it's it's his workout fit yeah like busy town like that what like he's like a vert the guy in busy town who brings everybody prezzies is he influenced it all by the ghost of Christmas present in Charles Dickens oh absolutely Christmas Carol okay because he's wearing velvet and erm and maybe and one of the things that's interesting about that is that you'll sometimes see that figure the sort of ghost of Christmas present wearing green and sometimes before the 16th century bishops wore green so that you'll sometimes see the reason Santa wears red is because he's wearing bishops clothes but sometimes you'll it'll kind of toggle back and forth so but Coca-Cola Santa is sort of the regularized Santa image that we end up inheriting kind of in the late 1930s and 40s and this is right around the time that the United States enters World War II and the celebration of Christmas then becomes kind of DIY and ad hoc there's a lot of rationing of not just like the food is what a lot of people remember you know coffee let's all have a World War II Christmas no we're out of Christmas we're gonna have a ration Christmas yeah no meat no dairy we're gonna drink chickery and tell tall tales exactly we're gonna like we're gonna sit around the radio we're gonna stare at it yeah we're gonna have have coffee with with foe sugar so but basically everything that you kind of think to do around the holidays is curtailed rubber and metal are both in short supply gasoline anything nylon long distance phone calls are restricted I think it's easy for me to forget today sorry to interject yeah but I think it's easy for me to forget today because I'm off in a little bit like startled when I'm reminded of it that like Americans in a way that I think would be very divisive today obviously during World War II you know not everybody not unilaterally you know in a lot more Americans were isolationist and we've like chosen to remember been educated about typically during this time period but really in like as I learned from my molly books Americans to a great degree believed that it was their patriotic duty to endure personal deprivation in order to help the war effort that is also we'll get to this but that's something that is then becomes taken up by advertisers like that impulse that you're describing right what is interesting because in a way it sort of like becomes folded into capitalism the sort of like identity of yeah helping being the kind of person is helping the war effort exactly because if you scroll down past Santa at war you will find two print ads for Hoover vacuum and the first one you'll see is not advertising a vacuum cleaner what is it advertising sir Marshall it says give her a war bond and you give her the best and that's a pair of sexy lady hands with pretty red nail polish opening up a beautiful war bond with a red ribbon and then let's read the copy here for 35 years at Christmas time it has been give her a Hoover and you give her the best today few Hoover cleaners are available the Hoover company is not making electric cleaners now it is making materials of war this Christmas a war bond is just about the finest present we can think of someday there'll be a victory someday those war bonds will turn into US currency now let them stand for the money you're saving for the things you can't buy the money you'll have when the good day capital letters comes to pay for new electric cleaners and automobiles and refrigerators and stoves then again we'll say when Christmas rolls round give her a Hoover and you give her the best it beats as it sweeps the Hoover company north cat no incredible very nice incredible right it's it's either advertising delayed gratification which is so interesting because that's not something that we typically find yeah and this was essentially women's magazines and home magazines jumped on this idea that there were kind of workarounds to be had for you know you could do things like shave bar soap or use powdered looks soap to make convincing fake snow or you know you could sort of use like natural things like shells and pine cones could be sort of fashioned into ornaments and decor and what's interesting is that after the war all the big companies that make stuff like DuPont and Reynolds and Alcoa and 3M continue to sort of advertise and promote this idea that you can kind of DIY make your own stuff only now you're using like tinfoil cellophane plastic etc but at the time it is I don't know if you're aware of this but the I was not aware of this until I started doing this research most of the really good Christmas stuff historically came from Germany so all like your ornaments toys like really good children's toys yeah yeah so not only are we rationing you know things like meat dairy you know all sugar coffee all that stuff because where do all the nutcracker is come from exactly oh my god exactly where just the the Freudian ballet come from it has it has got to be Germany the nutcracker is one of the weirdest incredibly weird is a part of annual holiday American life it's just amazing yeah it's incredible that it it just kind of goes uncommented on yeah it is so Freudian you're having a dream about in that cracker and rats and they're doing their battling over you that is actually the most Freudian thing imagine I'm so glad that Freud never had the chance to analyze Clara I know poor Clara in in Clara's case well I think it all worked out for her because she probably got to wake up and he did fun cookin or something exactly and so this is like interesting moment where every company it's weird to think again a sort of like thinking about the US as not being a consumer society it's also kind of weird to think about the fact that there didn't used to be a military industrial complex the way we have we sort of are permanently there are all these big companies against you know Raytheon and Boeing and North of Grenham that are constantly producing things and have government contracts and you know sell things to armies overseas but are you know massive huge industrial concerns that didn't really exist when the US entered World War II and so the reason that all these companies like Hoover were sort of you know making things quote-unquote materials for war is because they had to like there just wasn't an existing infrastructure in place for that to happen oh interesting so basically the government was like hey vacuum yeah as you are going to make our technology now you can't do vacuums anymore you're busy and it happened to people too this is actually the reason that my my family lives on the east coast is because my grandfather who was a metallurgical engineer had been working on all the ways that were used mostly to make skyscrapers more flexible and stronger like the metal that was used in skyscrapers like that giant tower and and central park whatever that's going to collapse and kill everyone apparently could he use him apparently they didn't ask him because he has he is in sky in in metallurgical heaven so he was not available to be asked but I think that was the first problem but they basically people like him who were sort of working on practical industrial problems were sort of like okay you're going to go work at this lab on the east coast that's doing World War II related metallurgy stuff and kind of figuring out you know how can we apply what you've learned to airplane propellers or you know some part of a machine that we need to to refine and so then after the war ends this infrastructure is still there and that part of what we think of as the kind of consumer boom that took place quote unquote after the war like everybody's buying fridges and sofas and TVs they are and there is Ronald Reagan general is encouraging everyone to do so and they say yes Ronald Reagan but it's also because the capacity is there so there's this it isn't just that people are kind of starving to shop if you build it they will come exactly so what we are going to do I think is we should look let's take a peek at a clip from Miracle on 34th Street because I understand that but there must be something you want for Christmas something you haven't eaten told your mother about hey oh come on now why don't you give me a chance oh it's Natalie what it's Natalie what little rushing child yeah which nobody knew Santa has his beard at word like what's it it's only 1947 that's what I want for Christmas you're with a doll's house like this no a real house if you're really Santa Claus you can get it for me and if you can't you're me a nice man with a white beard like mother said wait a minute Suzy just because every child can't get it swish there doesn't mean there isn't a Santa Claus that's what I thought you'd say Suzy is early representation of women with autism oh my god Suzy is incredible yes Suzy and her mom are both like so from your knowledge of the movie generally put this clip in context for us what are we what are we seeing so I haven't seen it for a long time but the premise basically is that this guy turns up and works at is it macy's as a Santa it's macy's yes it's because it's it's the parade yeah okay and he but he's like basically definitely actually Santa yes and it's a I think like a busy woman who is she played by Moreno Harrah Moreno Harrah who plays Mrs Walker who's a successful career woman and single mom living on Central Park West yes one of those career girls you know yes one of those in 1947 and she's got a cynical little girl who's great and also there's a remake from the 90s with Mara Wilson which I also grew up with which is fabulous yes and these are both wonderful and the remake is is faithful in a really good way and it's basically I think just this idea of like I like I really have always loved it and found it very sweet and it's like Santa basically I don't know enchanting the child within of all these kind of cynical Madison Avenue type people and it's it's very I mean there's a lot of kind of movies like this I also this is revealing me is like a boomer I've always been very fond of the Bing Crosby as singing priest movies oh sure of course the bells of St Mary's and going my way and like two very scary institutions of exactly Bing Crosby and the cat and both equally terrifying right and also you know the bishops wife and then of course the preacher's wife where this kind of theme of like Christmas movies about like just kind of a little bit of like random Christmas magic showing up and it's kind of encouraging people to be a lot nicer to each other and then also happening to buy stuff as well you know it along the way yeah and so what I find super interesting here is that so we're in 1947 which means that probably this movie was being made at sort of the end of the war right or certainly being conceived of yeah and it is a moment when you know so here's this career woman who's living on her own and is famously sort of teaching her daughter to be very skeptical and not to believe in magic and she and Maureen O'Hara's character kind of takes the same view that you know in the same breath kind of Santa isn't real and you know first husbands leave you and you can't believe in fairy tales because then you'll just end up a single mom and you have all this stuff on your shoulders and the world isn't like that and then Santa and his kind of sidekick the neighbor Mr. Galey right the movie is like you can trust men and Santa you can trust men you you have to just have no plan and then a man will come along and make things materially easier for you in some you know undisclosed fashion and and so what's interesting about the way consumerism is being positive here is that there's a kind of are you familiar with the idea of the citizen consumer I don't know tell me probably not I am a huge fan this is lives of historian lives of at cones phrase to describe the kind of American shopper from kind of the depression onward who is being tasked with a kind of patriotism that goes hand in hand with shopping and so the idea that because the depression is you know basically use it exactly wear it out for the country all of all that stuff yeah and for yourself because you don't have any money yeah and in the the era that follows the war if you're spending on things like domesticity you know curating and kind of furnishing the life of a nuclear family which is literally what Santa Claus does in this movie he he basically like steers them in the direction of a house they get married he moves them out of the suburbs to beautiful stuff for Connecticut beautiful stuff for Connecticut where where nothing weird happens that that kind of a spending certainly not at that new plan not a new plan nobody nobody's talking about that um that that kind of spending is good it's not frivolous it's you're not just you know kind of like buying luxury goods for no good reason and sort of you know just kind of enjoying yourself you're investing in the future and you're spending money on right all the things you need to have a household that also happens to more less trap women at home yes that you you know you don't have any shared resources you don't have neighbors down the hall surrounded by appliances exactly you don't have a neighbor who can watch your kid for 10 minutes you have a dishwasher yeah and that all of this is being presented as as good and patriotic and that it's a form of sort of patriotic spending right interesting yeah and then this is the moment where we we meet Santa baby for the first time who is kind of I don't know an appliance pimple for for why like he's kind of like the lyrics are actually are really funny and they're mostly about luxury goods but it's also she wants a car and so there's this idea that you're kind of Santa Claus is less a grandfatherly sort of quasi archbishop slash rules were two Santa's a disagree exactly Santa is kind of like he would be interested in your only fans like although interestingly he is Santa basically not Santa daddy exactly yeah right so we're kind of we're seducing him but there's a lot of there's a lot of baby men with a lot of money so yeah and so that basically you know if you know you want to for code a car you got to put out for Santa right and not just yeah exactly not just carrots for the for the reindeer it's also so interesting to be living and I know we've you know we talked about the tried wife to in another episode that I really love doing with you but this idea of like so many women either sincerely or for engagement one of the two I mean they both work so many women were we're seeing today kind of in this cultural movement that I think is you know part of a bunch of other bigger ones are saying you know I do everything from my husband and he pays for us to exist and it's like yeah that was basically the promise of post-World War II America and really like of the industrial revolution that like women would that men would be paid enough to support a family and therefore could have all of their needs and functions as a human being supported by a woman and then we invented the Sunday paper so they could ignore their families and a pipe to go with it exactly yes and then we invented TVA to make sure that we they could absolutely fully ignore but yes I mean basically that so their children could be taught by puppets exactly and that what's interesting is that we're looking at two moments that are I kind of think of Christmas almost as being like the arena in which at various times in history we as Americans are kind of wrestling with our relationship with buying stuff and what it means I think that's absolutely true and so in during the Guilrd dayage there's a lot of self-consciousness about it and part of the reason why there's this obsession well actually let's let's go back to your special fancy document for a moment because we're now we're going to do a visual compare and contrast let's go back to my scroll your scroll on unfriol your scroll and it should be passed underneath Earth a kit so we've got Santa Claus I know that that's that's a real like Smith Smith the voice that's what I'm always going for okay yes so we have Santa Claus in his works which I think I remember looking at in our previous episode yeah from Harper's weekly 1866 which I also love because it's like very much you know in line with Santa as Saint yeah and he's tweet and he's kind of put in his feet up by the fire and he's making notes in his little book and you know kind of chiseling things and oh and this is canonical little Santa little Danny DeVito his little Santa look what's happening to do now he eats fish and so it's Santa on top of a chair because he had to get on the chair to get the stock it all down from the mantle yeah because he's just a little guy yeah and then there's he's like in it's so good I love it so he's like inside different circles so one of them is the Christmas tree yeah he's up on a ladder trimming a tree there's workshop where he's making a little horse there's dolly's tea party where there's just some dollies sitting around a table having a tea but I don't I guess Santa set them up I think the idea is like he said he probably crafted them he made them and then kind of set them he sort of put them in a ms all sun under the tree yeah he's the god of the dollies the god of the dolls on the lookout for good children he's like in the north pole with like the northern lights behind him with a telescope looking for good children and they oh god this is a cute thing now which dolly will you have and then there's some beautiful dolls lined up Christmas Eve where he's bursting through the night sky on his chariot of reindeer making dollies clothes a lot of emphasis on the dollies I really like making dollies clothes is this that's not fun is it's him he's so it's his little glasses on yeah and yeah and he's sewing doll clothes god Santa works hard because he's a craft he's a craft's person he he works tirelessly that's so many individual garments per dolly interestingly there are no elves in these pictures he's doing it all himself yeah it's very american yeah yeah because he's elf and Santa still I guess because it's only eight oh my gosh oh and I remember we talked about this before but it's so good account book record of behavior I know record of it tell us about this it's incredible it's so it's sort of position Santa is almost a kind of like he's like an accountant sludger and it's this as that he's keeping track of who's good and who's bad in a gigantic like binder but he's like a stand a binder full of children but he's a binder full of children but it's like as big as he is which is so funny yeah the book is like waist high it's so few it's so in terms of the page height as he's turning the pages and it's probably like four times his height if he stood it up yeah exactly like leaning over it trying it's so as he had his guess I cannot express how tiny he's so tiny these two kids and I guess makes me really happy and then the last one I would say chronologically is holiday week where he's in his rocking chair holiday week he's chilling with his dogs up and yeah what a week I've had oh my god having delivered you know 800 million presents around the world he's now he's putting his feet up because that's a lot from one little guy yeah and he's a really little guy delivering full size presents although I guess children were also slightly smaller back then because they weren't getting adequate nutrition that's true they weren't getting enough nice in or whatever but yeah and then we contrast with oh my god all right and then we have American Christmas card mid-1950s and the text says boy this is also my time to point out that Santa Claus battles the Martians is like a pretty good movie right now it's pretty good yeah 1964 and and early film of Pia Zedora oh that's right oh my god is a Martian child yeah so the text says here comes Santa's spaceship full of cards and toys zooming in to wish for you lots of Christmas joys and then it's as as promised Santa at his little jet-sonian spaceship it looks like a B-52 bomber honestly but it has snowflake I mean not at all really I'm sure anyone who would look at this and be like Sarah I know it doesn't but it looks it looks like a maybe like a vaguely military aircraft of the Cold War era yeah yeah it looks like it could like it could bomb Russia inside of like three hours right this is my point I guess yeah and it's got snowflakes painted on the wings and it's got a Christmas tree painted on the on the body and then the caption you just tells you how to make your own spaceship for Santa if you cut up part of the card and you use such exciting products obviously a scotch tape and rubber bands exactly and yeah it's very different I and we don't know how big Santa is although actually know we do because he's got presents in there with him so if they're regular size presents then he is probably regular size adult male so he looks like person sized yeah and so yeah I mean it's almost it's like hard to nowhere to begin in the the differences between these two they're about 100 years apart but one of the things that is really key about this era is that we've pivoted from imagining Santa in a kind of vague candlelit sort of cozy past as kind of like a little sprite as a little sprite a little fairy worker and specifically from the past to imagining him like set like a figure from science fiction or the future which is complete to a complete about face right or I guess like fully in the realm of fantasy yes during this kind of obsession with spay out or space during the Cold War and so there's like a sort of body of Santa and now I find this super fascinating because this is not the Santa that I grew up with like I very much grew up with Victorian Santa in you know in the kind of 1970s and 80s version of but there was this phase in the 50s and 60s when Christmas and Santa were positioned as almost space age fantasies like things that you could you would sort of imagine together with technology which I guess we kind of have aspects of today like you know the norad Santa tracker maybe that and which begins in 1955 so they're right so there's this like oh my god that's really early it's really early they they cast the sleigh ride in a new light so that it becomes instead of this kind of you know kind of story of Bethlehem or kind of him in the sleigh it's the idea of like we can track him on radar that had you know begins in the mid 1950s yeah can I say something that I've been thinking about as I'm promoting my satanic panic show which is like one of I think the questions that I've been thinking about is like why Satan you know why exactly why does Satan make the story so sticky and I think one of the reasons is that like Satan is is allegedly like and if you're superstitious this is like both maybe scary and maybe in a way kind of comforting to believe how available Satan is supposed to be you know because there are so many people in America who feel like if you even think too hard about Satan he's going to show up and be like good evening you know whereas Jesus on the other hand says he'll be right back right and is evidently taking his sweet time although according to my theory Jesus has been reborn many times and never got as far as he meant to because of how unjust society is and he keeps dying keeps being an undocumented baby yeah that's the kind of theory that makes me think I should probably just cut to the chase and become a quaker but right that like that God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are like famously elusive and are like I'll be back any day now but Satan allegedly is like going to come back all the time like you can't even get rid of him right which is scary but it's nice the idea that like someone from a supernatural religious realm or that offers you proof of your religion like might actually show up and yeah Satan come or I was about to say Satan comes once a year Santa comes once a year which is very comforting for a child you know it's just so regular yeah so we're gonna take a little detour into atomic age design and if you scroll past your American Christmas card spaceship you should see a kind of tripartite panel where there's a Christmas current on one side and some wrapping paper on the other side and in between a clock and a chandelier you see okay so we've talked before I think about streamlining and sort of during like art deco which was the dominant design language of the 1930s the machine age the kind of the use of techniques like streamlining to give a sense of like industrial progress or sort of futurism to household objects that actually don't need to go go fast like vacuum cleaners but there was this real push to kind of like apply the look and feel of things like skyscrapers and trains and cars to pencil sharpeners and toasters and all you know designers like Raymond Lowey Norman Belgette's Burke Stevens famously sort of transformed the look of household appliances stoves fridges you know anything you name it is this an aesthetic where the HUD sucker proxy would be a good place to see satisfy okay yes or in actually in a strange way as is the 1989 Batman because there's a lot of like sort of art deco revival happening weirdly enough but that's yeah it's a lot yeah I love the Tim Burton Gotham it's so good it's so good and the giant statues of the big mussely guys yes exactly so it's kind of imagined like you're at Rockefeller Center timber and there's the trouble if you're Tim Burton's would travel us it's you know if everything is streamlined there looks like a train in the 1930s and so what this does is sort of give consumers access to a kind of a sense of the future in the form of something like a radio that looks like a skyscraper what have you and the next iteration of this kind of gesture in design that happens happens during the atomic age and you can just sort of see what you can let me describe for us what you're seeing in kind of the two objects in the middle yeah so I'm seeing what I would call an atomic starburst style decoration and I can see in the caption that it's a chandelier but I think of that as the atomic star pattern is that correct it looks more or less like it's called sputnik but it basically looks like a kind of controlled explosion yeah right but is that like I'm thinking of because isn't in like mid-sensory decor the kind of like atomic yes not the atomic symbol but like the starbursts yeah so here's basically the just what you're getting at is actually a very important observation which is that unlike every other revival movement or sort of futurist movement that came before it the designers are tasked with using a visual language that refers back to something that people can't see so there's this kind of the part of the reason why everything is so stylized and why what you'll find is something like on that like the eems hang at all coat rack or the marshmallow sofa by Irving Harper or the ball clock which is also by Irving Harper because he was a African genius is what looks like somebody took a model of you know a chlorine atom or something or molecule deconstructed it and then kind of used those essential parts to create a useful household object like a clock so there's kind of like there's rods there's there's spheres well and there's I would say a sense of playfulness to totally is interesting to think about as something that was partly inspired by you know the tools of the greatest American death machine well and that actually is addressed directly or indirectly by disney are you familiar with our friend the atom have you read or seen the cartoon I've heard of it I haven't seen it I feel like it's kind of like a classic footnote of the time but tell us about that it is a classic footnote of the time but it just is another kind of like little cul-de-sac because this is going to be helpful and sort of understanding how we is this perhaps just providing a little bit of the inspiration for the animated DNA helix and Jurassic Park I would not be surprised I mean because it's basically so one thing that is kind of interesting in this time period about the disney world view is that the past and the future are presented as kind of a place you can go like there's the tomorrow land there's you know the old west there's sort of you know mainstream USA there's kind of different places that you can pivot to and there's this funny conflation I think maybe in part because it comes out of the disney sort of idea factory of ancient mythology with physics and science and so our friend the atom tells the story quote-unquote of nuclear energy using the ancient folktale that which I believe comes from Shaharizad 2001 nights of the fishermen in the genie and it's basically the idea that like nuclear energy like we collectively are the fishermen and the genie is nuclear power and we have three wishes and it's I think it's health peace and energy and it was turned into a cartoon and it's narrated by a German physicist named tine's hopper who's kind of of the same cohort of as Werner von Braun and he essentially becomes the voice of you know this is physics in the 1950s and 60s it's like the you know the guy with the German accent wearing a tweet that's kind of explained you know using the language of mythology and it's if you think about it there's a lot to do this experiment and then nuclear core and don't just don't worry about it could be totally fun that the way that Americans were introduced to nuclear power is as you say through like the unprecedented death and destruction of the bombings of rochemian Nagasaki in 1945 and this I think folklore may be sold to the American people that I think about a lot of like well we had to don't think about it we had to don't even think about it right it was a myth exactly and also the idea that it's kind of it it exists in the same universe as snow white in Cinderella it's the Disney universe of yeah folktales that are kind of at the very least you're counting apples eat right and there and that it's and that he's also kind of weirdly not alone about that because think about like the things that are on TV at this time there's like or a little later Idream of Genie is you know an astronaut meets a literal Genie and you know Barbara Eden in a bottle there's bewitched and so there's this kind of there's this conflation in a lot of different cultural properties of folklore with the high tech right and it is the time of like my magic wife exactly right and so if you look at the the visual like a little sort of collage that's in your your Christmas document that there's the atomic aesthetic where there's you've got lots of like things that look like they've had a lot of caffeine right like objects that look like they're just like ready to go you know sort of split out rods and spheres happens to lend itself really naturally to the iconography of Christmas and specifically the Christmas tree so when the time comes for an aluminum Christmas tree which is all the rage between you know kind of circa 1958 and 1964 I remember this on happy days I remember the year might be want me to tell you the happy days joke about this I remember this of course yes I think Howard Cunningham says this but the joke is that someone brings home an aluminum Christmas tree and the joke is well we'll save a lot of money on tinsel because it's already looks like tinsel exactly exactly and it does and it's essentially this is you know not to get sort of too over the top in terms of talking about aluminum but essentially you know aluminum I'm showing you to get too over the top about aluminum I think we can handle it I think we can do it I think we can do it this is a herty crowd this is yeah no we're tough so aluminum is it's kind of an interesting story in American design because up until the 1880s it was more expensive than gold or silver because not because it was rare but because it was very difficult to refine so it's not weird just just a contemplate and that's one of the reasons why you actually kind of don't see a lot of aluminum objects that are older than let's say the 1920s and 30s that's fascinating yeah although when you think about it I guess you know you never nobody ever found an aluminum nugget that I heard about right because you have to sort of there's this whole sort of electrolysis process I think it involves like you know passing while luck is down there pan and for aluminum exactly science and he's picking up he's gonna buy a new wig for his girlfriend run it through with the electrolyzer and then and so these two guys form a cup basically two gilded age characters you know form a former company which is eventually known as the aluminum corporation of America or alkoa and alkoa has a very sweet deal with the United States government for a while they're the ones that funded all that TV theater exactly and they've and funded the forecast program where they had people like Charles and Ray Eams and a Simu Nguci designing you know tables and sculptural works of art to kind of like experiment with aluminum and see what cool things we could make out of it and one of the things the cool things you can make out of it is an aluminum Christmas tree and you can sell millions of them for not very much money because once the the the ability to I want part of just to go back for a sec part of the reason why alkoa is so successful is because a lot of this is it's giving delus brothers there's a lot of like there's sort of in the category of like Cold War foreign policy in which the United States is able to extract resources from countries overseas in you know it's kind of not officially an empire but it's kind of an empire and they have a patent with the government which means that for World War I and World War II most if not all of the aluminum that's used for the war effort comes from alkoa so they have they make out like like you know good deal like they make out like mineral tycoons which is which is which is what they are right so as a result of that one of the reasons why aluminum is so plentiful and why it becomes such a sort of crafty like you can make a decoration you know decorate your tree you can do you know make a costume you can dress make a Halloween costume was a robot for your kid you know it's because it's so cheap it's been you know it has been processed up the wazoo and so there's there's tons of it and there's a whole infrastructure there's you know Pittsburgh is home to to big aluminum and it's also kind of a cool new kitchen gadget and kid and sort of tableware material that that plays a similar role to plastic because aluminum doesn't shatter so if you're comparing it to glass let's say right and plastic and Tupperware is still relatively new in the 50s not a ton of people had a lot of plastic at home but you could have something like Russell writes spun aluminum barwear like looks really cool it's very light it's not very expensive you can drop it on the floor it'll maybe dense slightly but you know hopefully not and it won't shatter and I'm actually for like kitchen tools totally really revolutionary too right for like like a calendar and stuff like that it's cookie cutters calendars all the pots and pans all that stuff yeah food mills anything any tool oh god yeah cookie cutters cookie cutters I mean so there's a ton if you are out and about antiquing where you're going to find a crap ton of aluminum is kind of in the 30s and 40s like that all the sort of kitchen gadget stuff that comes from your grandma's house your great grandmother's house and so the aluminum tree then be cut takes on this almost kind of iconic status during this time period in which like if you scroll down you'll find there's a pink print ad from Reynolds which is now owned by Alcoa actually well yeah I'll also say that this tree looks very much like the Christmas tree I have which is an artificial umphil pink tree which was in the garage and I haul it out once a year because it bums me out to cut down a tree and then put it in my living room until it becomes crispy see this is the thing I mean do we want to create more plastic in the world no but if you can find it used this is my I will die on this hill if you can find a used aluminum Christmas tree for reasonable price which is let's say 100 200 dollars on eBay or at say you should I just pronounce it at say at say at say these are my twins eBay and at say they're both very mature they're they're very entrepreneurial yeah you should because you can use it over and over again you're not you know you're letting trees live I mean it's good to plant trees but it's also good to not cut down I mean I'm not going to tell anyone not to cut down a Christmas tree it just personally depresses me you know I I'm in the same boat I find and I'm also kind of allergic to the the crud that exists on the right and also it's like it's what I think that like I'm sure we talked about this last time but Christmas is interesting to me because I think it's kind of like the Olympic gymnastics competition except it's an events where as a nuclear family which is of course also what we're talking about it's a period during which that concept was kind of cemented arguably I don't know if you agree with that oh no I totally agree with you know the idea of like the way we never were being one of the great books about it right where like you know it's not that we used to live in nuclear families is that there came a time when we decided to all agree to pretend we should be and the word nuclear is interesting there because it's not like it's a double meeting yeah it's a like to hold a lack of danger but so I feel like cutting down the Christmas tree and hauling at home is like a feat of strength to use some fastivist language that's like also something that families do to prove that they're like adequate as a family and if you have fighting parents like I did it sucks because it's an argument right or they're just like you know I was always happy to have a Christmas tree at the end of the day and I love the part we get to lie under it and look up through the branches you know and all kind of decorations are on it but the process of getting it can be brutal but it's very I mean it's very old school Santa Claus right it's the worship of trees it's physically labor it's lumberjack lumberjackery the worship of Victoria and Albert exactly the worship of Victoria and Albert of lumberjackery right and also interestingly how like the sort of fall and winter rituals of like white girl fall basically yes our yes else pretending to work in agriculture a little bit because I think that that's what we understand that we have some kind of a need to like be in touch with the seasons and so you know and so we have pumpkin patches right as our like stand in for the kind of an apple picking you know wicker man seasonal rituals that we used to do now we just go to the pumpkin patch yeah and so the the clip that we're going to watch is the Charlie Brown Christmas story which is one of our our three cultural properties that we're talking about today okay one of the big sort of areas of conflict within it is the nature of what kind of Christmas tree to have I don't know lines I just don't know well I guess we better concentrate on finding a nice Christmas tree I think just we try those searchlights Charlie Brown this is definitely a carton for kids who want the tiny soft spoken Santa I know this really brings Christmas Christmas close to a Christmas fantastic yep this is what I picture when you mention aluminum Christmas trees right pink perky although the nice thing isn't a real life they don't echo let's true right yeah they're kind of yeah they're sort of tinny and they say a little Charlie Brown Christmas tree it's got two little branches and a little top gee did they still make with Christmas Christmas trees it's so cute this little green one here seems to need a home I don't know Charlie Brown remember what this he said this stuff seems to fit the modern spirit I don't care all decorated and it'll be just right for our play besides I think it needs me see this is the Charlie Brown school of shopping which I do follow which is that you should buy things because they seem to be underdogs and you don't think anyone else will buy them which is how I feel about single bananas right exactly the single banana needs you to to rescue it from the produce market so this is to me like I there's part of me that is like very annoyed by the entire premise of a Charlie Brown Christmas because basically you have like a man like a man is in a bad mood and everyone needs to kind of stand on their head and rearrange their entire existence to make it so that the man is not in a bad mood anymore and I find that very annoying on the other hand it is endearing because you have a group of little kids wrestling with all the same themes basically that animate a Christmas Carol or miracle on 34th straight and can you remind us what is the kind of overall story of this show because I don't remember it as well as I maybe would like to it is wildly subversive and it's actually worth watching it again if you haven't seen it since you were a kid because it basically is Charlie Brown it opens with Charlie Brown saying that I believe to either Linus or Lucy that he feels sad and that he feels like he should be happy because it's Christmas season everyone's skating to Vince Garaldi's jazz music on the little pond but he doesn't feel happy and the dog is kind of charting up his doghouse with all this kind of like Christmas parabola that's like really tacky and you know everything is so commercial. Snoopy is doing the old Clark Griswald over there. Totally he's doing it totally doing a Clark Clark Griswald and why is the carpet all wet time? So the suggestion is made because remember there's also psychoanalysis because there Lucy has the like the psychiatrist is in and so she says well why don't you if you're sad why don't we you know why don't you be in charge of the Christmas play or pageant or whatever it is and so he's kind of becomes like the artistic director and there's a scene where they're all kind of doing like modern dance that remember that they're all doing kind of this like it's really cute. I know you really need to watch it again and then there's you know it's like you're going to be in charge of the tree so he picks out the tree that needs him because it's this like pathetic little kind of pine tree that has one branch and it's the only actual like tree tree right. And the whole lot that we can see the others are all artificial or have been spray painted I guess at best like pink spray paint which is not a thing but pink spray painted and Lucy is like yeah get a pink one get you know like the biggest one you can find. Oh wow I have a Lucy tree wow right exactly and so he is super bummed out about this and kind of basically has a meltdown and doesn't understand why everything is so commercial is as you know doesn't anyone know what Christmas is all about and I believe it's who's the one with the blankies at Linus I think it's Linus. Yeah Linus I remember this part Linus is the one who reminds them right. He recites this verse basically from the Bible of the kind of the of the annunciation of sort of you know the shepherds are grazing their sheep right before you saying glory to God in the Messiah. The Angel Gabriel appearing the exact shepherds and he says be not a free a feared. Be not afraid even though I'd be blickly accurate and have 17 eyes or don't be afraid and you know that's what I'm actually 17 on fire levitating eyeballs appeared in front of you and we're like don't freak out don't freak out but FYI and so and then he just kind of calmly delivers because that I get that's his line in the Christmas pageant and says well that's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown and do you want to know what the reaction was from the network when this was initially shared before it was broadcast with the the brass. I have to assume negative because it probably seemed like a real pinko commie kind of a thing to do right. They did not get it they didn't understand there was like this is like a we first of all like really weirdly religious which is interesting because now we're trying to have less Christianity forced upon our children right but at the time it felt subversive I bet. Well but it was also on the one hand it's like it's like hippie-dippy Christian so it's sort of you know it's like goodwill toward man it's like Charlie Brown is one of the Jesus people or something paired with anti-consumerism and they were just like what you know it's super weird they didn't understand the music and you know what this reminds me of the apparently the exact same thing happened when prince played kiss for executives whatever his music you know Warner or Sony or whatever his music company was people they were panicked there was like this is so minimal and stripped down it's so weird like what even is this hated it so that just proves that if you are working on something and the initial reaction to that thing is not what you would hope. This wait five minutes wait five minutes you might be be in the same category as prince and Charles Schultz and the people may you may be creating a stone cult classic and not realize it and also you know the commentary for the godfather is pretty fun and it's like oh I bet that's like yeah it's co-plan all his glory but it one of the I in that vein fascinating things about it is that like when some of the most iconic scenes were being shot the things that you would assume people recognized at the time were great the studio was kind of watching I think that you know what what I don't know if they were like watching what he was shooting as he was doing it I just I don't know I don't know how movies are made um but that basically the studio was like we think you're doing a terrible job and it always seemed to be on the verge of being taken out of his hands and they're you know they're against having the production go to Sicily for the scene it's like all these choices that you assume people just kind of intuitive would be good you know they famously wanted to cast a Robert Redford as Michael originally oh my god you know and these were all things that clearly today we all see as idiotic but it's just that like the thing that we've internalized is great like that's not because it was clear to everyone at the time right now exactly and if we go back a little further in time so how the Grinch Stole Christmas airs on the same network CBS the following year but it's published in book form in 1957 and I thought that we could read ourselves a little excerpt or two from how the Grinch Stole Christmas um are how familiar are you so you had sort of you remember aspects of Charlie Brown do you remember the sort of the gist of the Grinch yeah I remember the story is that the Grinch hates Christmas and I can't really remember the what the basis of that is to be honest but he's against it and he lives above who will on a mountain with his his dog and he decides it's you know it's not just a clever title he decides to steal Christmas and specifically to steal all the presents and Christmas foods and decorations and all the kind of like objects I guess are the material aspect of Christmas from the who's down in who will because then they won't like Christmas anymore but it turns out that once well and then he goes to I think his last house where a little baby Cindy Lou who lives Cindy Lou and they have a moment I really kind of forget what that involves but his little heart is touched but then he hears all the who's singing down in whoville because they're still grateful even though they don't have their stuff anymore I forget why I think they're just like they just are like that they're like Lutherans so I've I've selected three passages from it and I figured we could alternate oh my god I would love that okay every who down in whoville liked Christmas a lot but the Grinch who lived just north of whoville did not the Grinch hated Christmas the whole Christmas season now please don't ask why no one quite knows the reason it could be his head wasn't screwed on just right it could be perhaps that his shoes were too tight why the kidder remember thinking that can't be it that's a weak excuse weak sauce yeah so the middle part is and then we'll get to what this reminds us of when we're when we're done with part three but the middle part is from his his reign of terror when he's kind of going through whoville attempting to steal Christmas hmm then he's slid down the chimney a rather tight pinch but if Santa could do it then so could the Grinch then he slunk to the icebox he took the whose feast he took the who putting he took the roast beast he cleaned out that icebox as quick as a flash why that Grinch even took their last can of who hash then he stuffed all the food over it with glee and now Grinch the Grinch I will stuff up the tree okay it is like it's it's a fun sequence like both in the book and in the adaptation it's fun to watch him still all this stuff it's very resourceful okay should I read the ending now here let's do it okay that will talk and this is our thrilling conclusion every who down in whoville the tall and the small was singing without any presence at all he hadn't stopped Christmas from coming it came somehow or other it came just the same it came without ribbons it came without tags it came without packages boxes or bags maybe Christmas he thought doesn't come from a store maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more so this is like really kind of like very similar to a Christmas Carol which I also really love which is like someone who is like a textbook killjoy is like I hate Christmas people only care about buying things and then he realizes that no they actually love it because they're just like good and nice and then he's like well never mind we should buy even more things and it happens to be it's like if you're like me it's a holiday where you can if you're somebody who's sort of obsessed with paper products you can kind of go nuts a little bit and then there's like you know but I think what's also interesting is that I think he's he has deftly channeled a Christmas Carol in the in the person of the Grinch yeah but he's all and it's a great made-up word and Dickens was so good at making up character names like crutch yeah which I think was like kind of an antiquated verb of the time but like like yeah have an easy scrooge it's perfect I mean it's perfect perfect but it also has the cadence of a visit from St. Nicholas oh my god it does oh it's genius I don't know if it's identical I'm not enough of a pentameter it's like that horrible kid rock song that is emulating both werewolves of London and sweet home Alabama and yeah this is one terrible song but this is a good thing that we like sorry to compare doctor sues to kid rock like I know he did some racist stuff that he doesn't deserve to be compared to kid rock um but it's sort of it it echoes I don't know if it's like letter perfect identical but it's it's pretty similar and it definitely I kind of took me a minute to realize that that's what it was referencing and it's right and I never thought about it but it's like what the American brain perceives is like the Christmas meter the Christmas dog girl it's Christmas meter it's did it it it it it it it it it it it it yeah exactly and so it's like whatever you hear the rhythm of a horse drawn sleigh of like little ranger hooves on your on your roof yeah and I sort of I love the kind of the fact that this is initially published in 1957 so this is really like we are in prime like Santa baby dishwasher buying like putting a big ribbon around a toaster like consumer frenzy and as early as 1957 doctor sues is you know kind of saying like look at all this like over the top commercial sort of gift-leading Christmas like you don't need all that stuff like you just need to like hang out with your hooves and sing a song maybe somebody will bring roast bees don't plan too hard but it's kind of I think it's it's kind of remarkably subversive for the time yeah it also makes me think of a Christmas story which is why you know definitely a while to become beloved that's certainly why and it's like the wet hot American summer of Christmas movies do you know that I actually I have to confess I don't like it I mean it's not in rotation for me yeah it's not in rotation for me it that's a that's a more diplomatic way of putting it what is in your rotation out of curiosity I've said a lot of mine already well so for Christmas in terms of like stuff to watch I I pretty much always watch miracle on 34th Street like that's sort of probably not all time and because it takes place in the neighborhood where I grew up right and it's sort of it's where the parade begins and it's really it's so it's it's very that's very cozy for me um I super love vintage like I'm kind of a call them midwife person which is weird but they always have a Christmas special and it's this bizarre kind of retro futurism where they all the the Christmas specials all take place in like 1965 because that's when the show is set but so it's as though you're watching a rerun from something that's 60 years old but it was just made like a few years ago by the BBC right so I'm a huge fan of that I'm also a huge fan of like certain Christmas music like it's it becomes you know it's as Karen Thompson famously said in that documentary it's Karen Carpenter season you know once you hit Thanksgiving it's carpenter season so there's the you know there's Merry Christmas Starling I don't know I mean I feel like one of the things about Christmas as we're talking about it that I feel like it's so tricky is that it's like you can't really engage with it in the kind of classic sense or as it feels like you're being urged to do without having too many feelings it's almost like an invitation to too many feelings because it's like it's about family and it's about how much money you have and it's about getting the right toys for your kids and it's about whatever the like latest crazes as we get more into you know the cabbage patch era and beyond and it's certainly out of action to admit sanctuary but one of the reasons why I think people collect this stuff is because I mean as you say there's part of it is like that emotional Christmas triggers that part of your brain that's like childhood parents emotions toys cookies etc all of your trauma potentially like you're you're happiest memories when you were sad when you were scared like all the things that you feel that age some people more than others but then it's also you know people grown adults collect toys and collect Christmas ornaments and I've interviewed lots of them they you know I interviewed people from my book who were like you know the world's greatest expert on like aluminum Christmas trees you know vintage and it's kind of incredible but you also have to think it's like part of it is that collecting impulse I think is sort of chasing something that is forever receding further and further into the past and that part of the reason why grownups collect stuff especially things from their childhood back like boats against the tide absolutely it's this you know you're cut you can never recreate it but you can kind of glimpse you can listen to the music you can listen to Eartha kit you can watch Charlie Brown you can kind of glimpse echoes of this time and place when like a lot of people who are probably not around anymore we're still around and there is actually a scene in the movie Scrooge that I think do you remember this when it's David Johansson yeah from what is it like the the New York Dolls right buster point dexter yeah he buster point dexter he's driving a cab and then he's he's like oh you know who was like a total cry baby was gengus con or whoever it was like something was like in the back of his cab who was like is there a go handsome the ghost of Christmas past in the scenario I think he's the ghost of Christmas he takes frank back to his house when he gets meat for Christmas right and then any any's crying because it's like I don't understand and his dad's like well that's 40 pounds of fuel what do you want you know what do you millionaire and it sort of captures that feeling of like the toughest most cynical dude you've ever met like if you you turn the key or the dial just right and remind them of something you know the Christmas when they were five years old and their dad yelled at their mom or something right and that Christmas is maybe actually like a tool to get at the hearts of like horrible old man it's a portal yeah yeah because one of the things I love about a Christmas Carol is that scrooge is only transported back to his boyhood for like five or 10 minutes before he starts crying you know it's like kind of he does not take that long to to be worked on honestly he folds pretty fast and honestly like I think the last time I saw it I think I cry during that scene oh yeah so yeah I mean it's intense right right it's like the most intense possible emotions and also it's about Jesus incidentally and Christianity which is like kind of also an emotional area for a lot of Americans there's just a lot I feel like it's fair to say academically that there's just a heck of a lot going on there's an extreme amount going on but I fear I've derailed us at some point I think we're actually right on schedule we cover it like most of the larger themes that we were going to get to you know we've arrived somewhere in the mid 1960s and we're probably poised perhaps I don't know for it maybe for a part three one day I think so the Santa Trilogy yeah we can we can sort of tackle the 1980s perhaps or the 90s or well tell me about kind of who who is cold war Santa spiritually and when does he exit the scene or does he just become part of the broader Santa that we now live with that's a great question and I so I remember there was a super interesting conversation over on I want to say blue sky about how do you date the cold war or how do you date mid century I was wondering how do you date mid century in terms of design yeah because it's obviously not literal or also would be for like one day exactly it would just be like certain decades so my rubric for this is roughly that it's the end of world war two to the oil embargo in the 1970s because that is the end of kind of unfettered with some dips kind of this the streak of unfettered prosperity and consumption right in which the rest of the world was in tatters because it was the end of world war two so there's you know Europe is in ruins and so the American dollar is is so strong that it's like a it's a little too strong maybe scary strong it's a little too strong people are you know buying stuff like there's no tomorrow consuming nesting white fighting out to the suburbs buying aluminum trees you know watching tv yeah etc and then when the oil embargo happens suddenly like we can't afford things again right now we're back to the American version of bicycle thieves exactly we're we're back to sort of 1930s like oh I can't afford it I don't know and so I tend to think that also the heyday of the aluminum Christmas tree was pretty short it was like sort of mid to late 50s through mid 60s and then after that then it's the hippie movement and free love and things like the space age starts to seem like really dorky by comparison it had seemed to me what it's like the thing that your parents' generation bought into that then exactly direct way led toward the war that you are now you know being drafted into right actually it that basically like the dream of the early 60s then decay into this you know Vietnam and assassinations and so we you know have kind of innocently or intentionally naively bought into the military industrial complex and now it must continue to perpetuate itself and you know the United States under Nixon is still involved in the Vietnam war despite being past the point of knowing that it's basically mathematically unwindable exactly yeah that that that is basically been acknowledged as a birthtapes what are your opinions about the Christmas aesthetics of today or kind of the you know the recent past and looking ahead like most cramudgeons I'm having a hard time with today and I'll tell you well yes it's a little for a number of reasons one of the things that drives me baddie is the kind of AI generated like printed wine mom font domed decor objects like if like when you go into like an Airbnb and it has like friends gather here and like wine mom but I think what what grosses me out is to think about how much of this you know that there's you're aware even though weren't neither of us are in Twitter anymore but you're aware that Twitter is now a cesspool of like official federal government accounts basically much why I left yeah that's yeah it's not great it's posting essentially like kind of Nazi propaganda for lack of it that more well that's nice and also we know we're having basically like fascist human processing and concentration camp building facilities built in all of our backyards right now and it's all really happening yeah it's really happening and it's happening self-consciously and one of the ways that you know it's self-conscious is because let's say you know the Department of Homeland Security Twitter account will post an AI generated kind of phantasia that is riffing off of either like a Soviet or a Nazi poster of like protect that's like protect the fatherland so it's not in German but it'll say why I know I mean it's a good it's a really good point why are they doing that I know why so many people want to be Nazis that's really that's what I want to know yeah I mean I think that it is a giant fuck you from an unhappy person is is in a general way I think that's part of it I hope he gets visited by a Biblically accurate angel angel repudiate whatever it was just scare the crap out of this these people and but then also it's like a lot you know if you look at the the trolls behind the accounts it's like are any of them do any of them actually look like this I mean probably not I think because most people don't I mean but it's just kind of like I think that realizing and seeing that that has become and I I'm not on Twitter but I follow people on blue sky who post this stuff just as as a way of like documenting it and so I just I'm aware that's happening yeah this is going to sound extremely dorky because it is extremely dorky but to kind of take propaganda from world were two and position it as though it's sort of like you're defending the homeland you're defending the borders like using essentially like just makes me want to vomit like it just is so you know if you I mean and it's not for for all the obvious reasons it's I'm not different from anybody else I mean I'm not having any reaction that anybody else wouldn't have but just that it's well actually you are because apparently a lot of people are pro the very I guess that's true but there are a lot of us who are feeling equally ill right now yeah like if your family was here during world were two if they were somewhere scarier than here during world were two if your ancestors fought or like mine did engineering you know just what it took and how close it came to completely cudd knuckleing under to fascism the first time and now to be kind of like fucking around with it and how to embrace it enthusiastically and did you so in the service of tormenting all of these wonderful people who want to move here who we want to have live here because they're great and even if they weren't great we would want them here because it's America and but I think most of them are great and it just makes me really sad so that's my very inarticulate rant about anti immigration I was kind of asking you more about like the idea of a Ralph Lauren Christmas being this year but I think he says a lot more relevant and mine was like a brain-dead question well actually I mean the the Ralph Lauren Christmas is actually kind of a fascinating additional cul de sac because you know talk about that for a second let's have one last cul de sac it's an echo of the Reagan era yeah god it is oh it's right out of the preppy handbook isn't it it's the preppy handbook so because Ralph Lauren became sort of came into prominence around the same time as like John Hughes movies and Ronald Reagan's second president president right and the world that Ralph Lauren depicts which is this kind of like western ranch slash like New England country estate slash yeah it's kind of a it's like a non-place that has sort of I would say that the classic 80s or off-loran looks are like your cause playing maybe not a character on dynasty because they were just like dripping in jewels and stuff like that was pretty over the top and I would say not preppy really but like a horsey like horsey plaid yes your cause playing like a beautiful girl from a horsey family you're like the like during the school year girlfriend of one of the guys and mystic pizza exactly now and you're so beautiful but your family's got secrets there's there's a lot going on at home I say yeah and you're wearing a plaid a lot of the time and you've got the the LL being boat tote or whatever it's called oh the pullover yeah exactly the boat tote with the little the little monogram that you know that is depicting an extremely white racial landscape of 1980s America well yeah I mean it's you know and I think in the 80s we were talking about wasps explicitly a lot more exactly I don't mean to cast a spursion on Ralph but not not well I mean personally but not for this reason maybe I guess but like not for this idea that like you know Ralph Lauren I think real name lip shits is like right right as an outsider and I remember I did an episode on kind of prepped them with a very truffleman a while ago yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes to synthesize the sort of aspirational wasp aesthetic for just like not normal necessarily because this is clothing and stuff is still a symbol of upward mobility but for someone who is like trying to learn and perform this aesthetic rather than just living it because if you're doing it naturally you don't realize you're doing it right and it's like and it's very much the aesthetic of like white generational wealth yeah which of course goes hand in hand with racial oppression in America because that's just where a lot of families have made their money that's where it came from exactly it was aluminum it was yeah exactly um so I think yeah I mean I don't want to you know Ralph has a kind of like 19th century Santa Claus appearance nowadays so I don't I don't want to cast his versions but I think I am a firm believer that store and mall Santas should reflect the communities they serve and they should also be smaller and maybe we need more women and non-binary Santas we can get a smaller Santa just like got back in a nice and small kind of go because have you ever experienced like Mickey Mouse at Disneyland or Disney World yes yes as a child because Mickey Mouse is like five feet tall right imagine if Mickey Mouse were played by someone the size of Gaston it would not feel good I know it would be so weird whereas I mean didn't we talk previously about the idea of either John Waters or Fran Leibouids being Santa yes and I think either of those are great choices I think but there's infinitely good Bowen Yang I mean there's incredible choices out there you can have whatever Santa you want yeah and also as you famously observe Santa Claus as a mom yes he's your mom he's totally your mom well okay so maybe my last question is because yeah I feel like just kind of on TikTok this is going around this idea of like the thing to do this here is a Ralph Lauren Christmas and of course really the thing to do every year is to throw out all your stuff and get new stuff because that's what they want you to do yeah exactly to me a Ralph Lauren Christmas is also basically like the entire aesthetic of the McAllister household 100% and those people except Kevin yeah kind of Kevin too are assholes and so we don't you know we don't need to emulate that I feel like my Christmas aesthetic is definitely like a little bit atomic age as evidence by my Christmas tree totally but also my Christmas aesthetic is I am tired and whatever I bother with is great and I think that's the best for 2025 that I believe in person exhaustion and also being like what I have found is actually it's you're lucky I did this much you're welcome yeah I baked and there's there's like a tree we have I think we've maybe talked about this last year but basically my various passions in domestic life are at loggerheads with one another because on the one hand I have a miniature aluminum Christmas tree which has been in storage for quite some years because I also have cats and cats and Christmas are a fraught combination so I have to be really careful in kind of the edit of like what you know what gets put out what are what will they leave alone oh yeah there's a reason I have a Christmas tree but not ornament on it exactly exactly that's the exact use of the climbing wall so part of that I mean so we're kind of Christmas middleman a little bit and partially because my husband is Jewish and he's not neither of us are religious but we're just kind of like generally festive is the vibe like a tiny huge festive festivists for for for all of us you just need more lights up because it's dark all the time yeah you need more lights and then you know you you are tempted to dress up the cats but then resist doing that and you know make special food have some I actually got these really cool battery powered illuminated trees from the moment gift shop which are I highly recommend if you're if you want to put something out that you need to only put batteries in and then turn on and then you're done decorating incredible like 10 out of 10 yeah and you know and my advice this year is I think it was last time is let's try to the best of our ability to stop trading Christmas and the winter holidays as an event that we're being judged on even if there are people who are actively judging us let's try to ignore it and just like do less have a better time to truly do less have a better time because people yeah people don't care and if they do care it's weird and they're caring about the wrong thing and just yeah yeah because you know what I think too is that like and this is like a real big part of our culture right now is the anxiety about knowing that the technologies in our lives that were sold to us as a means of entertainment and productivity are now robbing us of all the waking hours they can possibly get and I know got us to keep the running while we're asleep as well right and that our time is really precious in a way that I think the war more and more becoming conscious of as it we're feeling it you know being sucked away from us by corporations and industries that make money by taking our time from us and taking our attention yes yeah the whole attention economy of today and so I think that at Christmas like we're you know we're all thinking about spending money and that's a very difficult area because people are trying to get by with less and you know for a lot of people it's certainly in the United States then then in a long time or in recent years potentially and thanks who just been getting you know have been tough for a long time for various reasons so I feel like this is really a time to try and celebrate and share the joys that come with just like with and you know we're spending money on things that we enjoy and I'm kind of like treating the people that we care about if that makes us happy and as possible for us but not thinking of this stuff as a obligatory and not thinking of there being a minimum of stuff that you have to to buy or to display in order to be doing it right because whatever we choose to do is the right thing for us and also to think about like the time that we spend is very precious and to not take part in things because because we feel like that's the baseline that we've been trained to do regardless of whether we really have the capacity for that I feel like Christmas is a little bit of a green sheet take but to me Christmas is a great time for enforcing boundaries and saying no if that's what makes you feel safer I will always say that yeah Christmas is also a time when abuse of people use the holidays as an excuse to get you to do what they want you to oh god I know you can ignore that it's okay Santa doesn't care Santa's on his spaceship well I think that is one of the things that I really love and try to remember always about I think it's a useful thing if your personal relationship with Christmas is fraught which I think honestly like most people's kind of is just some extent because I mean just look at it just look at it look at it all of this stuff is made up like we treat it as though it's like oh it's a federal holiday it's from god it's you know it's like just this unstoppable force all of it is invented and cultivated and shifted and changed and tweaked over time by people and you can do that too if you want to right don't have to do you're a people you're a people also you can be a gritch temporarily if you feel like it you can invent your own Christmas tradition randomly out of nowhere because if there's one eternal Christmas tradition it's making stuff up and pretending we've always done it and pretending that it comes from the Middle Ages that's the only yeah yeah that's all you have to do whatever you want say it's from the Middle Ages and to all the goodnight Sarah Archer you're so great little Sarah Marshall likewise we are going to put this out around thanks giving actually because like the Christmas tree we want to give it extra time to stay out sure and become desiccated I love that what what where can people find your work and have you written any fun books that people might like to buy or get from the library this Christmas that is a great well all three these so my books are mid-century Christmas which is seasonally appropriate and it makes a great gift for like your mom which is really both the things we've been talking about it's like the book version of this podcast episode it is the book version of this podcast exactly and the mid-century kitchen which touches on many sort of overlapping themes of Cold War don't just see and cat planned which is about cat culture in japan from the view of people in the west to consume it very avically so all of those three depending on who's on your list if you've got a kitchen gadget person or a cat person or a Christmas person though these might all be the same person I could be could be me but I already have your books so get them for someone else yeah could you already have them and you can and thank you so much and you can find me on Blue Sky and on Instagram at Starterize and I usually post links on both of those places to whatever my latest piece is out in the world I've been doing a fair amount of writing for architectural digest lately which is super fun and yeah so I I would love to hear from you if you're out there and want to talk about Christmas stuff yay or cats or whatever thank you so much for your work and the things that you write and also for joining us oh it's such a pleasure and thank you for being just the most fun person to talk about material culture and ephemera and why my kitchen looks the way it does anytime truly anytime also this is a hard time to feel like you're doing enough yeah and maybe it might help to remember my theory that cats are ancient aliens and someday the larger family members who brought them to our shores will come back and will be judged on the way we've taken care of them so when things are feeling difficult just take a care of your cats find a cat to pet or not pet if that's what it was do what it wants yeah and then you'll you'll have done something something good and that'll make it easier to do your next thing all right a lot of good advice excellent advice on around Merry Christmas Sarah brushball Merry Christmas and that was our episode thank you so much for being here you can find Sarah's books and the show notes they will make a great gift especially perhaps to your mom I know my mom liked hers thank you to Miranda Zickler for editing and producing don't forget we have bonus episodes for you on patreon and apple plus check out the deli you know from cvc podcasts check out a sunset they happen at 415 now so they're a little bit easier to catch we will see you next time yeah