Mingling popular, commercial, national, and personal Christmas meanings

 

Around the time of Thanksgiving the Christmas lawn art goes up

The colorful and large pieces of store-bought lawn art attract some attention of passing traffic in mid-day, but at night the accompanying lights attached or internal to the inflatable figure stand out especially vividly. This business benefits from visibility on a main road in the city so they rotate the themes of lawn displays four or five times in the annual cycle: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, maybe Easter, possibly something patriotic from Memorial Day (end of May) weekend and into Independence Day (start of July). Without asking the proprietors it is hard to say what may be the mix of motivations or to estimate which of them is strongest: business name recognition/visibility, community spiritedness, tradition of the earlier proprietors or family memories, creative impulse to express publicly, and so on.

The figures in the photo include the 1966 cartoon adaptation of Dr. Seuss' (1957) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (reindeer dog and green Grinch), the Snowman from the 1964 stop-action animation of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, and at the right edge of the frame, partly protected by the roof overhang, is the standard Santa Claus (or Saint Nicolas) figure in costume. Both of the Christmas TV special productions concern gift giving, cold weather, community spirit, and wishes fulfilled in spite of obstacles faced by the protagonist(s). And the Santa (or British and colonial Father Christmas) also has roots in the church calendar and stories, too. None of the figures quotes Bible scripture or sings church hymns, though. But this ensemble has a cultural logic that makes this mix of figures coherent.

There are many ways to view the scene, depending on one's own interests and beliefs about the best way to kindle a Christmas spirit and acknowledge the holiday's original and its present-day meanings. Some will foreground the happy, fun, and spendy feeling of the weeks before and maybe a few days after the December 25 calendar date. Others will mainly feel a communal and nation-sized synchronicity with fellow citizens all doing something along the lines of celebrating good things in life (or grieving the absence of those things due to recent losses, change in fortune or health, and nostalgia for not achieving remembered and imagined heights of Christmas celebrating). Worshipers organized into religious bodies will celebrate congregationally with seasonal food and music and orders-of-worship to retell the story of Jesus' birth and its lead up, too. A few may resist the headlong consumerist compulsory gift-giving and disengage from the swirling mass media, pop culture, and annual merry-making; not disrespecting all those others enjoying themselves, but withdrawing from the general busyness of the season and clinging to the somber theme of the shortest days and weeks of the Earth's rotation around the Sun at winter solstice. None of this approaches is mutually exclusive of the others since a person can feeling all of these things to some degree in sequence or at the same time. Many others have religious life other than the Christian calendar at the end of the year (or none at all). So all the special efforts present a prominent, dominant, but otherwise low-relevance repeat each year.

Compared to 50 or 100 years ago, some dimensions of the Christmas season remain the same, while others bear little resemblance to what came before. As a young child the whole transformation of routines at home and out in public is wondrous and seems effortless: it just happens, like a force of nature. As an older child there is less magic and more active participation in the making of Christmas decoration, food, atmosphere and socializing. As an adult with or without children there is much more involvement in producing Christmas for others to see, to participate, and to reflect on prior experiences, too. So those life-cycle perspectives probably are similar in 2023, 1973, or 1923. But the scale, expense, and excesses of the business cycle of today surely dwarf the way things went in those earlier lifetimes.

Seeing this photo in daylight, or again against the darkness of short days, the first spark of meaning from the season's figures brings a smile of recognition and the associated positive memories when having first seen the stories they belong to. But by thinking beyond that initial reaction, it turns out that there are many layers of meaning, depending on a person's age, formative years (decade), budget, social obligations and network, primary connection to the holiday (religious or not, businessperson or not, USA born or newly immigrated) and so on.

Comparing pop vs. commercial culture: holiday lawn decorations during December

commercial versus popular culture (click image for full size view)

Maybe in in 20 or 25 houses put Christmas scenes, accent lights, or ornaments in front of the building for public display that goes beyond hanging a wreath on the front door. Most of the scenes or figures have to be plugged in for operating the lights (occasionally soundtrack, too) and, for inflatables like these, for running the fan or blower to hold the internal pressure steady. There figures from popular (TV the first two, film for the right-hand figure) are from left to right: Frosty the Snowman (c.1969), The Grinch who Stole Christmas (c. 1966), and Chewbacca of Star Wars (c. 1977). At the front door a green bulb has replaced the normal white illumination, since green and its opposite no the color wheel, red, are prominent colors for the dark nights of Christmas season (evergreens betoken life, even in the dead of winter; red for the berries of some wintertime plants). The red painted planks standing next to the door give one of the seasonal greetings.

A few things come to mind when thinking about the overlapping meanings of commercial culture (significance is mostly instrumental, occupying public space and imaginations thanks to mass creation and distribution) and popular culture (things connected to stories in the society or linked to themes of the language/culture). Popular culture has exited long before industrialization and mass production or consumption. Things like folk songs, folk stories, folk costumes and characters of the stories circulate widely among people and form a shared currency or pool of imagery and words. On the other hand, commercial culture only took the place of, or overshadowed and dominated, things made by hand --one's own or another person specializing in making the thing-- with the rise of factories and mass production and selling.

Another difference is that commercial culture extends beyond what the average person recognizes by brand name or product appearances. This culture includes the people, places, and lore concerning the making of the particular product. By contrast the pop culture, too, extends to places that have no connection or correspondence to commercial operations and experiences. As an example, there are customs that are widely know and practiced (like Christmas stockings hung near a fireplace for the convenience of Santa Claus (or St. Nicolas). To the degree that uniformly sold stockings are widely used, there is a commercial culture layer. And to the degree that home-made, making do, or craft-fair, individually distinct stockings are used in a family's Christmas customs, then it is popular culture that is being referenced and expressed.

Mingle and mangle 2015 consumers' and Christians' Christmas

In the fading afternoon light the bright nylon inflatables catch the eyes of passers by, complete with their own blowers to keep air pressure, along with lights to internally illuminate to figure. In this case the figure of Saint Nicholas (a.k.a. Santa 'claus) astride a motorcycle stands out for its juxtaposition of jaunty biker culture with kindly bewhiskered gent in red. Then there is the giant teddy bear, quoting the Santa costume trimmed at sleeve and hat brim in white fur. Lastly at the far right and sheltering under an evergreen, there are Mary and Joseph surrounding a cradle, pressed from solid plastic and set glowing with bulbs inside the figures. Perhaps they date to the 1980s whereas the inflatables come from the 2000s. In addition to the range of scenes or characters from popular (Santa) and commercial (Mickey Mouse in Santa costume) culture of the year end holidays, manufacturers also have a selection of inflatables for late November (Thanksgiving Day in USA; the 4th Thursday of the month), and perhaps most of all for the end of October (Halloween). So there are a few households that put up a display in October, November and December, while others do none of this public lawn display.
       If asked about reasons to add the electrification and increase their energy bill, perhaps they would respond in one or more of these ways: it is for my (grand)children (or neighbor kids), it brightens the December darkness, I got this on sale after last year's holiday season ended, it is fun to set up and look at each night, it is my contribution to my street's community spirit. But, of course, without actually posting the questions to a cross-section of residents, the list of suppositions is little more than imagination of just one writer.
       A symbolic interpretation might go like this: The Santa figure is suited to a nation of immigrants, since strangers can be a source of unexpected benefit. The biker reference seems to bring the story out of the land of reindeer and onto the streets of a motorized society where people can be together and still be separate or isolated. The bear hearkens to the original Teddy Bear - something fierce and dangerous that now is cuddly and suited to childhood reveries. Meanwhile, dwarfed by the blower and big dimensions of the inflatables (just so much hot air?) there the figures going back to the 2000 year old story and the holy scripture that has conveyed it generation by generation. I wonder how well these relative proportions mirror the larger patterns around the regions of the USA, both in rural and urban places, among the many varieties of ethnic groups comprising the society at the moment.

God and? or? nor? Country - Christmas creche in plastic and internal lights; veterans memorial in road center

In the cold light of the last calendar day of 2014 we observe the permanent display in brick, metal and stone for the veterans memorial and the seasonal display of figures to represent a scene at the Bethlehem manger about 80 generations ago when the VIPs from the east arrived to behold the baby Jesus. For someone who has never seen either of these things, there is a lot to reflect upon: origins of these forms of memorializing, the undertaking of designing, funding, securing permissions and building, then maintaining and using the sites. For someone who sees the Christmas ensemble year after year, it is easy to glance briefly enough to identify what it is, but then go no further and study the meanings of the original language and society, much less the meanings over the centuries as the Bible meanings intersect with the World.