Santa was an elf and actually invented by Coca-Cola

Spoiler alert: The image we know as Santa was actually invented by Coca-Cola.

The first original image of Santa Claus started out in 1822 when Clark More wrote a poem for his daughters that would eventually be reprinted in newspapers. In his poem, “The Visit And St. Nicholas” our jolly friend is a slimmer character much more resembling an elf that could actually fit down a chimney. Try that one out on your young ones when you try to answer just how does the fat guy fit down your tiny flue.

St. Nick was plumped up to the Santa we now know by the editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast and made public in prominent in newspapers, magazines, and calendars by the famous chromolithographer Louis Prang. In the popular collected cards of the day called "scraps" (collected and pasted into a book––what we now call scrap books), Santa was not yet a jolly image, but much more severe persona appearing in a multicolored suit. Sketched by Nast,
the old St. Nick that we know from countless images did not come from folklore, or from More or Nast but from the yearly Coca-Cola Company advertisements.

In the 1920s the Coca-Cola Company was struggling to make its soft drink a popular beverage during the winter months. Striving to make an all weather beverage, they came up with the campaign magic–“Thirst Knows no Season" and took it on the road with poster advertising just about everywhere.

These early marketing entrepreneurs made a serious effort to position their products around a specific calendar event. Christmas and Coca-Cola was all it. Santa drinking a Coke instead of the traditional milk and cookies began to push all other images of Santa aside. But the marketing strategies linking to a calendar event did not stop there. Soon many calendar events were a big part of product selling strategy. 

Some of these calendar events actually divided the year into memorable marketing sections. New Year's to Valentine's Day onto Mother's Day were all viable markets for the candy companies and they exploited them big time. You can't make it throughout the year without Halloween––which is the mother of all candy marketing strategies. Based on a pagan ritual that Americans took hold of and established as a holiday as quickly as they now look at ice cream and cookies and ask "Can you fry that?"
 
Given our current economic market, one might not be surprised by the interruption of a longtime tradition of the Thanksgiving meal. Black Friday has now become the early bargain hunter's deals on Thanksgiving day. What is to become of our time honored family tradition? Will Americans sit still at the Thanksgiving table while so many deals are available just one day earlier than Black Friday, or at best, be the bleary eyed participant at that meal who woke up at 4 am to get a great deal on a toaster oven?
 
There are so many marketing "events" now that one can't look at calendar and not see some type of money making extravaganza tied to it. If you can think of any event (large or small) that exploits human behavior, chime in and discuss on December 13. Post and recognize that nasty advertising agenda that twists our way of life and how we spend money based on a calendar date.
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A Retro Art Look at the Polish Poster

The Polish Poster If you know your World War II history well enough you'll remember that Poland got slammered on both sides. First, by a devastating invasion by Hitler from the West (with no real declaration of war), and second, only seventeen days later, by the Soviets on the East.The capital city of Warsaw was almost completely gone when all was said and done, and with it went any purpose for great art or design. But the Polish people at that time owned a resilience that was unmatched elsewhere, and within that mode of endurance the Polish school of poster art emerged Henryk Tomaszewski http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/henryk-tomaszewski-meeting-the-master led the drive to promote the art of the Polish poster as a prominent means of communication–a graphic idiom that eventually became a source of national pride. Put in perspective, Poland's electronic media was not even close its neighboring countries who had not been been dismantled by the effects of the war. The poster became the essential leader in communicating events in this communist country for many years. Another milestone in poster history was in 1964 when the landmark Muzeum Plakatu was dedicated to this rich source of communication of the Polish people post Wold War II. The museum generated international attention and the polish poster exists today as a testament to the will of an entire generation exposed to war. The hardships these people sustained through the realities of war and beyond continued to show up in their graphics, as the designers of these historical posters wore their hearts on their sleeves. The look of the Polish poster began to take on surreal, emotional and political aspects. A major trend in polish posters sprung up in the 1960s and reached a high point in the 1970s. A darker more somber side carrying the weight of surrealism and political awareness in a reaction to the social constraints of the dictatorial regime in place was now apparent. The freedom so often denied the Polish nation in history was now becoming a subtle subject appearing in the Polish poster.  Franciszek Starowieyski (above) was the first of the graphic designers to incorporate these frustrations of the Polish nationality into the work of his posters. Surreal and sometimes downright gory, the pictures produced by Starowieski have a tendency to stay with the viewer long after the images have been digested into the human psyche. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfArAqBJwsA Jan Lenica (below) pushed the imagery even further with a menacing and dreamlike quality of communication that even ventured into animated media. When a young Roman Polanski was asked to name his favorite Polish filmmakers, he cited only two—Andrzej Wajda and Jan Lenica. The first choice was not much of a surprise, but to single out Jan Lenica, a comparatively obscure animator, must have seemed a little puzzling. Lenica is probably best known in for his poster artwork for Roman Polanski's films for the Compton production company, Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966). Both are childlike gouaches, verging on the abstract, though immediately distinctive. Like Polanski films, Lenica's career in poster art and set-design cultivated associations with the absurd, a preoccupation that culminated with a series of remarkable animations during the 1960s and 70s. Waldemar Swierzy (below) polished his national style in a graffiti like manner with gestures into the wet paint working with a brush handle and incorporating a variety of media, sometimes incorporating watercolor, pencil and even crayon into one design. In his famous poster for the rock star Jimi Hendrix, this erratic movement with paint and markings bring the natural violence of the Polish poster into a unique vision. As spontaneous as his technique looked, it has been said he has been known to execute a single poster as many as five times before releasing the final.These designers carried a unique personal vision prompting others to join them in what became a famous national style that continues today. A former teacher of mine at Tyler School of Art, Temple University was the Polish poster artist and illustrator Raphael Oblinsky who continues to create magnificent imagery in the vein of this tradition. Check out this contemporary master at http://www.patinae.com/olbinski.htm.