For those of us in northern climes, there really is no better time of the season than Christmas. Egg nog and turkey, the heat of a crackling fire, that royal pine scent. It’s the high point of winter where cold weather and snow brightens the atmosphere; reflecting twinkle lights and hanging drapes of candy cane red.
On the calendar of the secular West, Christmas is the most important holiday, spurring entire industries and price indexes. For all the bluster of church bells and the “war on Christmas,” you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a doctrinal Christian holiday bastardized by secular affectations. But it isn’t.
A Saturnalian Christmas
The date of Christ’s birth was never established by religious scripture. Without a date, celebrations by early Christians would have been impossible. December 25 was chosen by Pope Julius I sometime around 337 AD and it accomplished two things. First, it projected mystic divinity to the life of Jesus. As he was widely regarded to have been crucified on March 25, it followed that the Annunciation must have occurred on the same day; a perfect nine month pregnancy puts baby Jesus snug in a manger on December 25. Second, this date coincided with the existing pagan holiday of Saturnalia, making for a tidy Christian cooptation of an existing Roman landmark.
Little is known about early Christmas traditions—if there were any at all to speak of. Birthdays were not nearly as significant to ancient and medieval people as they are now. But from the Middle Ages, it is apparent that Christmas had much more in common with the Roman Saturnalia than it did with Catholic ritual: a multi-day public revelry of drunken stupor and feasting, when slaves could be free and peasants could be lords and all rules of the social hierarchy were flattened. In fact, the traditional 12 days of Christmas was so sinful and disorderly that the very first “war on Christmas” was actually waged by American Puritans who attempted to ban the holiday by levying fines against those who observed it.
Whether Saturnalia or medieval Christmas, we see in both instances a holiday that was religious in name only. Rather than piety, what they really provided was a temporary release to the tense social hierarchy and class system. This was the occasion when Roman slave masters and medieval landlords would grant privileges and gifts to their subjects, solidifying the economic order with community cohesion. The multitude of free days dedicated to communal partying is practically unthinkable to modern economies, which generally only grant about ten statutory holidays throughout the entire year—let alone 12 for a single event. But for the largely agrarian economies of pre-capitalist Europe, there was not much work to be conducted during the winter months.
Capitalist Christmas
Although the Puritan Christmas ban during the 1600s failed, the advent of industrial capitalism granted them their wish. The spread of urban factories, industrial mining, shipbuilding yards and textile mills throughout the 1700s scrambled the established agrarian economy and muted the raucous 12 days of Christmas. People were working 16 hours a day, six days per week. Owing to such dreary working conditions in the Anglosphere, by the 1800s people “hardly took notice of the holiday at all.”1
Describing the capitalist thrust toward exchange value and profit realization, the geographer David Harvey wrote: “The monetization of everything appears to be an unstated evolutionary law of capital.”2 The history of Christmas is clearly an example of this capitalist tendency. Whereas the old Christmas posed an obstacle to capitalist accumulation, the new Christmas would facilitate it. The community that made that debaucherous, 12 day Saturnalian binge possible was pulverized by the crushing weight of industrial machines and thirst for survival wages. As Marx said, “where money is not itself the community, it dissolves the community.”3
Shared holidays are a kernel of communal human nature and social labour that have found cultural expressions for all of known history. What we find with Christmas is a tradition that was melted down by the Industrial Revolution and reforged with a capitalist skin. Christmas trees were the first seasonal item to be put up for sale in towns and cities across North America, as the German custom gained widespread popularity after the arrival of migrants. Christmas tree decorations then followed suit, spurning the seasonal sales of street vendors. Printing presses were the next to cash in on the season with the marketing of mass produced Christmas cards that could be sent via public mail delivery. The social nature of Christmas cannot be denied here; Christmas trees for family enjoyment and public display, cards purchased for friends and family across North America. The gift was the next logical expansion of the Christmas commodity ecosystem.
From an economic standpoint, the Christmas gift represents the ruthless commodification of social life under the guise of selfless giving to loved ones. Gift giving within a capitalist framework effectively exploits our cooperative nature for the realization of private profits. The costs do not have to be paid up front. Canadians are expected to carry $6.1 billion in post-holiday debt entering 2026. Last year, 36% of Americans took on about $1,100 in debt to finance Christmas and Brits collectively raised £1.1 billion in holiday debt. For many, it is so much easier to go into debt than it is to say “no” to their children.
Enter Santa
The most recognizable symbol of Christmas isn’t Jesus—it’s Santa Claus. On the surface, it appears absurd that the birthday boy, the King of kings and Lamb of God, would be overshadowed on his special day by a plump, sleigh-riding elf from the North Pole. It makes sense only when considering the history: Christmas was never a particularly religious ritual and modern Christmas is largely a capitalist construction that drives commodity sales.
Santa Claus is a composite figure based on 19th century American storytelling and Dutch interpretations of Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas. He was not invented by marketeers but his legendary association with gift giving to children made him the perfect marketable Christmas vehicle to drive sales. Attempting to turn Jesus into a piece of marketing would be heretical to the religious and exclusionary to the secular. But Santa; Santa can appear in Coca-Cola advertisements and department store parades. Santa can sprout like mushrooms in December at malls across a continent. The consummate salesman of Christmas, Santa can even get ripped and work the Target store.
Whereas previous modes of production often brought producers and consumers into personal relationships, what happens in the capitalist marketplace is the relation of prices, brands and objects against one another. The production process itself is concealed as “consumers come to form a relationship with products instead of the people who make them.”4
Likewise with Santa, whose mythical veneer belies a fetish: by projecting the generosity of Christmas onto an elf, we distance ourselves from the credit cards and labour that perpetuate the myth. Santa is the symbol of overconsumption under a cloak of charity. After all, he is only as generous as we are willing to spend. Yet, when we are acculturated into the Santa myth we recognize that the gifts he procures come from Santa’s workshop rather than a toy store or Amazon delivery. We are alienated from production and bound to superficial mass consumption—and we acknowledge this fact by our refusal to impute these qualities onto Santa, whose elves intimately handcraft gifts from wish lists.
The intimacy is important because this is what grows through the cracks. Despite the commercial creation of Christmas, the communal feast lives on. It is the social quality of Christmas that gives it a heartbeat—and that cannot be purchased at the department store.
Thanks for reading!
