"I hate Santa Claus"

So Alex the guy from Austria was absolutely hilarious. Omigod, he had me rolling the entire night. He spoke excellent English and therefore gave and got sarcasm very well.

He asked me do Americans celebrate Christmas like in the movies. I get this type of question a lot, e.g., Do Americans go on dates like in the movies?, etc.

I asked him what was his impression of an American Christmas. He started laughing and said, "Well, on Christmas Eve you open 1 present, and then on Christmas day you get a bunch of presents and then you have a big dinner with a turkey or something."

I told him that sounds about right. Every family is different, but that's generally how my went as a child. I explained further, that Catholics go to church at midnight, so they could be the first to celebrate Jesus' birth. (The latter part was pure sarcasm, and he laughed his ass off.) But seriously, others usually attend church Christmas Day morning. But it depends. And a lot of people don't go to church.

And yes, we have a big dinner turkey and/or ham dinner on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve usually is a more simple dinner. But again it depends because some families celebrate their Christmas Day on Christmas Eve.

So then we get on the subject of the commercialization of Christmas, and then he says, "I f***ing hate Santa Claus!" And I almost pissed my pants I was laughing so hard.

I was like dude, "How could you hate Santa Claus?"

"Well, it was invented by Coca Cola to increase coke sales. And it's not what Christmas is about. And now f***ing Santa Claus has made his way to Europe."

I disagreed. I explained that Santa Claus is derived from St. Nick and wasn't he from Austria or the Nordic countries, or something? He disagreed with me.

Well, I had to look this up. His Coca Cola story is an urban legend. Santa Claus comes from or is Saint Nicholas. Santa became popular in the 19th century due to the influence of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast. His cartoon of the plump jolly guy, that we all know, was published in Harper's Weekly.

But was Santa invented to purely increase retail sales? No, I don't think so. Have American corps used it to make a profit? Of course. And of course, Santa Claus is associated with the commercialization of Christmas.

But I still like Santa. Ho, ho, ho!