Christmas în Advertising

The middle of winter has long been a time of celebration around the world. Centuries before the birth of Jesus, early Europeans celebrated light and birth in the darkest days of winter

Today Christmas is the most popular holiday on the planet being celebrated in almost every country as a time of happiness and gift giving.

However Christmas is also a time when our TV screens are flooded with commercials for every existing product or even new products that are yet to be launched, all of them showing basically the same thing.

The first ever Christmas commercial was created by Coca Cola in the 1930’s.

Actually Coca-Cola is responsible for inventing or spreading around the world many of the things that are considered traditions by people in developed countries.

These traditions include: the Christmas tree, Santa Claus, Christmas stockings (in the USA and Western Europe), and in some parts of the world even Christmas itself.

Coca Cola is credited with the invention of the red and white Santa Claus, which happen to be the Coca-Cola colors as well.

They are also responsible for taking a Christian saint, saint Nicholas of Myra, and a German, Dutch and Norse mythological character and turning them into the most popular person in the world, more popular than Jesus himself.

There isn’t a single commercial in which Coca-Cola uses the words: Christmas, Christian and/or any other words related to religion. Instead the words: holiday, holiday season and gift appear in every Christmas commercial since 1938.

On the lower right is Saint Nicholas of Myra, the original gift giver of Christmas

One the lower left is Sinterklaas, a Norse mythological character adopted by the protestants in Northern Europe in the 15th century because they feared Saint Nicholas will become more popular than Jesus.

On top sits the Coca-Cola Santa a combination of the previous two with a touch of red.

Through it’s commercials Coca-Cola, followed by other companies, helped spread Christmas throughout the world.

Christmas is now celebrated in countries like: Japan, Peoples Republic of China, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other non-Christian countries.

However this is a secularized version of Christmas devoid of all religious connotations and content.

Some people say that, through it’s commercials, Coca-Cola unknowingly encouraged the use of synthetic Christmas trees. In the filmed commercials Coca-Cola preferred to use perfect synthetic trees instead of faulty real ones.

Following the Coca-Cola example, Pepsi tried to impose their own view on Christmas by promoting a blue Santa who liked extreme sports. They also encouraged people to spend their Christmas outside rather than at home with their family.

However their special Christmas product Pepsi Blue failed and so did their commercials.