Art and Humanitites

Jerry Gore

HU300 – Arts and Humanities: 20th Century and Beyond

Unit 2 Assignment

4 January 2013

Professor Jamie Jordan

The story of Santa Claus and Christmas is a great story that brings joy to kids all around the world. This is a story of a man who works in a magical workshop at the North Pole, and builds toys with his elves all year long lights up a kid’s imagination. Santa is created a magical man who can deliver toys all around the world in one night. His magical sleigh flown by flying reindeer takes him to every nice and naughty child’s house. To better make the story real, there are countless movies and cartoons that make him believable. Parents will tell their kids to leave milk and cookies for him. They have mailboxes for letters that go to the North Pole for kids to make a Christmas wish list.

The lesson is dealt into the story from the naughty and nice list. The Christmas song “Santa Claus is coming to town” tells kids that he knows who is naughty or nice and he is checking his naughty/nice list twice to make sure whether you will get presents on Christmas. Parents are able to give gifts to their kids from Santa and if they didn’t get everything on their list they can tell them that maybe they weren’t good enough for all their presents and they have to act better next year. That lesson teaches kids that you have to be good all year long to be rewarded at the end of the year. This teaches kids that you must act right in life and good things will happen. It can be made into a Christmas bonus from work or just the satisfaction of making it through the year and happy to begin the next year and be even better.

The most recent expansion of the Santa story is elf on a shelf. Every day during the holiday season parents leave a stuffed elf in their house and tell their kids that the elf is watching them and travels to the North Pole every night while they are asleep to tell Santa how they are acting. After the child goes to sleep the parent puts the...