December 23, 2025 • 46 mins
The holiday you know wasn’t born under twinkle lights. It was assembled—piece by piece—out of Star Wars, Sol Invictus and Saturnalia, immigrant folklore and Protestant pushback, department store spectacle and the irresistible pull of a good story. We follow that winding path from Rome’s calendar to America’s shopping aisles, showing how gift giving shifted from communal ritual to commercial engine and why the myth of a “pure” Christmas never really existed here.
We dig into the colonial bans and 19th-century legalization that set the stage for a retail renaissance, when newspapers sold Santa, window displays became cathedrals of commerce, and cards and ornaments scaled through industrial craft. Santa’s look didn’t start with Coca-Cola; it coalesced from poems and prints that mass marketing spread nationwide. Then we jump to 1977, where George Lucas’s bet on merchandising collided with demand: Kenner couldn’t make Star Wars figures by Christmas, so it sold promises—the Early Bird Certificate Package. An empty box with stickers and a pledge should have flopped. Instead, scarcity and story turned IOUs into the season’s hottest gift and birthed the modern collector boom.
The throughline is startling and useful: American Christmas has always blended wonder with salesmanship, moral tales with marketing, generosity with buying. That doesn’t cheapen the meaning we make; it puts the power back in our hands. Understand the machinery, keep what matters, and let the rest go. If this history reshaped how you see the season—or made you smile at the audacity of that Star Wars “empty box”—tap follow, share with a friend who loves holiday lore, and drop a review to help more curious listeners find us.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Gentlemen, let's run our minds.
SPEAKER_02 (00:21):
Charge the lightning field.
SPEAKER_00 (00:28):
Christmas.
I just want to be a dentist.
SPEAKER_01 (00:36):
It's Herbie.
All right, welcome back toDispatch Ajax.
I'm Skip.
SPEAKER_02 (00:43):
Happy holidays from Jake.
SPEAKER_01 (00:45):
That's a J Hardboard cutout of Jake, and it does
this, you know, every everyyear.
Not really heartfelt, but justknow he loves you.
SPEAKER_02 (00:55):
Happy holidays from all of us at Dispatch Ajax.
At Globo Chem.
You can just put in anythingreally.
Yeah.
Sky Dance.
Happy holidays from everybody atMcDonald's.
Sky Dance.
Cock Ring warehouse.
SPEAKER_01 (01:17):
This holiday season, don't forget.
So he's like, oh, well, I've allI've got is 75 cockerings to put
in the bed.
It's really good.
So there is no historical sourceidentifying the exact date of
the Christian artifact known asthe Nativity.
(01:40):
None whatsoever.
In fact, the date of December25th wasn't adopted to represent
what we call Christmas untilsometime during the fourth
century CE when the RomanCatholic Church began to
celebrate the Feast of theNativity, which was not just a
single day, but kind of a wholeseason.
(02:03):
As we all know at this point, alot of Christmas traditions in
the West are actually juststolen from ancient pagan
rituals based around thechanging of the seasons and the
harvest festivals and otherreligious practices or just
cultural or folk practices ingeneral.
But that declaration of theFeast of the Nativity wasn't
(02:26):
even Rome's first flirtationwith that date.
The Roman Empire declaredDecember 25th a holiday to
celebrate the birth of theiradopted Syrian god, Sol
Invictus, in 274 CE.
Some 50 years later, JohnConstantine officially adopted
December 25th as a day forcelebrating what we would now
(02:50):
call Christmas.
Before 1000 BCE, we have a lotof gods or demigods born on
December 25th.
Horus and Osiris from Egypt.
Attis, the the Phrygian andlater Greek god of vegetation.
And I want to do a whole episodeon that because it is the most
(03:12):
bonker story I've ever read inmy entire life.
Before 200 BCE, we have Mithra,who we're big fans of here in
the pod.
Friend of the Pod, Mithra.
Gotta get in Mithra.
Gotta get him in.
Heracles, Dionysus, Tammuz, andAdonai.
Who there's a Star Trek episodecalled Who Mourns for Adonai?
Now, the gift giving aspect ofthis tradition originates, I
(03:39):
think most commonly from theRoman celebration of Saturnalia,
where gifts were given toeverybody you saw in your
community, you had to give thema gift, and they were gonna give
you a gift back.
To the point where thetraditional greeting of somebody
(04:02):
gift giving during Saturnaliawas low low low Saturnalia.
Which has its holdovers today inSanta Claus saying ho ho ho.
Where them hoes at?
Wait, but until the 19thcentury, most Americans did not
(04:23):
celebrate Christmas, like atall.
When the Puritans first came toAmerica, or well, let's call it
New England or the New World,they outlawed Christmas straight
up.
And the only ones who did wereusually the upper crust who used
it as an excuse to have alltheir rowdy friends over.
I'm guessing to watch Mondaynight football.
(04:43):
Monday night football?
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
All that is to say that thosecelebrating December 25th, or
even the winter solstice, whichis like the 22nd, is very old,
but the modern Christmastradition is not.
So why is it the way it istoday?
At one point.
It kind of stems out ofnostalgia, where there was a
(05:10):
there was a longing by peoplewho had moved into the urban
proletariat role.
Who wished for the morepastoral, family-oriented, you
know, sort of like prairieexistence.
Which really wasn't a thingeither, because they didn't
celebrate Christmas back then.
(05:31):
So we've already kind of likecreated this myth that isn't
real in nostalgia.
But Americans, because Americansare a very diverse group of
people based on immigrants, theystarted slowly adopting old
world or European Christmastraditions that sort of like
(05:52):
helped solidify their familyunits.
Christmas trees, for instance,were come from the Germanic
peoples, which were allChristianized pagan traditions.
And Santa Claus was brought overto the US by the Dutch.
And we'll get to that in asecond.
So Christmas was introduced tothe American colonies while it
(06:15):
was really not seen favorably bymost of Europe, and definitely
not by the colonies, thecolonists themselves, especially
the Puritans and Baptists,Presbyterians and Quakers during
the 17th and 18th centuries.
This whole time, Christmas wasmost important to the Church of
(06:36):
England, who had separated fromthe Catholic Church because, you
know, Henry VIII wanted to fucka bunch of other women because
he didn't realize that hecouldn't have boys.
Puritans thought that it thatChristmas as a celebration,
because it's never mentioned inthe Bible, was secular and
unholy.
(06:56):
And they refer to it oftentimesas, quote, wanton Bacchanalian
feast.
And they're not wrong.
It is essentially Saturnalia orBacchanalia.
Most of them just some of themsided with the Church of England
who had come over, some of themsided with the more puritanical,
tyrannical versions ofChristianity here in the states.
(07:21):
In fact, in 1620, the NewEngland Puritans spent their
first Christmas day in Americaconstructing a building instead
of celebrating the birth oftheir Lord and Savior.
The Massachusetts Bay Colonypassed an ordinance in 1629
stating that Christmas must betreated as a normal working day,
(07:43):
and anyone caught feasting, notworking, or partaking in any
kinds of celebration would haveto pay a fine of five shillings.
Damn.
Sounds like a deal nowadays.
That law was eventually repealedin 1681, but Christmas still
wasn't a thing.
Stores, businesses, shops,markets, they all stayed open.
It was just another day.
(08:05):
Now, when it became a littlemore popular, Christmas gifts
weren't really emphasized.
But there was a tradition inparts of Europe about giving
children small gifts on specialoccasions.
And so, like the Dutch coloniststhat settled in New Amsterdam
brought, for instance, the taleof Saint Nicholas to America, in
(08:29):
which St.
Nicholas.
Well, we'll get to that in asecond.
He was supposed to bring giftsto good quote quote good
children and switches for thebad.
So we're getting into sort oflike Krampus territory or
Belschnickel or, you know.
The Germans had settled inPennsylvania brought the
(08:50):
traditions of the Christmas treein the 18th century.
And during the 19th century,Christmas trees became more
popular because you know what?
We had a lot of those treeshere.
Christmas kind of became alittle bit more of a time of joy
and celebration as a season.
Now, by the 19th century, thepopularity of Christmas was
(09:12):
exploding, characterized by thelegal declaration of December
25th as a holiday in all statesand territories between 1836 and
1890.
The first one being Alabama.
Now, in the later part of the19th century, merchants and
(09:34):
retailers started salivatingwhen they realized that if
you're gonna give gifts tolittle kids, maybe we can uh get
a piece of that sweet action.
And they started exploiting thiscelebration with sales,
advertising, and really startinghitting it hard that, well, it's
(09:59):
your duty to give gifts thisseason.
SPEAKER_02 (10:04):
Can I interlude at all?
Please do.
Oh, yeah.
In the 1840s, newspapers hadspecial Christmas advertising
sections featuring pictures ofSanta Claus.
And in 1841, a store inPhiladelphia displayed a
life-size model of Santa Claus,and thousands of children came
to see it.
One of the early indications ofadvertising to try to get kids
(10:29):
into a store by having arepresentation of Santa Claus
there to welcome them.
SPEAKER_01 (10:37):
Absolutely.
The first explicit advertisementfor Christmas gifts was in
Salem, Massachusetts in 1806,and the ad read, quote,
Christmas gifts.
That's it.
It was placed by a localnewspaper, placed in a local
newspaper by a bookstore, but itkind of went dark after that
(10:59):
until the 1820s.
Now, like you were saying,during the end of 1839 was the
most, to this day, probably themost devastating depression
America's ever had.
We talk about the GreatDepression as if it were the
biggest economic downturn inAmerican history.
It is not.
(11:20):
The reason it's considered thatis because it was worldwide for
the very first time.
The 1839 Depression was actuallyfar worse and devastated the
entire country.
But during this period,capitalists and retailers wanted
to exploit the spirit ofChristmas and the tradition, the
(11:45):
slow-growing tradition of giftgiving, by uh by advertising
that it's sort of like your dutyto buy Christmas gifts for your
children or for your loved onesduring the holiday season.
One of the one of my favoriteones is certain newspapers
(12:06):
represented this depression as amalevolent personified identity
called Old Hard Times.
An actual dude.
And villainizing him, but thenintroducing his foil, the spirit
of commerce himself, a positivegiving figure.
(12:30):
Santa Claus.
Department stores blew up duringthis period.
And they really saw anopportunity here.
Because even during thatdepression, gift giving was
still a thing.
Now, granted, gifts that weregiven were usually handmade or
(12:51):
custom-made, especially sincethis is be you know, around uh
the implement of the IndustrialRevolution.
So everything was still handmadewooden things, rocking horses,
you know, tr m wooden trains,things like that, which is one
of the reasons that that wholearchetype about Santa Claus
still exists, but doesn't make alot of sense today.
(13:16):
The slow incremental lurch ofhardcore modern American
capitalism really startedseeping in at this point.
They started clawing out of thatdepression.
And when department storesbecame more and more prevalent,
(13:39):
they started decorating theirestablishments for Christmas and
using different marketingtactics to draw new shoppers,
either guilt tripping or makingit seem like they were obligated
to buy so that they could give.
In fact, much of the aestheticof what we think consider
(13:59):
Christmas today comes fromdepartment store, you know,
presentations and decorations.
They used to be people used tohave full-time jobs being
department store decorators orlike decorating window displays
at department stores.
In fact, it got real weird inthis era.
A lot of times, departmentstores, especially specific
(14:20):
ones, they would install thesedecorations and these
installations almost assacramental.
In fact, some of them werereferred to as cathedrals, with
Christian symbolism and a veryreligious-like approach to
(14:40):
capitalism and consumerism.
For instance, a department storein Philadelphia named
Wanamakers, whose founder JohnWanamaker, was a Presbyterian
builder of Sunday schools andchurches, and his stores, he
would often refer to his loftestloftiest temples.
(15:00):
Department stores contained agrand court in Wanamaker's
vision, and various others inthat era.
They became churches, some ofwhich had organs.
In Wanamaker's, they had theworld's largest organ organ as
the centerpiece of the storeduring Christmas.
(15:21):
They had Christmas carolingtwice a day, and completely
decked out Christmas uhparaphernalia, including scenes
of the nativity, flags of thecrusades, statues of angels,
religious tapestries.
And that's that tradition kindof still exists, especially in
(15:45):
the role of the mall Santa.
That's that's a that's aholdover from this this kind of
era.
Now they weren't the only likedrivers of this, though, they
were big ones.
A lot of entrepreneurs fed intothis.
Like a German printer namedLouis Prang created a market for
his his new innovative colormulticolor printing technique,
(16:10):
and that's where you getChristmas cards.
FW Woolworth was the one whomass produced sphere-shaped
ornaments for Christmas trees,because he uh because they were
produced in Germany, and theChristmas tree is a German
creation.
Holiday marking holidaymarketing and its impact on our
(16:33):
our cultural traditions andaesthetics, though, are nothing
compared to, though I think theobvious creator of the most
famous Christmas character ofall time, not Jesus Christ, but
Santa Claus.
Now there have been many figuresthroughout Europe's history that
have been compared to the modernAmerican Santa Claus that we all
(16:55):
know and love from you know hisrepresentations in Coca-Cola and
whatnot, though I'd like tosquash this myth, Coca-Cola did
not create the aesthetic ofSanta Claus.
That was all based off of a poemwhich we call The Night Before
Christmas, and it wasn't eventhe first to visualize it.
It was just the most popular onebecause it was an inner it was
an international company and itjust made it really common.
(17:16):
There are parallels throughoutEurope, like the Dutch
Sinterklos, Father Christmas ofthe UK, Pierre Noel from France,
Santa Lucia, that's hilarious,from Sweden, Babushka from
Russia, Befana from Italy, andthe Spanish have something
called Three Kings, and I'm andI'm I'm I'm really hoping it's
(17:38):
just like a DVD of the movieThree Kings that they put up on
their on their like on theirmantle.
Yeah, you you got George Clooneyand Ice Cube?
Come on.
Is it the other one?
Isn't the other one in Wahlberg?
Isn't that the other one?
SPEAKER_02 (17:53):
I uh I can't remember.
SPEAKER_01 (17:57):
I'm not 100% sure either, but it just like sticks
out to me.
Maybe because he just does thatkind of movie all the time.
Who's who is the other one inthat?
There there are three of them.
Oh, that's it's kind of awhatever movie anyway, so it
doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_02 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, it's uh it's a it's a it's a berg.
SPEAKER_01 (18:12):
It's it's the Marky.
There you go.
Marky Mark and the Christmasbunch.
Um but honestly, most of thestuff that we take for granted
as the visual aesthetic forSanta Claus obviously comes from
that poem, but directly inspiredby the Christian saint Saint
(18:37):
Nicholas, who served as Bishopof Mira in the Eastern Church
during the fourth century.
That's an important thingbecause, like we said earlier,
Christmas wasn't considered areal holiday until the fourth
century CE.
So you're seeing a biginnovation here as we go along.
(18:59):
And I don't want to get too muchinto the bog down in the details
in this because we're not gonnahave a long time to do this, but
one of the things that's aboutSt.
Nicholas's uh school for Waywardwomen or whatever it was.
Right.
He would throw bags of goldthrough the windows of poor
girls to pay for their dowriesso that they wouldn't be sold
into slavery or prostitution.
Which is why he's consideredgenerous.
(19:22):
Well, I mean, it's a nice thingto do.
unknown (19:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (19:25):
That's great.
That's really good.
He also did a bunch of otherweird stuff that I'm not going
to get into because that wedon't have time for it.
But in the European tradition,he would come around December
6th every year, which was theanniversary of his death, and
children were told that he wouldcome to their homes during the
evening dressed in a red bishoprobe and riding a horse to
(19:48):
distribute the gifts to thosewho have behaved according to
their parents.
Hilariously enough, MartinLuther, who, you know, obviously
reflects.
Formed the church and createdwell sort of modern
Protestantism.
He hated this idea of gift-givenon behalf of St.
(20:10):
Nicholas.
And so he introduced a newcharacter.
He decided to rewrite the wholestory.
And he created, and this isbecause he's German, Christen
Klein, a messenger of Christ,specifically.
Not secular, not separate, notbased on anything pagan.
That character would, when itsort of migrated to the West and
(20:33):
came over to America, was sortof misinterpreted by non-German
speakers as Chris Kringle.
And because America is a meltingpot of immigrants and also
people who refuse to learn eachother's languages, those two
characters simply merged.
So Kris Kringle became SaintNick, which is also Santa Claus.
(20:59):
Now, during more modern history,Santa became this weird symbol
of getting children to buy intocapitalism.
And I want to make thisabundantly clear.
Everybody who has any sort ofnostalgia for Christmas and
(21:21):
wishes it weren't so commercial,wishes it weren't so
materialistic as the way it'scelebrated in America, that has
never existed.
Christmas has always been amarketing tool in America.
Period.
There has never been a time inwhich it wasn't tied very
specifically into selling peopleshit.
End of story.
(21:42):
There is no like weird Victorianera like nostalgic ideal that
existed.
All of that was done by Dickens,and even they didn't celebrate
Christmas the same way as wethink they did.
It just doesn't exist.
It never happened, it never willhappen, so stop it.
If you're gonna lean into it,lean into it and just own up to
(22:04):
what happened.
Santa was kind of designed toteach children that, especially
in America, and especially aftera certain period, that there is
a thing called boundlessabundance.
And which means you will foreverget gifts.
(22:26):
As long as you do the rightthings, you follow the rules,
you will always be given endlessgifts.
And this was never more obviousthan a bunch of studies that
were done in the 20th century,actually, when the whole
tradition of children sendingletters to Santa came under
(22:50):
scrutiny because it's notobviously not a very old
tradition.
It kind of more most famouslyhighlighted by the movie Miracle
on 34th Street, which is just areally long commercial for a
department store.
In 1978, an organization did astudy about letters to Santa
(23:12):
Claus.
It was found that in almostevery case of the 855 letters
sent to Santa, found in theSeattle Post Office in 1978,
that children often receivedmore gifts than they requested,
(23:32):
that the kids actually wouldnormally ask for things that
they actually needed or wantedthat made their lives better.
Not ninja turtles, not stuffthat they didn't see coming, not
stuff that they didn't careabout, literally stuff that
mattered to them, and that theywould in turn receive more
(23:54):
specifically in preschoolchildren who requested an
average of 3.4 toys per childand received an average of 11.6
toys.
Absurdly like endless abundance,which does not exist.
But in America during thatperiod, we all just were
convinced that it was supposedto be that's the fuel for
(24:16):
capitalism, the fuel forAmerican expansionism, and under
the ideals of American-styledcapitalism.
So that kind of catches us upvery briefly to another
watershed moment in Americansociety.
Let's fast forward a fewdecades.
When Star Wars officiallydebuted in theaters May 25th,
(24:40):
1977, George Lucas, he was outto dinner that evening with his
then wife.
And when he came out of therestaurant, he walked down the
street and he came acrossGrauman's Chinese theater.
And saw lines that went out thedoor and wrapped around the
block, not realizing right awaythat it was to see his fucking
(25:04):
movie.
Why?
Because he was so tied up withadvertisements, toy deals,
merchandising, and everythingthat doesn't matter when it
comes to the spirit of these ofthis concept.
The lines that Lucas saw infront of Grauman's theater would
(25:26):
be the portent of the biggestopening day in Grauman's 50-year
history, taking in$19,358, whichis not a lot today.
The film broke eight records inthe other 31 theaters, combining
for a grand total single-dayopening of 254,000.
(25:48):
Jesus Christ,$254,809 on itsopening day in only 32 theaters
in America across the country,one of which being the Glenwood
in Kansas City.
It would go on to look gross, Ithink, a total of$550 million.
And for 1977 money, it's prettyfucking good.
(26:14):
See, when when Lucas set out todirect Star Wars, he did
something kind of brilliant onpar with Jack Nicholson getting
10% of ticket sales for Batman.
He wanted to have full controlover the entire franchise.
He wouldn't get distributionrights, but he would have all
the rights to the characters,locations, toys, merchandising,
(26:36):
you know, all of the otherancillary stuff.
And Fox, who was the distributorat the time, they thought that
was a great deal because moviesmade their profits at the box
office.
They didn't make their profitsfrom t-shirts and fucking, you
know, action figures.
So he agreed to take a pay cutfrom what he was originally
(26:59):
offered to$150,000.
That's all he made for directingStar Wars.
But he got full rights to thesequels, merchandising,
advertising, and so on.
And intellectual property, whichis a big deal.
Now, one of the biggest parts ofthis was Lucas' insistence in a
(27:23):
toy line from Star Wars.
Which, to be perfectly honest,almost didn't happen.
Every company that Lucas went toto present the possibility of
toys for Star Wars as toytie-ins turned him down.
Including Migo, who had made alot of money off of Marvel, DC,
(27:44):
Star Trek, Planet of the Apes,and other big movies, like not
just multimedia franchises ingeneral, but also a lot of movie
stuff.
Even they weren't interested.
They were like, nah, that'swe're not gonna make any money
of this.
It's sci-fi, it's niche,nobody's gonna like it, nobody's
gonna watch it.
So they obviously didn't seewhat was about to happen.
(28:08):
So Lucas is really scraping thebottom of the barrel.
He's desperate, he's gonna needsome money, and he really needs
this deal to go through tocreate the toys so that he can
pay back, you know, theinvestors and the people that
had, you know, put up money forthe creation of the film.
(28:31):
So enter Kenner, a sort of darkhorse that would decide to take
the chance on Lucas and investin a contract to create the Star
Wars action figure line.
(28:54):
Which, after the premiere of themovie, every single person that
rejected Lucas suddenly waslike, What the fuck was I
thinking?
Kenner, smartly, and if youreally want to get grand about
that thing, go watch The ToysThat Made Us.
It's a very mainstream, sort ofshallow, but you know,
(29:14):
informative uh account of howthis worked.
Kanner ends up making toys forStar Wars, and they become
extremely sought after by everyadult and child in America.
And so, come Christmas time, amere few months later, after the
(29:35):
premiere of Star Wars, you'dthink there'd be an abundance of
Star Wars gifts under your tree,right?
I mean, that's what everyone'swaiting for.
Well, the problem was Lucascouldn't get an investor or or
or a company to even bite on thecreation of these toys until
Kenner, and that was really latein the game.
It was quite a bit after StarWars had blown up.
(29:57):
Well, I mean, he signed the dealbefore that, but like they
hadn't really come intoproduction until Star Wars very
blown up.
So Kenner was only a few monthsaway from full-scale production
of Star Wars toys, and Christmaswas coming up fast.
So, let's fast forward toChristmas of 1977.
(30:18):
Picture it, Sicily, 1922.
All these kids are expectingthese Star Wars toys.
They're like excited.
They know they're coming out,they're viny, they've exuberant
about the idea that there mightbe toys that they could play
with about this fucking kick-assmovie that inspired uh kids and
adults alike.
Hundreds of thousands of kidswould tear into their gifts from
(30:40):
under the tree one by one untilthey finally get to the coveted
Star Wars toy box.
And with rabid resolve, they ripopen the only package they
really cared about in the entirething.
And there, before their hungry,greedy eyes, was an empty box.
(31:00):
A cardboard envelope, whichcontained little more than a few
bits of cardboard and a handfulof stickers.
This was what was known as theearly bird certificate package,
a collection of uh essentiallyleaflets and some other printed
paraphernalia.
(31:21):
Reassuring promissory notes.
Yes, IOUs.
Literal IOUs saying, guess what?
I know you want these toys.
They're coming.
Just hold on.
That's the most bizarre bonkerscapitalistic thing I think I
could ever possibly imagine.
(31:42):
All these parents bought thesethings for their kids on the
idea that they might get toyslater.
See, realizing that it would beimpossible to create a full line
of Star Wars toys in time forChristmas for the demand,
Kenner, executive BernardLoomis, no relation to you know
the psychiatrist to Dr.
(32:04):
Loomis, uh, he knew he had to dosomething fast.
And instead of waiting until1978, when it would probably be
ready, he came up with this ideaknown as the early bird
certificate package or the earlybird campaign.
Now, the idea was literally tocreate IOUs for kids, which is
(32:29):
on paper a terrible idea andshould not work at all.
You would think everybody wouldbe so fucking pissed that no one
would ever talk about Star Warsever again.
But that's not exactly whathappened.
Kenner, smartly, limited supplyof these of this pre-order
(32:50):
campaign to only 500,000 kits.
And they stopped the sale ofthem by December 31st, 1977.
They basically rigged the marketto make those scarce.
Which was smart because thenthat kind of like tamped down
the the sort of disappointmentof not getting their fucking
(33:10):
toys with the idea that not onlyare they coming, but they're
gonna be but even having justthis empty box is rare.
Kenner's president, John Beck,at the time, told the telegraph
that action figures take a longtime to produce.
They have to be designed andsculpted, and those sculpts have
to be turned into steel molds,and then the toys have to be
(33:33):
cast, painted, and safelytested.
Then they have to be packaged upand shipped off to toy stores.
It usually takes a year ofproduction time for toy figures
like this.
And even though we hired extrapeople and cut production time
to seven months, we stillcouldn't make it by Christmas.
And in desperation, they threwup a Hail Mary.
Faced with the prospect oflosing millions of dollars in
(33:54):
sales in the 70s, they werelike, Look, if we can't give
them the action figures, why notjust sell them an IOU?
Terrible idea, and yet what doyou know?
In an attempt to soften theblow, no, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02 (34:12):
Yeah, it helps you at the biggest property of you
know, at least that generationand generations to come.
I mean, you can't do that witheverything.
But Star Wars was and still isspecial.
SPEAKER_01 (34:30):
Absolutely.
And today we would consider thispotential vaporware.
We actually have a term for it,because this is the kind of
thing that people do nowadayswith Kickstarter and things like
that.
But included in your package wasjust a cardboard box.
(34:51):
But you got, hey, stickers, andand a Star Wars fan club
membership card.
And the the promise that aftermonths, and well into 1978, they
would finally get their thing.
SPEAKER_02 (35:10):
And it came with a cardboard display stand for 12
figures.
So it's like the promise you'regonna get these figures, and
here's a place to put the restof the figures so you can keep
buying.
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01 (35:26):
Don't worry, they're coming.
They're gonna happen.
And nowadays, honestly, becausethis thing has been kind of not
exactly replicated, but done alot in in, especially in
crowdsourcing, most peoplecynically would be like, no,
that's it's just never gonnashow up.
But the crazy thing was, this isquoting Beck again.
(35:47):
We did some research, uh, we didsome market research research to
see if people would settle forcertificates with the promise of
the toys that they'd bedelivered by February 15th.
The research told us it wouldwork.
And the crazy thing is, StarWars merchandise had such a
clamor and such a desire, andnobody had done this kind of
scheme before, that it was ahuge success.
(36:11):
In fact, packages were sellingso fast that Kenner found itself
taken by surprise.
They really had no idea what todo with themselves.
In a newspaper story publishedon the December 18th, 1977
report, said that the packageshad sold out all over New York
and Chicago.
(36:33):
And the certificates were onlyon sale for a very limited time.
A lot of stores refused to evenstock them because they were
like, we sell things, notpromises.
But then, in mid-January of1978, Kenner began shipping the
(36:53):
toys to those who had boughtthose pledges.
3.75-inch figurines of Luke,Leia, Chewbacca, R2D2.
Now, those toys came in aplastic tray, in a little
rectangular box, and then asmall plastic bag that had
little tiny white pegs thatcould, you know, with a hole in
(37:14):
the foot of one foot of each ofthose characters so that they
could be put on a stand and keptupright.
So the company enclosed in thisperiod a leaflet advertising a
further offer to fill out a formand send two dollars.
And then Kenner would send acollector's action stand
(37:36):
designed to house the eightother figures that would fill
those slots in that eight-figureplastic trade that they put out
that spring.
And to their credit, by the endof 1978, Kenner had managed to
shift an estimated 40 uh shift,I think I meant ship, managed to
(37:58):
ship an estimated 40 millionStar Wars toys based on 500,000
of these promissory notes.
Which means it fucking worked.
It shouldn't have.
(38:25):
Alright.
He told the Evening Independent.
Wouldn't hold your breath.
Today, the early bird set onlinegoes from, depending on its
quality, depending on theseller, anywhere from a couple
(38:46):
of hundred dollars to over$8,000.
People are still falling for thescheme to this day.
And they created the collectormarket.
(39:08):
Without the love of Star Wars,and also without the quality of
the toys, which were great forwhat they were.
They were very unique and rare.
And so to me, this is like theperfect like encapsulation of
how though December 25th hasbeen celebrated throughout the
millennia, what we considerChristmas, especially American
(39:31):
Christmas, is completelyintertwined with American
capitalism.
And I don't think there's a abetter, more perfect
encapsulation of that thanKenner selling an empty box of
toys to kids for Star Wars in1977.
I thought that was better thanjust doing commercialization of
(39:52):
Christmas history.
SPEAKER_02 (39:54):
Yeah.
unknown (39:55):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (39:56):
I was aware that it was a, you know, later on, many
years later.
That it was a thing thathappened.
SPEAKER_01 (40:03):
Yeah, I'd heard about it, but I really never
looked into the history of it.
And also, I thought it was amore unique thing to talk about
than the what which is ironic, amore unique thing to talk about
than the Star Wars Christmasspecial.
Because it seems like everybodycan have access to that now.
So it's not as Yeah.
Interesting.
I came across this and I waslike, holy shit, wait, hold on.
(40:24):
They sold you empty boxes?
Holy shit.
Yeah, it's like what a what aperfectly American thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then like uh World War IIwas a huge driver of the
commercialization of Christmas.
And and there are actually somereal fun, interesting anecdotes
and stories and all that, but II I felt like if I do all of
(40:47):
that and then just talk aboutthis one Star Wars thing, it's
gonna be like reallyfront-loaded, and then nobody's
gonna give a shit by the end.
You know, they're like, oh,that's it?
Okay, well, never mind, youknow.
So I tried to just like skipover a bunch of shit that I
really wanted to talk about thatreally wasn't germane
necessarily to the conversation.
SPEAKER_02 (41:06):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01 (41:06):
Germaine chat.
SPEAKER_02 (41:07):
Oh, I think it totally worked.
SPEAKER_01 (41:10):
Well, yeah.
So I guess we'll yeah, I guessthat's it.
So that's what I got for thisone.
SPEAKER_02 (41:17):
Well, that's uh we'll wrap it up.
Uh uh.
Well, we hope your uh yourChristmas present of a pod this
year wasn't a promissory emptybox, and that you uh we
delivered uh on some interestinginformation and a a some
(41:39):
insights into the commercial andcapitalistic nature of Christmas
and its origins.
Yeah so uh do enjoy unwrappingthat.
And if you'd like to on thisSaturnalia uh give give gifts to
your your friends and loved onesin the form of our podcast, we
(42:01):
would greatly appreciate it.
We wouldn't mind if in this veinof uh wassailing, if you
wouldn't sing mind singing thepraises of your favorite geek
podcast on a podcast app of yourchoice, ideally Apple Podcasts,
where you might give us fiveearly bird starter boxes jolly
(42:24):
uh early bird uh starter boxes.
Uh if you wouldn't mind uhgiving uh five shillings um to
uh the the uh St.
Nicholas whore of your choice.
I was gonna say straightstraight urchin.
(42:44):
You over there, boy.
Any of the above.
SPEAKER_00 (42:47):
What part is this?
Well, it's a spit Ajax, huh?
SPEAKER_02 (42:54):
Or stop lying with with the men of the street uh
and and raise yourself up.
SPEAKER_00 (43:01):
Oh, a new podcast.
That's just what I need to cureme rickets.
SPEAKER_02 (43:07):
We are proven to cure all rickets.
Uh Lyme disease.
Sometimes scurvy.
Um sometimes scurvy.
Depends on the the podcast topicof the week.
SPEAKER_01 (43:18):
Um ironically, if we ever talk about Lyme disease,
the lime, uh the citrus from thelime will cure rickets.
Or scurvy.
I mean, scurvy.
That's because you put the limein the coconut.
In the coconut, and then youdrink them up together.
Just like your favorite pod.
Uh but do please.
Also, these are cola nuts andthese are unkola nuts.
(43:38):
You can't see it because this isan audio format, but I'm
literally cradling two men'snuts and telling you about how
that works.
Miles, get down.
SPEAKER_02 (43:47):
Smiles, Miles, get down.
SPEAKER_00 (43:49):
Get down.
SPEAKER_02 (43:52):
Uh but yes.
Uh uh do like, share, subscribe.
We'd greatly appreciate it.
Um uh thank you again um forjoining us on this holiday
season.
Uh we have uh holiday pods goingyears back, so uh please do
check out the archives, uh seewhat you can find that uh might
trip your trigger this uhfestive season.
(44:14):
Um and until you unwrap a newpod uh the next time we come
out, uh skip.
What should they do?
SPEAKER_01 (44:26):
Well they should trust they should trust that
we're gonna deliver on our emptyboxes.
Also, they should wait for mywe'll deliver to your empty
boxes.
Delivered to your empty box.
I uh wait till that uh you knowthe point in which I uh decide
to go off on my probably veryunpopular opinion that that it's
(44:48):
a wonderful life, it's not aChristmas movie, but a new
year's movie, and which iswhatever.
Whoa.
Uh well what I'm sorry, I I havean argument for it.
I have an argument for it.
I do, I really do, and I havethought it out a lot.
But it's a debate, and I'mwilling to listen to that.
We'll get into that later.
So perhaps in the new perhapsironically, in the new year.
SPEAKER_02 (45:10):
We did uh an episode on that.
Um The Great Christopher Lloydis in that movie, some for some
reason.
You do check out that that spooktacular episode.
SPEAKER_01 (45:20):
Yeah, we tr we tried real hard to get through that
one.
That was unwatchable.
Anyway, so what they should dothen instead, while we're, you
know, instead of us ranting,they should probably clean up
after the selves to some sort ofreasonable degree.
I know it's gonna be tough.
It's the holiday season, youhave friends, family over.
There's gonna be a lot of paperplates and plastic forks and
whatnot, all these things thateventually are just gonna get
(45:41):
dumped in the ocean.
But make sure that you've triedyour best, make sure that you
remember the spirit of theholiday season, whatever that
means to you.
Make sure that you have paidyour tabs, make sure you support
your local comic shops andretailers, and from Dispatch
Ajax, we would like to say nomatter where you go, there you
are.
(46:02):
Thank you, and good night.
I watched Buckaro Bonzai like aweek ago.
Yeah, well, not even a week ago.
I watched it the other night andI was like, yeah, I why don't I
say that more?
That's such a good fuckingsign-off.
It's so good.
SPEAKER_02 (46:19):
Yeah.
I think this might be your firstsign-off where we didn't do the
uh yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_01 (46:24):
Well, and I was it uh the reason that I didn't used
to do that was because like thatwas my sign-off for karaoke, but
I have I don't do karaokeanymore, and so that's when I
did the God Speedfair Wizard.
SPEAKER_03 (46:35):
Please go away.
Gentlemen, let's run our minds.
SPEAKER_02 (00:21):
Charge the lightning field.
SPEAKER_00 (00:28):
Christmas.
I just want to be a dentist.
SPEAKER_01 (00:36):
It's Herbie.
All right, welcome back toDispatch Ajax.
I'm Skip.
SPEAKER_02 (00:43):
Happy holidays from Jake.
SPEAKER_01 (00:45):
That's a J Hardboard cutout of Jake, and it does
this, you know, every everyyear.
Not really heartfelt, but justknow he loves you.
SPEAKER_02 (00:55):
Happy holidays from all of us at Dispatch Ajax.
At Globo Chem.
You can just put in anythingreally.
Yeah.
Sky Dance.
Happy holidays from everybody atMcDonald's.
Sky Dance.
Cock Ring warehouse.
SPEAKER_01 (01:17):
This holiday season, don't forget.
So he's like, oh, well, I've allI've got is 75 cockerings to put
in the bed.
It's really good.
So there is no historical sourceidentifying the exact date of
the Christian artifact known asthe Nativity.
(01:40):
None whatsoever.
In fact, the date of December25th wasn't adopted to represent
what we call Christmas untilsometime during the fourth
century CE when the RomanCatholic Church began to
celebrate the Feast of theNativity, which was not just a
single day, but kind of a wholeseason.
(02:03):
As we all know at this point, alot of Christmas traditions in
the West are actually juststolen from ancient pagan
rituals based around thechanging of the seasons and the
harvest festivals and otherreligious practices or just
cultural or folk practices ingeneral.
But that declaration of theFeast of the Nativity wasn't
(02:26):
even Rome's first flirtationwith that date.
The Roman Empire declaredDecember 25th a holiday to
celebrate the birth of theiradopted Syrian god, Sol
Invictus, in 274 CE.
Some 50 years later, JohnConstantine officially adopted
December 25th as a day forcelebrating what we would now
(02:50):
call Christmas.
Before 1000 BCE, we have a lotof gods or demigods born on
December 25th.
Horus and Osiris from Egypt.
Attis, the the Phrygian andlater Greek god of vegetation.
And I want to do a whole episodeon that because it is the most
(03:12):
bonker story I've ever read inmy entire life.
Before 200 BCE, we have Mithra,who we're big fans of here in
the pod.
Friend of the Pod, Mithra.
Gotta get in Mithra.
Gotta get him in.
Heracles, Dionysus, Tammuz, andAdonai.
Who there's a Star Trek episodecalled Who Mourns for Adonai?
Now, the gift giving aspect ofthis tradition originates, I
(03:39):
think most commonly from theRoman celebration of Saturnalia,
where gifts were given toeverybody you saw in your
community, you had to give thema gift, and they were gonna give
you a gift back.
To the point where thetraditional greeting of somebody
(04:02):
gift giving during Saturnaliawas low low low Saturnalia.
Which has its holdovers today inSanta Claus saying ho ho ho.
Where them hoes at?
Wait, but until the 19thcentury, most Americans did not
(04:23):
celebrate Christmas, like atall.
When the Puritans first came toAmerica, or well, let's call it
New England or the New World,they outlawed Christmas straight
up.
And the only ones who did wereusually the upper crust who used
it as an excuse to have alltheir rowdy friends over.
I'm guessing to watch Mondaynight football.
(04:43):
Monday night football?
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
All that is to say that thosecelebrating December 25th, or
even the winter solstice, whichis like the 22nd, is very old,
but the modern Christmastradition is not.
So why is it the way it istoday?
At one point.
It kind of stems out ofnostalgia, where there was a
(05:10):
there was a longing by peoplewho had moved into the urban
proletariat role.
Who wished for the morepastoral, family-oriented, you
know, sort of like prairieexistence.
Which really wasn't a thingeither, because they didn't
celebrate Christmas back then.
(05:31):
So we've already kind of likecreated this myth that isn't
real in nostalgia.
But Americans, because Americansare a very diverse group of
people based on immigrants, theystarted slowly adopting old
world or European Christmastraditions that sort of like
(05:52):
helped solidify their familyunits.
Christmas trees, for instance,were come from the Germanic
peoples, which were allChristianized pagan traditions.
And Santa Claus was brought overto the US by the Dutch.
And we'll get to that in asecond.
So Christmas was introduced tothe American colonies while it
(06:15):
was really not seen favorably bymost of Europe, and definitely
not by the colonies, thecolonists themselves, especially
the Puritans and Baptists,Presbyterians and Quakers during
the 17th and 18th centuries.
This whole time, Christmas wasmost important to the Church of
(06:36):
England, who had separated fromthe Catholic Church because, you
know, Henry VIII wanted to fucka bunch of other women because
he didn't realize that hecouldn't have boys.
Puritans thought that it thatChristmas as a celebration,
because it's never mentioned inthe Bible, was secular and
unholy.
(06:56):
And they refer to it oftentimesas, quote, wanton Bacchanalian
feast.
And they're not wrong.
It is essentially Saturnalia orBacchanalia.
Most of them just some of themsided with the Church of England
who had come over, some of themsided with the more puritanical,
tyrannical versions ofChristianity here in the states.
(07:21):
In fact, in 1620, the NewEngland Puritans spent their
first Christmas day in Americaconstructing a building instead
of celebrating the birth oftheir Lord and Savior.
The Massachusetts Bay Colonypassed an ordinance in 1629
stating that Christmas must betreated as a normal working day,
(07:43):
and anyone caught feasting, notworking, or partaking in any
kinds of celebration would haveto pay a fine of five shillings.
Damn.
Sounds like a deal nowadays.
That law was eventually repealedin 1681, but Christmas still
wasn't a thing.
Stores, businesses, shops,markets, they all stayed open.
It was just another day.
(08:05):
Now, when it became a littlemore popular, Christmas gifts
weren't really emphasized.
But there was a tradition inparts of Europe about giving
children small gifts on specialoccasions.
And so, like the Dutch coloniststhat settled in New Amsterdam
brought, for instance, the taleof Saint Nicholas to America, in
(08:29):
which St.
Nicholas.
Well, we'll get to that in asecond.
He was supposed to bring giftsto good quote quote good
children and switches for thebad.
So we're getting into sort oflike Krampus territory or
Belschnickel or, you know.
The Germans had settled inPennsylvania brought the
(08:50):
traditions of the Christmas treein the 18th century.
And during the 19th century,Christmas trees became more
popular because you know what?
We had a lot of those treeshere.
Christmas kind of became alittle bit more of a time of joy
and celebration as a season.
Now, by the 19th century, thepopularity of Christmas was
(09:12):
exploding, characterized by thelegal declaration of December
25th as a holiday in all statesand territories between 1836 and
1890.
The first one being Alabama.
Now, in the later part of the19th century, merchants and
(09:34):
retailers started salivatingwhen they realized that if
you're gonna give gifts tolittle kids, maybe we can uh get
a piece of that sweet action.
And they started exploiting thiscelebration with sales,
advertising, and really startinghitting it hard that, well, it's
(09:59):
your duty to give gifts thisseason.
SPEAKER_02 (10:04):
Can I interlude at all?
Please do.
Oh, yeah.
In the 1840s, newspapers hadspecial Christmas advertising
sections featuring pictures ofSanta Claus.
And in 1841, a store inPhiladelphia displayed a
life-size model of Santa Claus,and thousands of children came
to see it.
One of the early indications ofadvertising to try to get kids
(10:29):
into a store by having arepresentation of Santa Claus
there to welcome them.
SPEAKER_01 (10:37):
Absolutely.
The first explicit advertisementfor Christmas gifts was in
Salem, Massachusetts in 1806,and the ad read, quote,
Christmas gifts.
That's it.
It was placed by a localnewspaper, placed in a local
newspaper by a bookstore, but itkind of went dark after that
(10:59):
until the 1820s.
Now, like you were saying,during the end of 1839 was the
most, to this day, probably themost devastating depression
America's ever had.
We talk about the GreatDepression as if it were the
biggest economic downturn inAmerican history.
It is not.
(11:20):
The reason it's considered thatis because it was worldwide for
the very first time.
The 1839 Depression was actuallyfar worse and devastated the
entire country.
But during this period,capitalists and retailers wanted
to exploit the spirit ofChristmas and the tradition, the
(11:45):
slow-growing tradition of giftgiving, by uh by advertising
that it's sort of like your dutyto buy Christmas gifts for your
children or for your loved onesduring the holiday season.
One of the one of my favoriteones is certain newspapers
(12:06):
represented this depression as amalevolent personified identity
called Old Hard Times.
An actual dude.
And villainizing him, but thenintroducing his foil, the spirit
of commerce himself, a positivegiving figure.
(12:30):
Santa Claus.
Department stores blew up duringthis period.
And they really saw anopportunity here.
Because even during thatdepression, gift giving was
still a thing.
Now, granted, gifts that weregiven were usually handmade or
(12:51):
custom-made, especially sincethis is be you know, around uh
the implement of the IndustrialRevolution.
So everything was still handmadewooden things, rocking horses,
you know, tr m wooden trains,things like that, which is one
of the reasons that that wholearchetype about Santa Claus
still exists, but doesn't make alot of sense today.
(13:16):
The slow incremental lurch ofhardcore modern American
capitalism really startedseeping in at this point.
They started clawing out of thatdepression.
And when department storesbecame more and more prevalent,
(13:39):
they started decorating theirestablishments for Christmas and
using different marketingtactics to draw new shoppers,
either guilt tripping or makingit seem like they were obligated
to buy so that they could give.
In fact, much of the aestheticof what we think consider
(13:59):
Christmas today comes fromdepartment store, you know,
presentations and decorations.
They used to be people used tohave full-time jobs being
department store decorators orlike decorating window displays
at department stores.
In fact, it got real weird inthis era.
A lot of times, departmentstores, especially specific
(14:20):
ones, they would install thesedecorations and these
installations almost assacramental.
In fact, some of them werereferred to as cathedrals, with
Christian symbolism and a veryreligious-like approach to
(14:40):
capitalism and consumerism.
For instance, a department storein Philadelphia named
Wanamakers, whose founder JohnWanamaker, was a Presbyterian
builder of Sunday schools andchurches, and his stores, he
would often refer to his loftestloftiest temples.
(15:00):
Department stores contained agrand court in Wanamaker's
vision, and various others inthat era.
They became churches, some ofwhich had organs.
In Wanamaker's, they had theworld's largest organ organ as
the centerpiece of the storeduring Christmas.
(15:21):
They had Christmas carolingtwice a day, and completely
decked out Christmas uhparaphernalia, including scenes
of the nativity, flags of thecrusades, statues of angels,
religious tapestries.
And that's that tradition kindof still exists, especially in
(15:45):
the role of the mall Santa.
That's that's a that's aholdover from this this kind of
era.
Now they weren't the only likedrivers of this, though, they
were big ones.
A lot of entrepreneurs fed intothis.
Like a German printer namedLouis Prang created a market for
his his new innovative colormulticolor printing technique,
(16:10):
and that's where you getChristmas cards.
FW Woolworth was the one whomass produced sphere-shaped
ornaments for Christmas trees,because he uh because they were
produced in Germany, and theChristmas tree is a German
creation.
Holiday marking holidaymarketing and its impact on our
(16:33):
our cultural traditions andaesthetics, though, are nothing
compared to, though I think theobvious creator of the most
famous Christmas character ofall time, not Jesus Christ, but
Santa Claus.
Now there have been many figuresthroughout Europe's history that
have been compared to the modernAmerican Santa Claus that we all
(16:55):
know and love from you know hisrepresentations in Coca-Cola and
whatnot, though I'd like tosquash this myth, Coca-Cola did
not create the aesthetic ofSanta Claus.
That was all based off of a poemwhich we call The Night Before
Christmas, and it wasn't eventhe first to visualize it.
It was just the most popular onebecause it was an inner it was
an international company and itjust made it really common.
(17:16):
There are parallels throughoutEurope, like the Dutch
Sinterklos, Father Christmas ofthe UK, Pierre Noel from France,
Santa Lucia, that's hilarious,from Sweden, Babushka from
Russia, Befana from Italy, andthe Spanish have something
called Three Kings, and I'm andI'm I'm I'm really hoping it's
(17:38):
just like a DVD of the movieThree Kings that they put up on
their on their like on theirmantle.
Yeah, you you got George Clooneyand Ice Cube?
Come on.
Is it the other one?
Isn't the other one in Wahlberg?
Isn't that the other one?
SPEAKER_02 (17:53):
I uh I can't remember.
SPEAKER_01 (17:57):
I'm not 100% sure either, but it just like sticks
out to me.
Maybe because he just does thatkind of movie all the time.
Who's who is the other one inthat?
There there are three of them.
Oh, that's it's kind of awhatever movie anyway, so it
doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_02 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, it's uh it's a it's a it's a berg.
SPEAKER_01 (18:12):
It's it's the Marky.
There you go.
Marky Mark and the Christmasbunch.
Um but honestly, most of thestuff that we take for granted
as the visual aesthetic forSanta Claus obviously comes from
that poem, but directly inspiredby the Christian saint Saint
(18:37):
Nicholas, who served as Bishopof Mira in the Eastern Church
during the fourth century.
That's an important thingbecause, like we said earlier,
Christmas wasn't considered areal holiday until the fourth
century CE.
So you're seeing a biginnovation here as we go along.
(18:59):
And I don't want to get too muchinto the bog down in the details
in this because we're not gonnahave a long time to do this, but
one of the things that's aboutSt.
Nicholas's uh school for Waywardwomen or whatever it was.
Right.
He would throw bags of goldthrough the windows of poor
girls to pay for their dowriesso that they wouldn't be sold
into slavery or prostitution.
Which is why he's consideredgenerous.
(19:22):
Well, I mean, it's a nice thingto do.
unknown (19:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (19:25):
That's great.
That's really good.
He also did a bunch of otherweird stuff that I'm not going
to get into because that wedon't have time for it.
But in the European tradition,he would come around December
6th every year, which was theanniversary of his death, and
children were told that he wouldcome to their homes during the
evening dressed in a red bishoprobe and riding a horse to
(19:48):
distribute the gifts to thosewho have behaved according to
their parents.
Hilariously enough, MartinLuther, who, you know, obviously
reflects.
Formed the church and createdwell sort of modern
Protestantism.
He hated this idea of gift-givenon behalf of St.
(20:10):
Nicholas.
And so he introduced a newcharacter.
He decided to rewrite the wholestory.
And he created, and this isbecause he's German, Christen
Klein, a messenger of Christ,specifically.
Not secular, not separate, notbased on anything pagan.
That character would, when itsort of migrated to the West and
(20:33):
came over to America, was sortof misinterpreted by non-German
speakers as Chris Kringle.
And because America is a meltingpot of immigrants and also
people who refuse to learn eachother's languages, those two
characters simply merged.
So Kris Kringle became SaintNick, which is also Santa Claus.
(20:59):
Now, during more modern history,Santa became this weird symbol
of getting children to buy intocapitalism.
And I want to make thisabundantly clear.
Everybody who has any sort ofnostalgia for Christmas and
(21:21):
wishes it weren't so commercial,wishes it weren't so
materialistic as the way it'scelebrated in America, that has
never existed.
Christmas has always been amarketing tool in America.
Period.
There has never been a time inwhich it wasn't tied very
specifically into selling peopleshit.
End of story.
(21:42):
There is no like weird Victorianera like nostalgic ideal that
existed.
All of that was done by Dickens,and even they didn't celebrate
Christmas the same way as wethink they did.
It just doesn't exist.
It never happened, it never willhappen, so stop it.
If you're gonna lean into it,lean into it and just own up to
(22:04):
what happened.
Santa was kind of designed toteach children that, especially
in America, and especially aftera certain period, that there is
a thing called boundlessabundance.
And which means you will foreverget gifts.
(22:26):
As long as you do the rightthings, you follow the rules,
you will always be given endlessgifts.
And this was never more obviousthan a bunch of studies that
were done in the 20th century,actually, when the whole
tradition of children sendingletters to Santa came under
(22:50):
scrutiny because it's notobviously not a very old
tradition.
It kind of more most famouslyhighlighted by the movie Miracle
on 34th Street, which is just areally long commercial for a
department store.
In 1978, an organization did astudy about letters to Santa
(23:12):
Claus.
It was found that in almostevery case of the 855 letters
sent to Santa, found in theSeattle Post Office in 1978,
that children often receivedmore gifts than they requested,
(23:32):
that the kids actually wouldnormally ask for things that
they actually needed or wantedthat made their lives better.
Not ninja turtles, not stuffthat they didn't see coming, not
stuff that they didn't careabout, literally stuff that
mattered to them, and that theywould in turn receive more
(23:54):
specifically in preschoolchildren who requested an
average of 3.4 toys per childand received an average of 11.6
toys.
Absurdly like endless abundance,which does not exist.
But in America during thatperiod, we all just were
convinced that it was supposedto be that's the fuel for
(24:16):
capitalism, the fuel forAmerican expansionism, and under
the ideals of American-styledcapitalism.
So that kind of catches us upvery briefly to another
watershed moment in Americansociety.
Let's fast forward a fewdecades.
When Star Wars officiallydebuted in theaters May 25th,
(24:40):
1977, George Lucas, he was outto dinner that evening with his
then wife.
And when he came out of therestaurant, he walked down the
street and he came acrossGrauman's Chinese theater.
And saw lines that went out thedoor and wrapped around the
block, not realizing right awaythat it was to see his fucking
(25:04):
movie.
Why?
Because he was so tied up withadvertisements, toy deals,
merchandising, and everythingthat doesn't matter when it
comes to the spirit of these ofthis concept.
The lines that Lucas saw infront of Grauman's theater would
(25:26):
be the portent of the biggestopening day in Grauman's 50-year
history, taking in$19,358, whichis not a lot today.
The film broke eight records inthe other 31 theaters, combining
for a grand total single-dayopening of 254,000.
(25:48):
Jesus Christ,$254,809 on itsopening day in only 32 theaters
in America across the country,one of which being the Glenwood
in Kansas City.
It would go on to look gross, Ithink, a total of$550 million.
And for 1977 money, it's prettyfucking good.
(26:14):
See, when when Lucas set out todirect Star Wars, he did
something kind of brilliant onpar with Jack Nicholson getting
10% of ticket sales for Batman.
He wanted to have full controlover the entire franchise.
He wouldn't get distributionrights, but he would have all
the rights to the characters,locations, toys, merchandising,
(26:36):
you know, all of the otherancillary stuff.
And Fox, who was the distributorat the time, they thought that
was a great deal because moviesmade their profits at the box
office.
They didn't make their profitsfrom t-shirts and fucking, you
know, action figures.
So he agreed to take a pay cutfrom what he was originally
(26:59):
offered to$150,000.
That's all he made for directingStar Wars.
But he got full rights to thesequels, merchandising,
advertising, and so on.
And intellectual property, whichis a big deal.
Now, one of the biggest parts ofthis was Lucas' insistence in a
(27:23):
toy line from Star Wars.
Which, to be perfectly honest,almost didn't happen.
Every company that Lucas went toto present the possibility of
toys for Star Wars as toytie-ins turned him down.
Including Migo, who had made alot of money off of Marvel, DC,
(27:44):
Star Trek, Planet of the Apes,and other big movies, like not
just multimedia franchises ingeneral, but also a lot of movie
stuff.
Even they weren't interested.
They were like, nah, that'swe're not gonna make any money
of this.
It's sci-fi, it's niche,nobody's gonna like it, nobody's
gonna watch it.
So they obviously didn't seewhat was about to happen.
(28:08):
So Lucas is really scraping thebottom of the barrel.
He's desperate, he's gonna needsome money, and he really needs
this deal to go through tocreate the toys so that he can
pay back, you know, theinvestors and the people that
had, you know, put up money forthe creation of the film.
(28:31):
So enter Kenner, a sort of darkhorse that would decide to take
the chance on Lucas and investin a contract to create the Star
Wars action figure line.
(28:54):
Which, after the premiere of themovie, every single person that
rejected Lucas suddenly waslike, What the fuck was I
thinking?
Kenner, smartly, and if youreally want to get grand about
that thing, go watch The ToysThat Made Us.
It's a very mainstream, sort ofshallow, but you know,
(29:14):
informative uh account of howthis worked.
Kanner ends up making toys forStar Wars, and they become
extremely sought after by everyadult and child in America.
And so, come Christmas time, amere few months later, after the
(29:35):
premiere of Star Wars, you'dthink there'd be an abundance of
Star Wars gifts under your tree,right?
I mean, that's what everyone'swaiting for.
Well, the problem was Lucascouldn't get an investor or or
or a company to even bite on thecreation of these toys until
Kenner, and that was really latein the game.
It was quite a bit after StarWars had blown up.
(29:57):
Well, I mean, he signed the dealbefore that, but like they
hadn't really come intoproduction until Star Wars very
blown up.
So Kenner was only a few monthsaway from full-scale production
of Star Wars toys, and Christmaswas coming up fast.
So, let's fast forward toChristmas of 1977.
(30:18):
Picture it, Sicily, 1922.
All these kids are expectingthese Star Wars toys.
They're like excited.
They know they're coming out,they're viny, they've exuberant
about the idea that there mightbe toys that they could play
with about this fucking kick-assmovie that inspired uh kids and
adults alike.
Hundreds of thousands of kidswould tear into their gifts from
(30:40):
under the tree one by one untilthey finally get to the coveted
Star Wars toy box.
And with rabid resolve, they ripopen the only package they
really cared about in the entirething.
And there, before their hungry,greedy eyes, was an empty box.
(31:00):
A cardboard envelope, whichcontained little more than a few
bits of cardboard and a handfulof stickers.
This was what was known as theearly bird certificate package,
a collection of uh essentiallyleaflets and some other printed
paraphernalia.
(31:21):
Reassuring promissory notes.
Yes, IOUs.
Literal IOUs saying, guess what?
I know you want these toys.
They're coming.
Just hold on.
That's the most bizarre bonkerscapitalistic thing I think I
could ever possibly imagine.
(31:42):
All these parents bought thesethings for their kids on the
idea that they might get toyslater.
See, realizing that it would beimpossible to create a full line
of Star Wars toys in time forChristmas for the demand,
Kenner, executive BernardLoomis, no relation to you know
the psychiatrist to Dr.
(32:04):
Loomis, uh, he knew he had to dosomething fast.
And instead of waiting until1978, when it would probably be
ready, he came up with this ideaknown as the early bird
certificate package or the earlybird campaign.
Now, the idea was literally tocreate IOUs for kids, which is
(32:29):
on paper a terrible idea andshould not work at all.
You would think everybody wouldbe so fucking pissed that no one
would ever talk about Star Warsever again.
But that's not exactly whathappened.
Kenner, smartly, limited supplyof these of this pre-order
(32:50):
campaign to only 500,000 kits.
And they stopped the sale ofthem by December 31st, 1977.
They basically rigged the marketto make those scarce.
Which was smart because thenthat kind of like tamped down
the the sort of disappointmentof not getting their fucking
(33:10):
toys with the idea that not onlyare they coming, but they're
gonna be but even having justthis empty box is rare.
Kenner's president, John Beck,at the time, told the telegraph
that action figures take a longtime to produce.
They have to be designed andsculpted, and those sculpts have
to be turned into steel molds,and then the toys have to be
(33:33):
cast, painted, and safelytested.
Then they have to be packaged upand shipped off to toy stores.
It usually takes a year ofproduction time for toy figures
like this.
And even though we hired extrapeople and cut production time
to seven months, we stillcouldn't make it by Christmas.
And in desperation, they threwup a Hail Mary.
Faced with the prospect oflosing millions of dollars in
(33:54):
sales in the 70s, they werelike, Look, if we can't give
them the action figures, why notjust sell them an IOU?
Terrible idea, and yet what doyou know?
In an attempt to soften theblow, no, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02 (34:12):
Yeah, it helps you at the biggest property of you
know, at least that generationand generations to come.
I mean, you can't do that witheverything.
But Star Wars was and still isspecial.
SPEAKER_01 (34:30):
Absolutely.
And today we would consider thispotential vaporware.
We actually have a term for it,because this is the kind of
thing that people do nowadayswith Kickstarter and things like
that.
But included in your package wasjust a cardboard box.
(34:51):
But you got, hey, stickers, andand a Star Wars fan club
membership card.
And the the promise that aftermonths, and well into 1978, they
would finally get their thing.
SPEAKER_02 (35:10):
And it came with a cardboard display stand for 12
figures.
So it's like the promise you'regonna get these figures, and
here's a place to put the restof the figures so you can keep
buying.
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01 (35:26):
Don't worry, they're coming.
They're gonna happen.
And nowadays, honestly, becausethis thing has been kind of not
exactly replicated, but done alot in in, especially in
crowdsourcing, most peoplecynically would be like, no,
that's it's just never gonnashow up.
But the crazy thing was, this isquoting Beck again.
(35:47):
We did some research, uh, we didsome market research research to
see if people would settle forcertificates with the promise of
the toys that they'd bedelivered by February 15th.
The research told us it wouldwork.
And the crazy thing is, StarWars merchandise had such a
clamor and such a desire, andnobody had done this kind of
scheme before, that it was ahuge success.
(36:11):
In fact, packages were sellingso fast that Kenner found itself
taken by surprise.
They really had no idea what todo with themselves.
In a newspaper story publishedon the December 18th, 1977
report, said that the packageshad sold out all over New York
and Chicago.
(36:33):
And the certificates were onlyon sale for a very limited time.
A lot of stores refused to evenstock them because they were
like, we sell things, notpromises.
But then, in mid-January of1978, Kenner began shipping the
(36:53):
toys to those who had boughtthose pledges.
3.75-inch figurines of Luke,Leia, Chewbacca, R2D2.
Now, those toys came in aplastic tray, in a little
rectangular box, and then asmall plastic bag that had
little tiny white pegs thatcould, you know, with a hole in
(37:14):
the foot of one foot of each ofthose characters so that they
could be put on a stand and keptupright.
So the company enclosed in thisperiod a leaflet advertising a
further offer to fill out a formand send two dollars.
And then Kenner would send acollector's action stand
(37:36):
designed to house the eightother figures that would fill
those slots in that eight-figureplastic trade that they put out
that spring.
And to their credit, by the endof 1978, Kenner had managed to
shift an estimated 40 uh shift,I think I meant ship, managed to
(37:58):
ship an estimated 40 millionStar Wars toys based on 500,000
of these promissory notes.
Which means it fucking worked.
It shouldn't have.
(38:25):
Alright.
He told the Evening Independent.
Wouldn't hold your breath.
Today, the early bird set onlinegoes from, depending on its
quality, depending on theseller, anywhere from a couple
(38:46):
of hundred dollars to over$8,000.
People are still falling for thescheme to this day.
And they created the collectormarket.
(39:08):
Without the love of Star Wars,and also without the quality of
the toys, which were great forwhat they were.
They were very unique and rare.
And so to me, this is like theperfect like encapsulation of
how though December 25th hasbeen celebrated throughout the
millennia, what we considerChristmas, especially American
(39:31):
Christmas, is completelyintertwined with American
capitalism.
And I don't think there's a abetter, more perfect
encapsulation of that thanKenner selling an empty box of
toys to kids for Star Wars in1977.
I thought that was better thanjust doing commercialization of
(39:52):
Christmas history.
SPEAKER_02 (39:54):
Yeah.
unknown (39:55):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (39:56):
I was aware that it was a, you know, later on, many
years later.
That it was a thing thathappened.
SPEAKER_01 (40:03):
Yeah, I'd heard about it, but I really never
looked into the history of it.
And also, I thought it was amore unique thing to talk about
than the what which is ironic, amore unique thing to talk about
than the Star Wars Christmasspecial.
Because it seems like everybodycan have access to that now.
So it's not as Yeah.
Interesting.
I came across this and I waslike, holy shit, wait, hold on.
(40:24):
They sold you empty boxes?
Holy shit.
Yeah, it's like what a what aperfectly American thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then like uh World War IIwas a huge driver of the
commercialization of Christmas.
And and there are actually somereal fun, interesting anecdotes
and stories and all that, but II I felt like if I do all of
(40:47):
that and then just talk aboutthis one Star Wars thing, it's
gonna be like reallyfront-loaded, and then nobody's
gonna give a shit by the end.
You know, they're like, oh,that's it?
Okay, well, never mind, youknow.
So I tried to just like skipover a bunch of shit that I
really wanted to talk about thatreally wasn't germane
necessarily to the conversation.
SPEAKER_02 (41:06):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01 (41:06):
Germaine chat.
SPEAKER_02 (41:07):
Oh, I think it totally worked.
SPEAKER_01 (41:10):
Well, yeah.
So I guess we'll yeah, I guessthat's it.
So that's what I got for thisone.
SPEAKER_02 (41:17):
Well, that's uh we'll wrap it up.
Uh uh.
Well, we hope your uh yourChristmas present of a pod this
year wasn't a promissory emptybox, and that you uh we
delivered uh on some interestinginformation and a a some
(41:39):
insights into the commercial andcapitalistic nature of Christmas
and its origins.
Yeah so uh do enjoy unwrappingthat.
And if you'd like to on thisSaturnalia uh give give gifts to
your your friends and loved onesin the form of our podcast, we
(42:01):
would greatly appreciate it.
We wouldn't mind if in this veinof uh wassailing, if you
wouldn't sing mind singing thepraises of your favorite geek
podcast on a podcast app of yourchoice, ideally Apple Podcasts,
where you might give us fiveearly bird starter boxes jolly
(42:24):
uh early bird uh starter boxes.
Uh if you wouldn't mind uhgiving uh five shillings um to
uh the the uh St.
Nicholas whore of your choice.
I was gonna say straightstraight urchin.
(42:44):
You over there, boy.
Any of the above.
SPEAKER_00 (42:47):
What part is this?
Well, it's a spit Ajax, huh?
SPEAKER_02 (42:54):
Or stop lying with with the men of the street uh
and and raise yourself up.
SPEAKER_00 (43:01):
Oh, a new podcast.
That's just what I need to cureme rickets.
SPEAKER_02 (43:07):
We are proven to cure all rickets.
Uh Lyme disease.
Sometimes scurvy.
Um sometimes scurvy.
Depends on the the podcast topicof the week.
SPEAKER_01 (43:18):
Um ironically, if we ever talk about Lyme disease,
the lime, uh the citrus from thelime will cure rickets.
Or scurvy.
I mean, scurvy.
That's because you put the limein the coconut.
In the coconut, and then youdrink them up together.
Just like your favorite pod.
Uh but do please.
Also, these are cola nuts andthese are unkola nuts.
(43:38):
You can't see it because this isan audio format, but I'm
literally cradling two men'snuts and telling you about how
that works.
Miles, get down.
SPEAKER_02 (43:47):
Smiles, Miles, get down.
SPEAKER_00 (43:49):
Get down.
SPEAKER_02 (43:52):
Uh but yes.
Uh uh do like, share, subscribe.
We'd greatly appreciate it.
Um uh thank you again um forjoining us on this holiday
season.
Uh we have uh holiday pods goingyears back, so uh please do
check out the archives, uh seewhat you can find that uh might
trip your trigger this uhfestive season.
(44:14):
Um and until you unwrap a newpod uh the next time we come
out, uh skip.
What should they do?
SPEAKER_01 (44:26):
Well they should trust they should trust that
we're gonna deliver on our emptyboxes.
Also, they should wait for mywe'll deliver to your empty
boxes.
Delivered to your empty box.
I uh wait till that uh you knowthe point in which I uh decide
to go off on my probably veryunpopular opinion that that it's
(44:48):
a wonderful life, it's not aChristmas movie, but a new
year's movie, and which iswhatever.
Whoa.
Uh well what I'm sorry, I I havean argument for it.
I have an argument for it.
I do, I really do, and I havethought it out a lot.
But it's a debate, and I'mwilling to listen to that.
We'll get into that later.
So perhaps in the new perhapsironically, in the new year.
SPEAKER_02 (45:10):
We did uh an episode on that.
Um The Great Christopher Lloydis in that movie, some for some
reason.
You do check out that that spooktacular episode.
SPEAKER_01 (45:20):
Yeah, we tr we tried real hard to get through that
one.
That was unwatchable.
Anyway, so what they should dothen instead, while we're, you
know, instead of us ranting,they should probably clean up
after the selves to some sort ofreasonable degree.
I know it's gonna be tough.
It's the holiday season, youhave friends, family over.
There's gonna be a lot of paperplates and plastic forks and
whatnot, all these things thateventually are just gonna get
(45:41):
dumped in the ocean.
But make sure that you've triedyour best, make sure that you
remember the spirit of theholiday season, whatever that
means to you.
Make sure that you have paidyour tabs, make sure you support
your local comic shops andretailers, and from Dispatch
Ajax, we would like to say nomatter where you go, there you
are.
(46:02):
Thank you, and good night.
I watched Buckaro Bonzai like aweek ago.
Yeah, well, not even a week ago.
I watched it the other night andI was like, yeah, I why don't I
say that more?
That's such a good fuckingsign-off.
It's so good.
SPEAKER_02 (46:19):
Yeah.
I think this might be your firstsign-off where we didn't do the
uh yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_01 (46:24):
Well, and I was it uh the reason that I didn't used
to do that was because like thatwas my sign-off for karaoke, but
I have I don't do karaokeanymore, and so that's when I
did the God Speedfair Wizard.
SPEAKER_03 (46:35):
Please go away.
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