I like my big-screen Santas like my Christmas cookies: old-fashioned. Simple. Sugar-dusted, with very few decorations. My guy says “Ho, ho, ho” and cares deeply about everyone, regardless of race, religion or creed.
This is probably my most conservative cultural opinion: Make Santa jolly again. Nice kids get dolls and baseball gloves. Naughty kids get coal in their stockings. That’s fair.
But in director Jake Kasdan’s recent holiday spectacle “Red One,” Oscar winner J.K. Simmons’ Santa Claus reminded me of Jeff Bezos — a jacked, tech-obsessed captain of industry overseeing a vast product delivery empire.
The movie made me miss, as I have more frequently in recent years, the Santa I grew up with.
In this bloated action-comedy, which opened last weekend and kicks off the start of what I like to call bad Christmas movie season, Santa is kidnapped by evil forces, and it’s up to his head of security, played by a straight-faced Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and a rakish Chris Evans as a bad boy turned accidental hero to save him. The movie is a loud, muddled CGI mess barely held together by Johnson and Evans’ odd-couple chemistry.
Simmons does allow for some tenderness: His Santa can see the best in people, and there are a few moments in this overcooked Amazon/MGM goose that are almost touching. But, mostly, the movie is nothing but chaotic fight scenes between the Rock and muscle-bound snowmen with carrot noses.
The movie made me miss, as I have more frequently in recent years, the Santa I grew up with. But he’s nowhere to be seen right now, at least at the multiplex. In a few weeks, a new comedy called “Dear Santa” drops, starring Jack Black as Satan, the Prince of Darkness, who receives a Christmas letter from a boy with a critical typo. The first Santa I saw this year was in the indie horror hit “Terrifier 3,” which features a murderous clown dressed in a blood-splattered Santa suit and beard.
I know things change, but does Christmas have to? Really?
Recently, the trend seems to be to spice up Santa — as if he’s too dull, too bland. Not manly enough. David Harbour starred as a grouchy Santa forced to fight mercenaries one Christmas Eve, “Die Hard”-style, in 2022’s “A Violent Night.” Netflix’s two “The Christmas Chronicles” movies feature the charming action-movie legend Kurt Russell as a dashing, youthful Santa. In the midst of all of this, I fear we are missing out on the most important lesson Santa has to teach us. And there’s no time we need to hear it more than the present.
Above all else, Santa is a symbol of positive masculinity, a paternal do-gooder concerned with the happiness of others. He’s selfless and self-deprecating, corny and utterly lacking in irony. Santa Claus exemplifies endangered masculine virtues that are too easily dismissed — for different reasons — by both ends of the political spectrum. Sure, to some progressives, Santa is a glass of warm patriarchy, another straight white man in charge of a powerful institution (Big Toy). Santa is kind, but the culture wars aren’t won with kindness. In my experience, conservative men see gentleness as a weakness. But even the most macho were once knee-high and sat on Santa’s lap. Even those bros know, deep down, that Santa is the one true alpha male. A cuddly, joyful, forgiving alpha male.
Santa Claus is an important cultural figure in America not just because millions of children dream about him yearly. He’s a lens through which we can examine and affirm our attitudes toward right and wrong — what is “naughty” or “nice.” I know life is complicated — there’s a lot of gray area — but I want to be “nice,” and Santa inspires us to be just that. I think that is an admirable virtue.
That’s partly why the push for cinematic Santas to be buff, badass or reinvented feels so very wrong. Where are those Santas, to paraphrase 19th-century poet Clement Clarke Moore, with twinkling eyes and dimples, cheeks like roses, and a nose like a cherry — those hardworking, pear-shaped cherubs with a bushy white beard that can bend space and time?
The ultimate subversion of St. Nick came in 2003 with “Bad Santa,” a vulgar comedy about an alcoholic mall Santa played by Billy Bob Thornton. One iconic Santa movie that stands out to me above the rest is 1947’s “Miracle on 34th Street” starring English actor Edmund Gwenn, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a department store Santa who may be the real thing. He’s the platonic ideal of Santa: mischievous and openhearted. But after that, the pickings are slim. I did have a soft spot for Tim Allen’s irreverent “The Santa Clause,” which casts the sitcom star as a schlubby dad who accidentally kills Santa and then has to become the new Santa. I also like Ed Asner as a down-to-earth Santa in Will Ferrell’s 2003 comedy “Elf.” In 2007’s “Fred Claus,” Paul Giamatti is a tightly wound Santa who has to endure his troublemaking brother, played by Vince Vaughn. It’s a bro comedy that I admit to enjoying, even if it’s another example of a Santa movie that doesn’t, deep down, respect Santa. The ultimate subversion of St. Nick came in 2003 with “Bad Santa,” a vulgar comedy about an alcoholic mall Santa played by Billy Bob Thornton. It is beyond crass, even by today’s standards. I have to confess, I kind of love its rude, transgressive spirit — but I did not know it would open a sort of Pandora’s box. “Who is Santa?” has become an existential pop culture question, and Hollywood can’t settle on a straight answer. Ripped tech titan? Action hero? Tired old man? I know other cultures have a Christmas folk hero — Father Christmas in England and Père Noël in France, for example — but the Santa Claus of pop culture is uniquely American. Nineteenth-century cartoonist Thomas Nast designed the modern Santa for Harper’s Weekly. He was a festive wizard wearing a holly wreath like a crown and smoking a long pipe. The character evolved from there, incorporating aspects of Nordic Yuletide myths and Christian saints. In the 1930s, Coca-Cola executives co-opted Santa for a marketing campaign meant to sell soft drinks during the winter, a campaign that still endures. He may live in the North Pole, but Santa has become a sort of unofficial Founding Father in America’s imagination. Sure, St. Nick is a nondenominational religious figure who listens to our greedy prayers. As a kid, I’d sit on his lap at the mall and rattle off a long list of action figures and video games I had to have. Santa is a consumerist, after all. At his core, it is a fundamental Christian message wrapped in a pagan character designed to appeal to a multicultural society: Santa’s one commandment is to be nice, which is a slightly more succinct variation of the golden rule. This sentiment is absent in our political and cultural discourse right now. We are, at this moment, not nice. We are a naughty people who delight in making each other miserable, especially on social media. It’s too bad he doesn’t really exist, or we’d all get a lump of coal in our stockings this year.
John DeVore
John DeVore is a culture writer and author of "Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway." His writing has been published in Esquire, Vanity Fair, Marvel Comics, and many other publications. 
