Santa wears red, white and black, right?
Santa wears red, white and black, right?
The example of Santa is one of examining truth and traditions. How might Santa help us confront assumptions in the workplace?
We have come to have an image of how Santa Claus is depicted that’s fairly universal and that variations of his depiction can cause an outcry. I’ve lived through eras where the prevailing truth about Santa went through several phases.
There was the “he’s a corpulent, jolly man in a red suit with white trim with black belt and boots” phase, and any variations of that were an attack on ‘Christmas tradition’.
Then, there was the revelation that the popularity of this depiction of Santa resulted from the work of artist Haddon Sunbloom for a Coca-Cola advertising campaign at the turn of the 19th century. The irony that one of the world’s largest corporations and strongest brands helped define the modern depiction of Santa Claus helped this meme catch the public’s attention and became an accepted truth for many, myself included. This epiphany, for me, became symbolic of how quickly a change can become subsumed into the substrates of tradition and presumed to be untouchable. I’ll talk about that later.
There’s been controversy when Santa is not depicted as a white man. This feels ironic when his origins suggest his heritage may be richer. Under the guise of protecting tradition, variation to a norm is sought to be corrected by some. We miss our own bias to project how we see ourselves into our stories. To be guilty of letting our worldview shape our perception without awareness.
As a child, all I knew was the famous depiction of Santa. I likely insisted that was the only way he could be rendered. As I learned more and was exposed to more, I discovered a lot of history and variation, and I am curious to understand the path that brought us to where we are.
Of course, as always, whenever looking into the genesis of something, the more you look, the more you find. For example, every time I research a quote to reference, I find that it wasn’t attributable to the person it's most commonly associated with. A slide down a rabbit hole of the etymology of the phrase ensues.
And so it is with Santa. Further research reveals that the red Santa dates further back to the work of cartoonist Thomas Nast, such as this example from 1881 and other reports suggest he may have depicted Santa Claus like this as far back as 1863:
On December 23rd, 1823, ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ (you may know it as ‘Twas the night before Christmas’) was published, featuring a description that includes most of the features of Santa Claus we know today - although it excludes the red (maybe obscured by the ‘ashes and soot’?) - here’s an excerpt:
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43171/a-visit-from-st-nicholas
Note: Most depictions may have gotten the size wrong, and they don’t usually depict him as an elf! Most modern stories portray Santa as a human with a legion of elves who work tirelessly to make and package gifts for the world. For many to claim he is an elf may be seen as a controversy.
And, of course, we know we can go further back and trace the origins of Santa Claus and Father Christmas, now synonymous, to Saint Nicholas, who may or may not have been a real person and to other figures of folklore and history. St Nicholas became known as Sinterklaas. In the United Kingdom, during the reformation of the church, stories of St. Nicholas became less popular, so Father Christmas became the more acceptable figure in the annual gift delivery story. In France, it was Pere Noel. In the United States, Santa Klaus can trace its roots to Sinterklaas, regaining popularity through poetry and stories.
So what did we learn? There have been many varied depictions of Santa over the years. At many points in time, changes occurred. There were many variations. Sometimes, ideas diverged, like the German Sinterklaas. Sometimes, multiple ideas are synthesised back into one, like Father Christmas, and Santa Claus has in our globalised era. The journey to the present can be a long, winding (and sometimes bifurcating!) road.
So, what does this have to do with organisational knowledge?
This demonstrates how easy it is to lose connection with why things are the way they are and how quickly it can be accepted that something has become part of the firmament, and the threshold for change rises. So, too, can we see something that affirms our worldview, and we will quickly co-opt that idea - like with the Corporatised Coca-Cola Santa.
So it happens with processes and practices, workplace conventions and teams’ shape, purpose and function. So much in the modern workplace is attributable as much to memetic trends over the years as to what is needed to be most effective.
Project Management practices focused on managing activities were deemed appropriate for most component-oriented industrialisation, popularised, and became the assumed default. Cost center accounting practices tracked a similar path. Hierarchical reporting structures, functionally aligned organisation of teams - the list of assumed defaults for organisations is quite long once you start looking. The inertia around changing these is akin to that of tradition, the assumption that this is how it must be pervades. Unexamined it assumes that the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
Many organisations default to certain approaches of accounting, budgeting, project management, and organisational structures because these have become the schema for how work is done. The defaults are not subject to the same justification or scrutiny as anything that might vary. A case does not need to be made for working in these ways, even when the fit is questionable, but one is almost certainly expected to make a business case to work differently.
This is not an attack on tradition. Upon examination, you may find excellent reasons why things are how they are. It has been often discovered that ancient traditions might have originated to address some common conditions. Of course, it’s just as often that the tradition is found to address something relevant to its time of introduction, but not for today. What is essential is to ask the question and to examine it.
My suggestion for your New Year’s Resolutions is to question what exists in your workplace because it was the assumed default and whether it is indeed aligned to helping your organisation succeed. Many organisations already have and are adapting themselves to meet today’s needs. They are positioned to disrupt you and compete more successfully.
What is your organisation’s red-suited corpulent Santa? Can we trace it back to how and why we work this way today? Might we flip the expectation and instead expect that staying the same needs to be justified?
I hope this post is thought-provoking and provides something to mull over if you are lucky enough to have a break over this period. For those who celebrate, have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Thanks for reading in 2023! If you’ve enjoyed this publication this year, please let me know in the comments!