The great campaign to transform the religious holiday into a commercial festival began in England and America in the early 1800s. For one thing, there was the raucous caroling tradition to be suppressed. More importantly, a growing middle class produced by the emerging industrial age had disposable cash on hand. But retailers were having a hard time squeezing it out of their pockets. Why not emphasize the gift giving aspect of the gospel birth story and see if folks could be encouraged to put down cold cash for presents to friends and relatives? What was needed was some propaganda. As per the 1822 standard “Twas the night before Christmas…” tale, their nonfictional parents turned holy Saint Nicholas into a gift-distributing fictional elf whose promises to the kids had to be kept. Dickens’ masterpiece, A Christmas Carol, more than anything else, established the new notion of Christmas as a secular nuclear family holiday. Coca-Cola’s seasonal advertising would help finish the transformation of Santa Claus in into the fat, jolly materialist by the mid 1900s. During WW II, Bing Crosby’s crooning “White Christmas” in Holiday Inn, and Judy Garland’s heart breaking rendition of “Have a Merry Little Christmas” in See You in St. Louis, further cemented the modern concept of the family day. In the 50s and 60s, a middle class, relieved to be out of the depression and world wars, could not help but celebrate their marvelous prosperity by throwing piles of goods at their baby boomer offspring and each other on Christmas morning. During those years, Christmas to this child was about the wonderful tree, the anticipation and the actuality of the wonderful morning of a cascade of presents from Santa et al., visiting relatives, New Year Eve, the big break from school. The birth of the baby Jesus? Ehhhhh. Going to church on the 25th? A mere Tom Sawyerian annoyance if we bothered to do it. The mercantile project has been fantastically successful as the commercial nature of the Christmas season becomes ever more deeply entrenched.