Santa go home! some Czechs say (Feature)

By Katerina Zachovalova Dec 23, 2009, 13:40 GMT

Prague - While scores of children across the world cannot wait for Santa Claus to sled in with bags of toys, his enemies in Prague would like him to go up in flames.

On a recent evening, two dozen activists carried a Santa figurine through the streets of Prague amid biting frost, setting him ablaze on a bridge over the Vltava river with a single hope - that he would not dare to come back.

'Someone could say that this is a Sisyphean struggle,' said Ondrej Soucek, a 32-year-old copywriter who co-organized the Santa expulsion. 'But we hope that one day this country will be void of Santa Claus.'

In the Czech Republic, as elsewhere in Central Europe, parents tell children that Jezisek, known as Baby Jesus or Christ Child in English, brings their Christmas presents.

Jezisek is a magic figure, whose looks are left to everyone's imagination. He is never seen hauling gifts through a window and placing them under a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.

Atheist Communist rulers unsuccessfully tried in 1950s to replace Baby Jesus with Ded Moroz, a Russian holiday season present-bearer.

After Communism fell in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989, Santa, a universally recognizable Christmas symbol, proved more effective than Ded Moroz - at least in invading the Czech marketplace.

The jolly, fat, bearded man dressed in a white-hemmed red outfit, who delivers presents to children in Scandinavia and North America through a chimney, has since crept into advertisements, shopping malls, television programmes and children's books.

Fed-up Czech advertising copywriters began protesting Santa in 2006, blaming him for upstaging Czech Christmas traditions. This holiday season, more than 7,200 people signed a petition organized by another anti-Santa group.

The activists made a stop in front of a pizzeria on the touristy Old Town Square, which employs a singing and dancing Santa figurine in a bid to lure clients to its street mulled-wine stand.

'It attracts people. They stop to take pictures,' said the restaurant's baker, Hatem Takrouni, a Tunisian who has lived in Prague for a decade. He questioned the sense of fighting Santa in a globalized world where traditions are no longer confined by borders.

'It is like Valentine's Day. It is not a Czech tradition, but people have grown accustomed to it. It is too late,' he said.

But Czechs seem to appreciate Christmas advertising that refers to homegrown customs and humour. Bara Novotna's work is a testimony.

The 33-year-old copywriter conceived what has become a perennial Christmas commercial for Kofola, a Czech soft drink that competes with the likes of Coca-Cola. Coke helped to popularize the contemporary image of Santa Claus in 1931 magazine ads.

Santa Claus is absent from a Kofola commercial created by Novotna. Instead the ad makes use of a local legend, according to which a golden pig shows itself to those fasting on Christmas Day.

While trekking through a snow-covered forest in a quest of a Christmas tree, a father tells his daughter the golden pig tale until the little girl declares she won't have to fast because she already sees a pig. A wild boar chases them away.

'Santa is trivial,' said Novotna, who has joined the anti-Santa movement. 'Coming up with something like this is much harder than doing a (Santa) ad for Coca-Cola.'

The client was not excited at first, Novotna recalled. But the commercial grew so popular that it has been broadcast every winter since 2003. A fan group on the Facebook social networking website has so far swelled to over 42,000 members.

'They cannot cancel this commercial. It has become a tradition,' one devotee, Iveta Polakova, wrote.

Its popularity, however, raises the question of whether Santa poses a real threat to Czech Christmas traditions.

According to a survey by the Sanep polling agency, 87 per cent of 16,260 respondents said that Baby Jesus brings gifts to their families. Only 1 per cent of Czechs believe this role is carried out by Santa Claus or Ded Moroz.

Some children are clearly confused by the abundance of Christmas gift-givers. Novotna said that several dozen children, whom the anti-Santa activists asked to draw Christ Child, mostly sketched a figure with a red hat.

Matyas Nesvadba, a lively 10-year-old, said that Baby Jesus is a tall bearded man who arrives on a sled. How does he bring presents? 'Through a chimney,' he said before hurrying to correct himself. 'Through a window! Through a window!'

Despite confusion, children of the globalized era seem capable of making some sense of the Christmas gift-giving mess.

The blond boy took a few moments to sort out the matter. 'Baby Jesus brings presents to us and Santa Claus in America,' he said.