Joe Biel

But we do know that the modern version of Santa Claus is, I'd say, broadly agreed upon.

But all of these things, it's like saying that Santa is real or fake, it's only as real or fake as, say, something like currency, money.

It's as real as the stock we put in it and the amount of belief and what we get out of it.

No.

And again, that's another one.

That didn't really get unified until about 1500 where they really put that all together because –

As you may know, the birth of Christ, that's hotly debated exactly when that was to this day, and we know that that did not happen on Christmas.

I mean, anywhere from, you know, there was a period in time where we were pretty convinced it was January 6th, you know, through research.

But there's plenty of people that will contend for the summer.

There's plenty of people that say there's no way it possibly happened in the winter.

But the one thing that we have definitively ruled out is December 25th.

But again, a lot of that, the coagulation of Christmas, the birth of Christ, giving presents, a lot of that was to stamp out the pagan traditions and

the way that different people celebrated the changing of the seasons once the christian culture became the dominant culture it was a way to sort of overwrite all of those and to really like cement their place on ruling the calendar

You know, I think the thing that was really fascinating was the way that culture interfaced with Santa Claus.

So, for example, there's lots of studies about how families wanted to see Santa in themselves.

When the white flight occurred to the suburbs, downtown Santa Claus, you know, places that you're at, like a downtown mall, they began having Black Santas.

And that was really fascinating because...

Through that, we got a lot of data at looking at how affirming it is to see a reflection of oneself in a figure.

If you grow up, and I think this is true, we do know that if Saint Nick grew up in what is now Turkey, he would have been of a very dark complexion, if not black.

And so looking at it that way,