{"id":24979,"date":"2016-11-21T17:53:57","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T00:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=24979"},"modified":"2016-11-21T17:58:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T00:58:43","slug":"the-history-and-the-mystery-of-santas-wink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/the-history-and-the-mystery-of-santas-wink\/","title":{"rendered":"The History and the Mystery of Santa\u2019s Wink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Santa\u2019s wink is missing. British fans of Christmas<\/a> are taking to social media to vent over a change<\/strong><\/a> in Coca Cola\u2019s traditional Christmas<\/a> commercial<\/a> that shows Santa<\/a> handing a bottle of Coke to a little boy and then winking at him. <\/p>\n

That wink from Santa<\/a> is meaningful. <\/p>\n

It has been around for a long, long time both as a gimmick in holiday advertising and as yet another means of imaging the legendary gift bringer. <\/p>\n

But what most do not know is that Santa\u2019s wink goes back much, much further than that.<\/p>\n

One of the many ancient figures that make up the modern legendary character of Santa<\/a> Claus is the Norse mythological figure of Odin. <\/p>\n

\"Odin\"<\/a>Odin carries several striking similarities to the modern Santa<\/a>. <\/p>\n

He was the ruler of Asgard who was depicted anciently as a white-bearded man with magical powers. The Winter Solstice \u2013 also known as Yule \u2013 was the time when Odin led a hunting party in the sky with an eight legged horse name Sleipnir. <\/p>\n

Nordic children were accustomed to leaving their boots by the chimney filled with carrots and hay to feed Sleipnir when Odin would come and exchange those items with gifts of candy and toys.
\nSanta\u2019s wink has its origin in Odin, who famously plucked out his own eye for his Father\u2019s wisdom, so that his remaining eye could \u201cremain single to His glory\u201d. <\/p>\n

Odin is famously depicted both in ancient records and in modern big screen block busters as having only one eye. Santa\u2019s wink is a way of acknowledging this single eye. <\/p>\n

The modern imagery of a winking Santa<\/a> comes directly from Clement Clark Moore\u2019s Poem, a Visit from St. Nicholas<\/em>, when he said,<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf<\/a>,

\nand I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
\nA wink of his eye and a twist of his head
\nsoon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.\u201d
<\/em><\/p>\n

While Moore\u2019s imaging of Santa<\/a> shared only the long beard and the flying character of his gift bringing with Odin it is simple to see why modern artists and marketers were attracted to the \u201cwinking Santa\u201d. <\/p>\n

The image lent itself to light-hearted secrecy associated with St. Nicholas\u2019 gift bringing, helping to advance the re-imaged Santa<\/a> as jolly (St. Nicholas of old could actually be quite stern and Odin was, of course, the God of War). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Santa\u2019s wink is missing. British fans of Christmas are taking to social media to vent over a change in Coca Cola\u2019s traditional Christmas commercial that shows Santa handing a bottle of Coke to a little boy and then winking at him. That wink from Santa is meaningful. It has been around for a long, long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":281,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[623],"class_list":["post-24979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-news","category-christmas-traditions","tag-santas-wink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}