By: Kalpita Bhar Paul and Aveek Mondal Published in: *The Wire* Date: December 20, 2025 Source: https://thewire.in/religion/everything-santa-claus-has-come-to-mean-for-indians
*Christmas Eve.* Nine‑year‑old Rohan slipped his wish‑list under his pillow and went to bed. Perhaps his dreams that night were filled with thoughts of Santa Claus – the red-suited, white-bearded figure flying over rooftops, ready to bring joy. His parents gently retrieve the list, smiling with anticipation, filling a large decorative stocking with as many gifts as they can, along with a heartfelt letter from Santa, praising Rohan’s hard work and cheering for his well-earned presents. Each Christmas Eve, like Rohan, an estimated 5 crore children in India place their hopes and dreams in the hands of Santa Claus. It has become a phenomenon beyond any religious boundary. But who is Santa? The global figure originates from Saint Nicholas, a 3rd-century Christian bishop from Patara in modern-day Turkey. Nicholas is known for miraculously saving sailors and providing dowries to rescue destituted children. His anonymous generosity made him the patron saint of children and sailors. His legacy of secret gift‑giving forms the hagiographic foundation of modern Santa Claus. Though Santa was revered in various forms in Europe, he could step out of Europe only in the late eighteenth century. In 1773, three years before American independence, he set foot in New York <https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/12/09/santas-new-york-roots> through a newspaper article. From the 1820s onward, American papers began featuring Santa. By the 1840s, Santa appeared in shopping displays across New York. Yet it took another fifty years before he became the Christmas sensation with the iconic image of Santa Claus established by Thomas Nast <https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008808467/page/n7/mode/2up> where he added some key elements to Santa’s story – his North Pole home, a team of toy-building elves, and his role as an overseer of childhood morality. By 1890, the Salvation Army was sending unemployed men dressed as Santa to collect donations. Gradually, the Santa Claus myth became inseparable from the festive spirit of the modern Christmas. Santa in Postcolonial Context: Mimicry and Meaning Much like post-revolution America, India emerged from its colonial past as a mosaic of identities, languages, and cultures. However, independence is coupled with a project of nation‑building, which always demands a uniform narrative, a singular image of citizenship that can hold a diverse population together. This impulse to create a cohesive national identity has gradually distanced us from the very diversity it sought to unify. Postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha highlights in *The Location of Culture* (1994) that we drift toward globalisation by mimicking a global identity that presents itself in metonymy – or symbolic shorthand. We alienate ourselves to align with that uniform culture – a process that symbolises modernisation, but without dissolving our otherness. The effects of this mimicry are incorporated into our socio-cultural psyche. It eventually reaches the child’s psyche. The direct effects of this cultural mimicry can be seen in our education system as well as workplaces. Children are taught to conform and seek rewards. Learning is measured through obedience and performance. If one is not at par with the global standard, a survival crisis manifests. Slowly, we learn that self‑gratification and enjoyment are insufficient. As a post-colonial society our aspiration of being modernised was modulated and sanctioned by the set global standard. Our work more than self‑enjoyment becomes products to be evaluated in the global market. Through this practice of self‑alienation, humans become human resources, useful only for delivering labour to secure subsistence. Thus, in the postcolonial era, global superpowers continue to colonise our thoughts, imagination and labour. At a broader level, the act of writing a wish-list aligns with global consumerist psychology. In American public consciousness, the modern Santa is a merchandised evolution of the benevolent saint. But the imagery of Santa that signifies the capitalist-consumerist culture is also infused with many similar characters across Christian cultures: Kris Kringle rewarding well‑behaved Swiss and German children; Jultomten, a jolly elf in Scandinavia; Père Noël in France and La Befana, a kindly witch from Italy. They all serve the same jingoistic purpose – acting as a superior being. Following this trajectory, in India, apart from symbolising capitalist-consumerism, Santa captures the effects of mimicry in cultural psychology of a post-colonised India. This is where Santa becomes psychologically relevant in Indian society. Santa – an approver, a symbolic evaluator of one’s behaviour. Children submit wish-lists not merely to request toys, but as early participants in a system of conditional gratification. In adulthood the belief in Santa fades, but the psychological conditioning that hankers after appreciation and expects to be rewarded for deeds remains forever. We hesitate to pursue joy for its own sake. This transformation reflects a deeper alienation – of pleasure becoming something to be earned, not simply felt. The vacuum of everyday enjoyment transforms into either a wish‑list or, at times, takes the form of a delayed gratification. Yet, beyond this formation of Santa as sanctioner, we could trace an ecological root of Santa that, perhaps, would help us to make sense of today’s imagination of Santa as the gift giver. In Nordic culture, nomadic peoples living uphill would descend with their reindeers during the extreme winter and exchange various necessities (leather, meat, dairy) with people downhill. Both parties awaited the year‑round meeting when they could trade items. This exchange was a survival mechanism; once a way to transcend ecological limits and offer resources, now a means to transcend our alienation and provide socio-psychological stability. Thus the metaphor of a tribal culture is ingested by power and transformed into the metonymy of its hegemony. Beneath the commercial wrapping lies a deeper metaphor: a moment of reciprocity and of bridging gaps in resources and reconnecting isolated lives. In contemporary India, especially among the economically deprived, Santa’s promise allows families to cope with consumerism without participation. The ritual of delayed gratification becomes a form of psychological resistance. Year after year, they wait for the time to receive the gracious gift from Santa. They wait for the approval of their hard work and show the rest of the world the benevolence of time. It creates hope, allows space for patience and lets people without means to indulge in dreaming. This highlights a subtle but powerful cultural adaptation. Unlike the West, where Santa’s accounting resets annually based on deeds, in India, reward cycles are influenced by a longer karmic vision that span lifetimes. Perhaps for this reason, even though they wait for the approval of their hard work, they don’t lose heart. It, instead, shows the ‘otherness’ embedded in the mimicking. Thus on the night of December 24, Christmas eve, millions of Indians without any expectation of fulfilling their wishlist, welcome the guest Santa Claus with a smiling face. The image of Santa is imported in India, but the meanings associated with him are rooted in Indian philosophy, resilience and imagination. He carries within him the otherness of mimicry. As Jorge Luis Borges has shown in his fiction, mimicries and fantasies become real and acquire a life of their own. Perhaps someday, on a Christmas Eve, our children will welcome Santa Claus in a dialogic space, ignoring his patriotic superiority, get to know him better. Instead of a wish‑list, a child might tuck a note beneath their pillow that simply says, “Hi Santa, How are you?” beginning the conversation on an equal plane. This small gesture signifies the true power of cultural mimicry – not in blindly copying, but in reshaping, adapting and, finally, humanising even the grandest of myths. *Dr Kalpita Bhar Paul is an Assistant Professor at the School of Liberal Studies, **BML Munjal University, Gurugram. Aveek Mondal is a researcher and thinker.*
