international comm

386

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PART F IVE: INTRODUCTION

Louise Story, "Anywhere the eye can see, it's an ad." New York Times, January 15,

2007, www.nytimes.com

Chapter 26

JAMES B. TWITCHELL

THE WORK OF ADCULT

H AVE Y 0 U E V E R N 0 TIC ED H 0 W many retail outlets seem to have an aisle reserved for holiday merchandise such as Valentine's Day candy, American-flag themed picnic ware, Halloween costumes, and Christmas decorations? Have you ever noticed how far in advance of the holidays this merchandise appears? It is per- haps not surprising that advertisers are eager to reap the financial rewards of holidays

and events. What may surprise you, however, is the extent to which advertisers have influenced these rituals over the years. In the following essay, excerpted from James Twitchell's 1997 book Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture, Twitchell traces the history of many popular "festivals of consumption." He also

suggests some of the ways in which advertisers' influence continues to shape how we experience these holidays. In doing this, Twitchell prompts us to consider the taken-for- granted ways in which advertisers shape our culture and society.

When you Care Enough to Send the Very Best: Festiva ls of Consumption in Adcult

We move through an invisible gel of time. In ancient days we knew where we were in the time flow by the amount of light and dark that occurred each day. And the rhythms of the seasons showed us where we were in our lifcume as we became aware of the cycles of vegetation. To mark these limits we have the light delineations of days, months, and years, as well as the growth delineations of furro" ing, plant- ing, tending, and harvesting. To mark these time blocks, we often celebrate some rite of passage.

The rise of the world's great religions saw the co-opting of these demarcations as they became tied to some mythic paradigm, no longer just of light and growth, but of human purpose. This syncretism is nowhere better seen than in the coloni7ing of ancient time markers by nascent Christianity. Not by happenstance docs the birth of

388 JAMES B. TWITCHELL

Jesus occur at the winter solstice; not by happenstance does the Resurrection happen in the springtime (on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox). Nor do the attendant ceremonies of these time marks, in which we gather together to ask the Lord's blessing, exchange gifts, eat special foods, and sometimes exchange still more gifts, have anything to do with whimsy. These ceremonies tell us where we are in time. The power of Christianity (and of any other enduring organizing system) is that it never does away with the old pattern but continually adapts it to changing needs.

So it is with Adcult. The ancient rhythms of the day , the artificial separation of the week, the solar mandates of the year are remembered in Adcult, as they arc in Christianity, with specific services in which we arc led from one time zone to another. From morning devotion to evening vespers to nighttime prayer, from Sunday service to Sunday service, through a year punctuated with festivals of thanksgiving and grieving, Christians keep time with their church. The clock is on the church steeple and the church bells ring out these changes. From breakfast and morning news through coffee break to late-afternoon cocktail time to sign-off, from Saturday shopping to Saturday shopping, through a year punctuated by festivals of consumption and sales, modern Adcultists keep time with their advertising. Our clock is no longer on the church but inside the television set. We move in half-hour blocks from morning chat through midday soap operas to late afternoon reruns to the newshour to early prime to prime time to late fringe and finally into late night. During the tclcyear we move from the introduction of the new shows in the fall through the sweeps weeks of winter to the reruns of summer. (Or at least we used to, until the chaos of cable.)

We begin our circadian rhythm with a m eal called breakfast. Before Messrs. Post and Kellogg this meal consisted of breaking fast by finishing last night's dinner. In fact, if you go to Western Europe where break-fast traditions are still in force, y~ou find the same meat courses of generations ago. Often table scraps were reheated-rashers and hangers and blood pudding. (What we didn't eat then went to the floo r as dog food. There was no "dog food" until Ralston Purina's ad agency created it.) The abundant supply of grains, and the technology to treat and package them, led to the advertising claim that "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." It is an important stop on "the road to Wellville." Cereal at breakfast is a uniquely American custom, embedded by the constant repetition of spurious claims of improved health Uust like dog food) and energy Uust like patent medicine). Breakfast stuck. .

The coffee break, however, took more doing. Here we have a drug, caffeine, wh1ch stimulates the nervous system and provides a short-term increase in attentiveness. The producers of coffee, once they were able to grow and cure it in bulk, didn't kno~v where to position their product. Was it a breakfast drink or a dinner drink? Initially It made sense to make coffee time near the end of the workday, and indeed many early ads show coffee being consumed near quitting time.

So too the cocktail hour, a celebration of yet another addictive drug, comes aft~r quitting time in the industrial age. However, drinking alcohol comes during the day 10

agrarian cultures. In the eighteenth century the rise of first cheap gin , then rum, posed a hazard for the machine age. Although such drinks were not only a triumph of tech- nology but also a sign of agricultural proficiency (because they depend on producing a surplus of rye, corn, wheat, barley, sugar cane, apples, and potatoes), their consump- tion during the day was a hindrance to orderly production. "Blue Monday," for instance, came about because the culture was unable to separate drunkenness from the work- week. It was resolved, as Witold Rybczynski has argued in Waitina for the Weekend

T H E W 0 R K 0 F AD C U L T 389

(1991), with the separation of Saturday, not Monday, from the week into the weekend. So too the cocktail hour is the way to separate work and play. Coffee went to the morning, alcohol to early evening.

Although the stars and the planets make the years, months, and days, people make the workweek and the workweek depends on the weekend. Who knows why we separate work from leisure do we work to have leisure or is leisure a preparation for work? but we separate it in almost every cu lture. o one knows how the seven-day cycle developed, but somehow it stuck. Across cultures and through history, dividing time into seven-dav chunks is the habit of humans. Some vears ago the Ford Foundation calculated that nin~ days would make more economic sen'se, as we would work in three shifts of three days with a three-day rest, but as much as machines would profit, humans wouldn 't. We like seven days-that's all there is to it. Perhaps this has to do with digestion and food spoilage, or perhaps it is si~ply that enough work is simply enough; no one knows. But this much is clear. To separate workweeks from each other, cultures need an off-on switch with a day of transition. This rest day gets coded in early modern times vdth religious sanctions. So, to summarize, the "rest day" is demanded by work- ers, sanctified by a supernatural force, and reinforced by institutional events. Hence the universal appeal of what we call Sunday. But what about Saturday? Why don't we have six workdays and then rest day?

We did. Until the eighteenth century it was work, work, work, stop, work, vwrk ... in chunks of six and one. Then a number of interesting developments shifted the rhythm to five and two. These developments are at the heart of Adcult. First, efficient production meant surplus, and surplus means that market day was no longer a time where you could exchange stuff but a time when you had to exchange stuff. To capture the economics of mass production markets had to be expanded, and to do this the distribution systems had to be enlarged. Second, workers now needed time off to buy the excess goods. Third and here the fun begins- just as the industrial revolution is prO\'iding buyers and sellers of surplus goods and labor, the brewers arc making it possible to have not just a cocktail hour but a real bender. This bender occurs naturally enough on Sunday afternoon. It is paid for on Monday. "Keeping Saint Monday" was a common and thomughly inefficient way of equilibrating work and leisure. lt was prized by certain groups, like cobblers, barbers, and tailors who simply started work Monday afternoon. o one much cared about them, but when factory workers started to pay allegiance to Saint Monday, something had to be done. When you fire up a steam engine, everyone should be sober and ready to work.

The Early Closing Society, started in the middle of the nineteenth century, was almost immediately successful in trading Monday for aturday. It should ha,·e been, for almost every important interest group supported it, except, of course, for those cobblers, tailors, and barbers. (Many barbers still take Monday off but aren't sure ·why.) The church, the leaders of industry, and especially the retailers, all found the relocation of consumption, whether alcohol or piece goods, to Saturday much more to their liking. orne precedent for moving the time off from Monday to Saturday already existed.

Printers and some home workers (usually weavers) had only half-Saturday work, either because there ·were no Sunday papers or because their work was picked up and paid for on Saturday--called reckoning day.

With the advent of trains and the ability to gather either at a country home (for the wealthy) or at a fair (for the working people), the idea of the "week-end" took hold. After World War I construction unions joined the movement to solidify the workweek

390 JAMES B. TWITCHELL

by pushing for the eight-hour day ("eight hours for work, eight hourl> for rest, ci h hours for V\ hat '' e will"), and the Saturday shutdown switch was installed. \orne un

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• ons made up of predominantly Jewish workers, like the Amalgamated Clothing Workers or Amcrka, had already taken Saturday off. They got no argument from l'nlightentd capitalists like Hcnr) Ford. More time to ~hop meant more time to bu). Blue Ia\\ those most peculiar edicts written on blue paper in the 1780s, were not repealed, parth' because retailers lobbied for them. Close down Sunday, move Monday to Saturday, an;! open up Saturday for retail. The dance hall revelries and later the mO\'ie matinl· rl•inforced the saturnalian quality of Saturday. Whatever Saturday may have lwen~ a method to get rid of food before it spoiled, a ''a) to increase work b) organizing Monday, a placebo to counteract boredom, a way to get pari!'hioners to church we all know what it has bccomt•. It has become shopping day at the mall.

To really observe and appreciate the effect of Adcult on our sense of time, hmvev~·r V\C need to turn from the circadian and weekly rituals of consumption to the call·ndri~ festivals. For here, supplanting 1.uch religious and political events that crossed the Atlantic, like Shrove Tuesday, Twelfth Night, Ash Wednesday, Whitsuntide, and eH·n Punkic Night, arc a series of holiday events sustained b) commercial interests. In the Darvvinian struggle for attention these festivals of conswnption ha,•e outdistanced the ancient fe1.tivals of church time. flohday, which dcri,·es its meaning from holj da;, 1s now more appropriatcl) Consume like-crazy Day. l'estivals may begin in the \\ood,, they may mon~ into the apse, but they end up at Sears.

With the eager help of my students let me take you through the year of a )Oung adult. Thi~ thoroughly unscientific study was accomplished with the "instrument~ in figure 26.1 and class discussion. Let's start the year at the beginning. New Year's Eve, a festi' al of enthusiastic drinking eagerly attended by adolescents, b almost ah .. ays celebrated v\ith the accompaniment of a tclev'ision set. Else how would they know to sing "Auld Lang Sync" at midnight? Television shows the party goers how to rcsponcl when the ball falls and the howling begins. It shows them Times S<Juare, a veritable son et lumicre of bill-board art called spectaculars in the trade. Although most of nw students have not been to Times Square, they know about the Sony Jumbotron video screen, some twenty three feet wide and four stories high. They know about these sign~ and hO\\ to respond to them, because they arc a fixture of modern sports and concert entertainment. They arc what we ha\'e fo1· the recitative reading of the church Sl'rvicc. Watch the sign. But the real importance of New Year's is not that ''e have to go to Times Square to celebrate it in accordann• "ith some signs we see on TV. The n·al importance is that it marks the end of the football bowl season and the preparation for Super Bowl Sunday.

While m) ~tudcnts are at home "'ith family for New Year's, they are all together at school for the Super Bowl. All the men and most of the women will watch this game, and although many "ill not care much for the combat, it is nothing short of amazing how much the) care for the advertbing. They know new campaigns will break and they know things will move fast, so they pay attention. I have actually observed a student distressed that he missed the Apple 1984- ad that was sho .. vn only once during the game He now v\atchc-;, hoping to sec another such important cultural event. 1\Jeedless to say, thev all know about the Bud Bowl.

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The next event in their lives will be Valentine's Day. Here we have an almost pun· example of smcreti'im, as Christianitv lavered the celebration of the martyrdom of

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St. Valentine over the Roman Feast of Lupcrcalia, which in turn hijacked the Greek

THE WORK OF ADCULT 391

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Feast of Pan. With the reduction of po~tal rates in the late nineteenth century, and the pl rfcction of chromolithography, the day was taken o,·er by card companies. Valentine's Day is second only to Christmas in the number of cards moved through the mails. The card companies han.' not been alom·. To magnify a minor aspect of the pagan ceremony th,, drawing of lots for ~weethearts- into a central concern, candy makers have con- fected the day, supplying sweetheart candies for the kiddics. Champagne makers ha\ e attempted the ~arne for gro\\ n-ups, and of course Aorisb have not been far behind.

Their ad,·crtising notwithstanding, champagne can no longer make an Adcult fl•stival. Only beer can. If Nt•w Year's Eve were entering the Adcult calendar now, 1t ''ould be a beer holiday. Beer has clout. About a month after the Washington's Birthday ~ales comes St. Patrick's Da). In Ireland this day is not unlike what American Christmas used to be: morning in church, afternoon sport (usually Gaelic games like rugby and horse racing), and fmally family dinner. Fe'' bars are open . .\larch 17 is a serious day to the Irish, commemorating Patrick, who "as kidnapped by the English, converted to Christianity, and returned home to convert the heathens (metaphorically: drive out the snakes). There arc parades, )es. But here is what there arc not: no green beer, no rivers d)ed green, no shamrocks, no leprechauns, no green lines down highways, no Lucky Charms for breakfast, no soaping in Irish Spring showers, no one singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling," and especially no massh·c communal beer drunks. Our brewers have

392 JAMES B. TWITCHELL

not only made this a day to get drunk, but each has even provided a special beer with which to do it. Killian's Irish Red bills itself as "The 0' fficial Beer of St. Patrick's Day," never mentioning that it is brewed by the fine Republican Protestants of Adolph Coors Company of Golden, Co lorado. "io matter that it far outsells the top Irish import, Guinness Stout (which is owned by the English, but then again so is Bailey's Irish Cream). For those who wish to be Irish without getting drunk, Anheuser Busch brews O'Doul's, a nonalcoholic brew \\ith the comforting slogan, "It 's what the leprechauns drink when they're not drinking beer." Per usual, the card companies arc not far behind. Hallmark has 150 kinds of St. Patrick's Day cards, most of them tasteless. Littk wonder the Iri~h ha,·e lodged countless complaints against the stereotyping clone b~ the American companies.

At the end of March comes Adult's golden ring a cele bration of the advertising of a commodity by advertising it again. The Academy Av.ards ceremony i~ brought to us by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and ciences to promote the motion pictures that created the academy to promote the pictures. Well, not quite right. Actually, thl' Oscars are brought to us by Revlon, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, and J. C. Pcnnc~ under the '' atchful eye of the motion picture studios, which arc themselves minor parts of worldwide entertainment conglomerates like Matsu~hita, News Corp., Disney, Sony, Tim e Warner, Viacom, and you know the re~t. The Oscars have had such a success in promoting themselves that there are nO\\ a handful of such awards, like the Tonp, Grammys, Golden Globes, Ace Awards, and the MTV Music Video Awards, in which the group giving the award is essentially advertising itself. 1

In the 1930s the studio bosses under Louis B. Mayer sought a way to advertise their wares and swdl profits. They also wanted to prevent the newly formed unions from cutting into their profits. So Mevcr invented the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

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Sciences, invoking all the semioti~ of high culture: the academ}, the arts, the sciences. Had the word cinema been in \Ogue, he doubtlc~s would have used it instead of motJon pictures. For advertisers the Oscars arc the demographic Aip side of the Super Bowl, and the a(h-ertising rates reAcct this. It is the highest rated show for twenty-fi,c- to forty-nine -year-old women, ,.,.atched by almost half the ho useholds that arc watching television. Ad rates are a bit lower than for the football game. If men's products arc launched in January campaigns on the Super Bowl, women have to wait a fe,.,. months. Because no beer is invohed, the Oscars arc not a central holiday, but many of Ill)' students will dress up and pretend to attend, celebrating the kitschiness.

They don't have to pretend for the next calendrie event; this one's for them. Around Easter time thousands of adolescents migrate to Florida's beach shrines around Daytona Beach, Panama City, South Padre Island, and California's Palm Springs. Thost• students with more disposable income, and less ability to pass for drinking age, are oil' to Mexico, especially Canctm. About 40 percent of the college population will make a trek during spring break. 'o card companies, please; no florists, no champagne, ju't beer, more beer, and perhaps a little suntan lotion. As cou ld be predicted when such a demographically pure audience so dedicated to consumption congregates, the sponsors arc waiting for them to arrive. Not only does MTV change its programming to bring the events to the melancholy stay at-homes and younger sibling understudies, but bct'T companies run continuous ads in campus newspapers alerting all comers to the profwr etiquette of getting drunk. Sometimes they make a mistake, as when Miller Brewing ran an ad featuring "4 Surefire Ways to Scam Babes," which was so politically incorrect that Miller had to apologize. So much commercial promotion is now invohed in spring

THE WORK OF AOCULT 393

break that during a thinly veill'd beach ('ntertainm(•nt sponsored by a (;ar com pan}, the audience became unruly and three thousand Generation X'ers chanted "Promo promo, promo," drO\\ ning out the spiel. ' '

Easter barely sur\ ivcs for this generation. A candy holida) <.an nl'' cr wmpl·te ,, ith a beer holiday. In the paper-rock-scissors game of festivals, beer trumps candy, which trumps Howers. The ce lebration of sprin g rebirth has so enthus(•d can<h manufacturers that they now spend millions to emphasit"e a minor a~pect of a fertilitv ~ult, naml'h, the burdening of the fecund rabbit with tons of heavy eggs. Who cares what a rabbit is doing laying eggs? Who cares how the rabbit gets these eggs, or why he hides them, so long as they are filled with sugar) goo and con·red with chomlate? Tht· celebration of m" life, the sunrise ~ervice, the Resurrection, the promise of Eastering is really not germane to a culture that is hermetically scaled off li·om the rhythms of the seasons. Fastl·r docs, howe,·er, mark the beginning of Daylight )a\ing Time, which lcngthms the shopping day.

Until Cromwe ll 's mischief had passed, Easter was not really important to the English and was never important to the Puritans. The Puritans detested all ceremonies, which probably explains why they disappeared so quickly. The first indu:..tries to sec the rebirth potential in Easter were the clothing manufacturers. Although we now buy most new clothing around the hack -to-s<.hool sales of Labor Oay, the English signified a new beginning by buying Easter clothing. In earl\ Adl·ult it was considered <rood lurk to - ~ \\Car three new articles of clothing on this day, which of course you wore to church. You were seen advertising your prosperity. This tradition !110\'Cd across the Atlantic. After sen ices at St. rhomas or )t. Bartholomew the young sophisticatc.·s of Manhattan would parade down Broadway to Canal Street along to the Battery. This \\aS also a time to dress up pets and bring them along. This Easter parade is, alas, almost a thing of the past, because no company wants to sponsor, ala ~1acy's Thanksgi\·ing Day Paracle, ~uch a religion -s pecific event at the \\ rong time of the merchandising year.

Not to worry, the kings of candyland, Nestle, Mars, and 1-krshey, keep East<•r alive and humming. The~ have been able to O\\ n three holidays during which they sell sped a I randy at lull retail price. Then· is Ch1·istmas candy (cand) <.ancs), Hallowel'n c.andy (candy corn), and Easter candy (chocolate bunnies and eggs). Seasonal <.andy accounts for most of these companies' profits, with Faster far in the lead \\ ith sales of morl' than S 500 million. The only vestige of Christianity in the modc.·rn Easter celebration i~ the rolling of eggs, which may be a dim analog to the rolling of the stone from Jesus 's tomb.

The really interesting April holiday is a restaurant holidav: Profe~sional Secn•tan 's Dayfi (ah,ays \\ith the registered trademark symbol, if you-please, in all the <k~k;op (alcndars). i\tay 27 i::. the busiest lunch da) in cities, \dth overcrowded restaurants often going to double shifts. The greeting card companies, candy makers, ami florists art• also pleased that April nO\\ promises yet another chann· to peddle thl'ir \\ arl''i. But the real support for ProSec Day comes from the O\'ernight express deliverers and the airlmcs. Federal Express sends special greetings to 320,000 sl'cretarks, UPS is not far behind, and the airlines often send trinkets of appreciation. Wh,? Setretaries make most 0 1 the shipping and resenation deci~ions. According to the 'noll !meet journal, which cares l no ugh to know about these kinds of things, most professional secretaries hate the day (Oulf 1993:Bi). They would prefer a pay raise.

M.ay is also a month of wonderful holida)s. The month bl•gins ,dth .\1ay Da), a day ()f such exuberance that youngsters used to "go a-maying" at the crack of dawn "to ft•tth the flowers l'resh." The fairest maid was crowned ,.,.ith a wreath as qul'cn of Ma~. her~

394 JAMES B. TWITCHELL

'illage had a maypole on the green that the ,;llagcrs ent\\ ined "ith flowers and then danced around, celebrating the glory of life renewed. Aside from the Russians '' ho likt·d to rumble their rocket launchers through Red Square, and Vas~ar stuch:n~' who enjoyed modern dance, and Frcuclians who delighted in explaining the relation\hi~ of the maypole to springtime, no one else reall) cares about the first day of May. r 'Cn April First and its cck·braoon of stupidity has outdistanced Ma) Da).

Perhaps there arc too many other holidays in May to be distracted. First, there is Cinco dl' Mayo, a holiday sponsor<.·d by the clistillers of tequila and ~1exican fast-food restaurants, which has as much to do with Mexican Independence as St. Patrick has to do ";th Irish Catholicism. ~<.'cond is the most important holiday in May. It is the da\ to which all Adcult holidays aspire Mother's Day. It is a day so filled with guilt th;t e'en the hardt•st heart pa)S full retail.

In the early year~; of the t wenticth century Anna Jarvis lived with her aged mother outside Philadelphia. Her mother ''as not an easy person to li'e ";th and Janis's other sibling~; quick I) left home. The responsibility of caring for Mother fell to Jan is. After a few difficult )Cars, the ''oman died, and Janis entered a period of what has been uncharitably called "prolonged pathological mourning" (Jones I 980: 177). She fashioned a small altar of dried flowers that she tended faithfully. People paid attention to Janis. She was so tender and devoted in her nc,cr ending mourning, she was so daughterly; she would speak of little other than her mother to anyone who would listen.

Although her siblings found Anna Janis teclious, others found her downright inspirational. John Wanamaker, master merchandiser of his self and his store, w~ transfixed. Hl wcouraged Janis to copyright the day to make sure the integrity of her feelings was not compromised. Meanwhile, he ran special full -page ads in the Philadelphw lnqwrer, incorporating her message of filial thanksghing, organized an annual program of music and recitations in the store, gave flowers away to customt•rs, and reportedh said that he would rather ha,·e been the founder of Mother's Da, than

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the king of Lngland. Not eYeryone agreed, certainly not Congress, which was petitioned to commemorate the da) but demurred. Alas, Anna Jarvis never lived to 'ee either herself a~ a mother or her Mother's Day enshrined in Adcult.

World War I changed that. What with the boys separated from their moms and all, it scemt•d the least the gO\ernment could do was to encourage the lads to write a spl'Cial May-time message to mom. They did. "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the \\orld" was the rallying cry. Mother's Day cards, called Mother Letters, were expedited past censors in record time and soon became an annual event around May 10. More impor- tant, in the years after the ""ar the cause of mom was taken up by the burgeoning Sunda) school Movement. As a way to increase attendance the second Sunday of May was set aside a_-; a timt.. to commemorate in church '"hat the state seemed too tim id to admit: moms rule. There was some precedent for this, as "mothering Sunday" had a peculiar history in the early industrial rc,olution. On mothering Sunday apprentices returned home, attended the mother church for a senice in which the biblical story of Hannah was usually related, ate a piece of mothering cake at home, and perhaps had enough momisms to last a vear.

As is usual fo/spring ceremonies, flo, .. ers were in,oked. You wore a r<.'d Ao"er if your mother "'as living, a white one if she was not. In 1934 Postmaster James farley ordered a commemorative Mother's Da) stamp showing Whistler's Mother whiling a""a)' the time waiting for Junior to come home. Farley had the engra,cr crop the painting and insert a vase of carnations in the lower lcfthand corner. Persnickct; art

THEWORKOFADCULT 395

histonans and their fello" tra,clcrs ""ere outraged that su<.h a work of art (Whistler's lforher was so important that it had been sold to the French in 1891 and was in the Louuc) had been used so crassly as a postage stamp. farley apologized, but '"ho cared? Mothers would have their day and indeed they did. By 1950 Mother's Day had become the second-largest retail sales holida). Helped out h) AT&T, MCI, and the other phone companies, as well as by the candy makers, florists (especially the carnation growers), and the U.S. Postal Scnice, we no" spend billions of dollars each second Sunday in May to make sure that mom is ackno" I edged and appreciated- very often from a distance.

M) students nO\\ enter a long refractory period, from late May to late October. It\ ~ummer vacation. To be sure, there is beer drinking on Memorial Day ,,;th the running of the lnclianapolis 500, and there is Father's Day in early June in "hich we are supposed to give dad not much, and July 4 and beer, then Labor Day, and return to school. Pity poor Columbus Day. Not only did the day's "hero" inflict aU kinds of hardship on the Native Americans, and not only do the Italians make lousy beer, but this is simply the wrong time of year to buy stuff, any stufl'. The telephone companies make pathetic attempts to encourage us to "discover" ne" Yalues by calling home, but we're too smart. We know what's coming up in a month or so.

If you want to see the po\\crs of Budweiser, Miller, and Coors really let loose in Adcult, "ait until the end of October. The night used to belong to the Druid, not Michelob. Hallo"ccn ,.,a~ yet another pagan festi,al, this one ha,·ing to do \\ith the hanest and the coming on of cold weather. Bonfires were lit and chants sung for safe passage through dangerous winter. Bonfire Night was taken over by the church to become All Hallow's Eve, \\ith perhaps a little of Guy Fawkes Day mixed in, accounting for the appuarance of prankish games. All we now share \\ith the Druids is the link with d)ing light, as this time marks our return to standard time and the end of Daylight Saving Time. That we get dressed up in the costumes of characters that may well ha\e scared us, that we demand and get treats, and that mischief is just below the surface all reinforce llalloween as an empowering event for the undcraged. lo candy makers this kind of subYersion is ninana. After all, this is the nature of candy.

To their brewing brethren, however, this was a lime for despair. A night is a terrible thing to .. , astc. \Vhat had started as a most somber adult ceremon) was been taken over by the kiddies but, thanks to the brewers, it is rapidly becoming an adult, albeit young adult, time again. About ten years ago Halloween became an Oktoberfest eYent. Go to your grocery store now, and "hat do you sce surrounding the stacks of fully priced candy? Stacks of beer and tons of advertising. This is a holiday in the process of being coloni7ed by Adcult.

So we haYe Coors Light, "the official beer of Halloween," changing its slogan so that the word Jnaht is substituted for riaht, making "It's the fright beer nO\\." Anheuser- Busch has a young woman dressed as a vampire telling celebrants, "I vant to drink your Bud," and Miller pictures the Frankenstein monster under the ambiguous line, "Keep a level head this Halloween." When the National Parent Teacher Association, the :\:ational Council on Alcoholism and Drug DLpendcnce, and the Center for Science in the Publi c Interest tattled on the beer companies and told the surgeon general what was going on, she scolded the brewers. Representatives of Miller, Anheuser-Busch, and Coors denied that their Halloween ads were aimed at und erage consumers. The marketing approach, they said, had been dri,·cn by consumer research sho"ing that Halloween had already become a popular occasion for adult parties. Say no more. Case closed.

396 JAMES B. TWITCHELL

All these festivals of consumption are just so many Groundhog Days compared to the festival to settle the score, the festival of festivals, the only festival to achieve transcendental status Christmas. We need not be reminded of its central plan· in Adcult. Here is the make-it or break it event, not on I) of parenthood but of family lile for the whole year. Western capitalism depends on it. Ut.i owners, cockfight enthusiasts, and militant vegetarians who complain of being marginalized have only an inkling of what Grinches feel during this season.

Chrbtmas season starts during a wonderful holiday. Thanksgiving. Of cour~c. Thanksgiving has nothing whatsoever to do with the Pilgrims and collegial times with Squanto, the affable Indian. It has everything to do with Sarah Josepha Hale's crusade in the 1820s to make a family time for remembering her ancestors who came over on the you knO\\-what. As editor of the Boston-based Lad1es'Maaazme she had a bully pulpit. After the divisiveness of the Chit War President Lincoln thought it a good idea to celebrate our communal past. He proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day to give national thanks. And so it continued until 1939, when an Ohio departme;t store owner named Fred Lazarus Jr. proposed that Thanksgiving be mo\·ed one week earlier to prO\ide a bit more shopping time. Tired of the depression, FOR agreed. The Republicans and right-thinking people were shocked, and a Joint Resolution of Con- gress restored the fourth Thursday in 1941. But too late. Macy's parade had alread) started and Santa was cropping up at stories. Christmas had begun.

Christmas is a great demonstration of the calendric dynamics of Adcult at work. What started as a pagan ceremony celebrating the winter solstice, became a Roman feast da), was pretty much ignored by all (especially by the Puritans, whose anticekbra- tion regulations stood until the late eighteenth century, complete with fines for those who do work on "such days as Christmas"), was for a short time a religious day (tht' on I; one sanctioned by the U.S. government), was scrcndipitously discovered by the department stores as an efficient way of"working oA" the end-of-year surplus, and no'' has been returned full cycle as a pagan ceremony.

The last turn of the Christmas screw was applied December 24, 1867, wht'n R. H. Macy kept his store open until midnight. 1le set a one-day sa les record of more than $6,000. A few years later he ''as decorating his windows with dolls and trink<"ts, and it was all o"er. By the 1870s Christmas sales were double the next best holiday, Moth<•r's Day. In December 1891 f. W Woolworth was on the bandwagon, exhorting his store managers:

This is our han·est time. Make it pay .... Give your store a holida} appearance. Hang up Christmas ornaments. Perhaps ha,·e a tree in the \\ indow. Make the store look different .... This is also a good time to work off "stickt·rs" or unsalable goods, for they will sell during the excitement when you could not give them away other times. Mend all broken toys and dolls every da) .

(Boorstin 1973: I 59)

By the end of the century Woolworth had done something else to stimulate salrs. Quilt' hy accident, to avert a Christmas strike, F. W gave his workers a bonus. He presented $5 to each cmployee for each year of employment, not to exceed $25. The multiplier effect \\a'i soon felt as other companies followed suit. :-.lo good Christmas deed ever goes unpunished, regardless of moti,·e, and by 1951 the National Lahor

THEWORKOFADCULT 397

Relations Board had ruled that the Christmas bonus was no bonus at all but an expected remuneration. To make economic mattus still more explosive, banks joined the splurge b,· marketing Christmas Club savings (read, spending) accounts that matured just in time to pay full retail prices at the department stores. The juggernaut of Christmas, to a considerable degree fueled by Jewish merchants in New York, now couldn't be stoppcd. In 1946, after years of protesting the singing of Christian carols in the public schools, the Rabbinical Assembl) of America realited it couldn't fight what it in part had started. The rabbis sohed the problem by eJe,·ating a minor holida) of their own, Hanukkah, and slipstreamed it into the calendar. Soon I Janukkah became paganized with not one but eight days of giving. No power resists Adcult.

You can keep Chri~t out of Christmas but not Santa. This character, a weird conflation of St. Nicholas (a down -on-his-luck nobleman who helped young women turn a\\a) from prostitution), and Kr1ss Kringle (perhaps a German barbarism of Chnst kmtle, a gift giver) is the apogee of magical thinking. He has become so powerful that when kids arc told he doesn't exist, their parents hecome depressed. Santa Claus was a creation of Clement Clarke Moore and Thomas Nast. In 1822 Moore wrote a poem for his daughters that was reprinted in newspapers and found its way a decade later into the ,'\'e•• }ork Book if Poetry In his poem "A Visit from St. icholas" (not 'The I\ight Before Christmas") an elflike treature runs about Christmas Eve delivering presents. He is tiny, small enough to come down the chimney.

When what to my \\Ondering eye~ should appear, Rut a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer; Witfl a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

St. Nick was plumped up into full sited Santa by the editorial cartoonist Thomas A'ast. In 1869 he collected these images from Harper\ llcek{y and published them in a book called Santa Claus and His Works. If we have Moort' to thank for the reindeer (and all their great reindeer names), we have Nast to thank for fattening up Santa and sending him to the North Pole.

By the end of the nineteenth century Santa was every\\ here. He w a~ in newspapers, in maga~ines, a doll, on calendars, in children's books, and - thanks to Louis Prang on Christmas cards. 1-1(' first appears in a suit sketched by Nast but now, with chromo lithography, colored red. But Santa is not ready for prime time yet. He still needs a little tuck here, a little letting out there. I Je needs a big belt, he needs those buccaneer boots, ht' needs a beard trim, he ne~,;ds shtick. He get~ it. The jolly old St. , ick that we knO\\ from countless images did not come from Mac)' s department store, neither did he ol'iginate in the imaginations of Moore and Nast, nor did he come from Western European folklore. He came from the yearly advertisements of the Coca Cola Compan).

In the 1920s Coca-Cola was ha\ing difficulty selling ito; soft drink during the winter. The soda execs wanted to make it a cold weather be,erage. "Thint knows no season" was their initial winter campaign. At first they decided to show how a winter personage like Santa could enjoy a soft drink in December. The) showed Santa chugalugging with the Sprite Boy (the addk·d young soda jerk with the Coke bottle cap jauntily stuck on his head). But then they got lucky. The) started showing Santa rela.xing from his travails b) drinking a Coke, then showed hO\\ the kids might l<•a,·c a Coke (not milk) for Santa,

398 JAMES B. TWITCHELL

and then implied that the gifts coming in from Santa were in exchange for the Coke p dirt .. anta's presents might not be in exchange for a Coke, but they were "wor~h"a) Coke. Coke's Santa was elbo,,ing aside other Santas. Coke's Santa was starting t<l a

0\\fl

Christmas.

from the late 1930s until the mid 1950s Haddon II. Sundblorn spent much of th\' year preparing his Santas for the 0' Arcy Agency in St. Louis. I Ic would do two or thr<'\' Santas for mass-market maga1ines and then one for billboards and maybe another f(n

point-of-sale items. They almost always showed Santa ghing presents and receh·in Coke, sharing his Coke with the kids surrounded by toys, playing with the toys an~ drinking the Coke, or reading a letter from a kid while drinking the Coke left like th\· glass of milk. The ad lines read "They knew what I ''anted," "It's my gift for thirst" "And now the gift for thirst," or "Travel refreshed." Sundblom ''as quick to glom on t:l

any passing motif. After Oisne) made Bambi and Gene Autry sang "Here Comes Santa Claus," the reindeer were often worked into the illustration. After all, the proYcnann~ of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was pure Adcult. Rudolph was created by Robert

L. May, a copywriter for Montgomery Ward, and his story proved so popu lar that 2.3 million copies of"Rudolph" were sent out with the catalog in 1939.

It is an axiom of modern merchandising that what you make during Christmas is

your profit for the year. One of the most accurate predictors of future spending is ,,hat Toys 'R' Us does in December. So important is the figure that the company now makes no public announcementl> of its Christmas sales until mid January, lest it roil thr

markets. Gi' ing-although it can hardly be called oznno in any traditional sense of the word is the essence of this festival of consumption. So the kc) is to make not-ghing unspeakably churlish even if, from a retail point of view, as F. W. Woolworth implied, most of what is given is junk.

Not-giving is the mythic responsibility of Scrooge. Whereas Santa is front and center, dispensing his subtle blackmail, his evil twin Scrooge is on hand to be ridicukd

for his more sensible lx•havior. Scrooge says hoard, hoard, hoard; Santa says spend, spend, spend. Our almost totally subversive reading of Charles Dickens's A Chriqmas Carol is a case study of how popular imagination, in consort '"' ith 'Valt Disney and the department store industr), renders meaning in Adcult. Dickenl>'s talc is nm" ever)- where. Hundreds of editions arc in print- well over 225 adaptations for stage, screen, and radio; it is on records, tape, and cos; it is a ballet, an opera, a musical, in hundreds of cartoons; its characters arc omnipresent in advertising. Scrooge has jumped loos<' of his text, becom ing such characters as ~crooge McDuck for Disney or the Grinch for Dr. Seuss. We willingly- nay, gleefully- have subverted the character of Scroogt~ and

the moral of the story to serve the greater glory of Adcult. Who cares that 1 Chmtmas Carol was a potboiler "ritten because Dicken~

desperately needed to recoup the losses of Jfartin Chuulen·11? Who cares that the ~tory was not serialized, because Dickens reckoned he could make more by publishing it "hole? And especially who cares that Scrooge's redemptive act was most assuredly not

to give presents at all but to give succor to the poor? Dickens saw the story as a plea for compassion, a way to relieve the distress of the urban poor, an act of noblesse oblige, a redress of his own miserable childhood. What redeems Ebenc7Cr Scrooge in print b

ddinitcly nor. that he gives presents, or a turkey, but that he takes fatherly responsibility for Tiny Tim, the crippled son of his clerk Bob Cratchit. This is what Scrooge means when he says, "I willlovl' Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year." When A Christmas Carol was published in 184 3, Christmas gifts were not exchanged and most

THEWORKOFADCULT 399

companies did not even take the day off. What makes ~-ou a Scrooge toda) is that you nJusc to heft )OUr share of "deadweight" gifts. l\o mention is made of caring for tht'

Jess fortunate. The paradox is palpable, perhaps instructhe. The work of commercial advertising, that it arrests attention long enough for an

otherwise o,·erlook<.·d message to be delivered, has mightily altered the cultures it has entered. Not only has it commandeered the media in which it appears, hut it has also

affected content. That television shows, for instance, arc filled with middle-class storks, that these stories often revoh·e around consumable objects, that they arc told in discrete

rweh·e-minute segments, and that they ha,e w1iforml) happy endings is partial!) the

result of the demands of advertisers. More profound than the influence of adn: rtising on the form and contt nt of

media, hO\\C\Cr, i!. its transformation of the audience's sense of time and sdf. An example is how weddings have been modified in the last half-ccntur~ as they ha,e become ritualiz<:>d ceremonies of acquisition. Two generations ago no one had heard

of such things as the bridal registry, nonrecyclahlc wedding garments, an industry of how-to manuals ("on the wedding day they give one another a piece of' wedding jewelry- tiny diamond earings or a pearl necklace for her, priced anpdwrc· from S 3 5 to $60,000, and cuffiinks or a \Hist watch for him" !Baldrige 1992: 13AI), elaborate ring exchanges, and e'en nO\\, as I write this, th<:> development of wedding day jl'welry exchanges between the participants and their in Ia" :.. Spend an hour n·ading a bride's

magazine, or look at the ubiquitous newspaper supplements, and you "ill sec Adcult hard at "ork making what was once a communal or c;h il or religious ccrcmon)· into a holiday of consumption.

But we now turn to yet another region coloniLed by advertising, a n·gion long thought immune to the blandishments of the vulgar, the sacred preserve of Highcult and the inner sanctum of Victorian value, a world of value ripe for the pludJng the world

of art.

Questions for Consideration

1 What holidays and/or events are not discussed in Twitchell's essay? Why

do you think this is? 2 What are some other ways in which advertisers think about time and the

timing of their campaigns? 3 As we move further into the new media environment, do you think

marketers will place more or less emphasis on the holidays? Why might this

be so?

Notes

1. Alas, the atht>rtising industry, which ,hould undt>rstand the commercial 1 alul' ol puhlir wlf- congratulations, has only botched its 01\n. nw Clios became almost hop\'lcssl) corrupt in the early 1990s, and now a number of fledgling awards like the Hlin and the Addie arc trying to takt:' its place but \\ithout mu<.:h national acceptance. My fa,orit<·? Till· Cre:-sta, short for wcreativt' ~tandards." The worst'? The lnlt'rnational Anclv Awardo,, 'hort for ,vho knows what? Only one international award, the Canne~ Lion, has ·an~ creclihilit~. A radical