What better place to find Christmas cheer than a crystal castle floating on a cloud way up in the heavens, the home of our beloved Santa. And as it turns out, Jolly Old St. Nicholas and Liberace may have shared an interior designer, the evidence of which can be found in Santa Claus (1959). This little creation is the strangest cinematic lift your holiday spirits could ever hope for.
Santa Claus is strangely intoxicating, like the hardest warm apple cider you’ve ever gulped. In his cloud quarters that would make the Care Bears jealous, Santa plays a pipe organ to his transplanted version of Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction. Stereotyped kiddies spanning the globe violate child labor laws and work like mad to make all the toys that Santa will deliver on Christmas. (The little African children wear loin cloths, and the kids from the U.S.A. dress like little cowboys and cowgirls as they sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”) Let us not forget famed wizard Merlin, permanent house guest of Mr. Claus. The mad apothecary is busy concocting sleeping powders and magical flowers that can make Santa disappear at will. And there’s a hulking blacksmith on the premises, crafting the key that will open all the doors of the world when Santa takes his toy-tossing flight. But by far, the best amenity of the Claus estate is a talking telescope that looks like something straight out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. How else could Santa compose his naughty-or-nice list?
The movie is sensory overload--like someone crammed all of Christmas into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Its over-the-top liberties taken with conveying a tale of Christmas are truly childlike in their whimsy. The longer the film goes, the more the plot sounds like a kid on a very long road trip telling an impromptu story from the back seat . . . there’s humor, charm, and a very specific sort of entertainment inherent in the wild concoction.
And what child tells a story without a bad guy? Move the n to the end, and Santa spells Satan. Yep, he’s here, too. He sends one of his minions, Pitch, to spoil Santa’s global giving and to taint the hearts and actions of children. His nimble contortions in red tights and sulfuric stench are no match for Papa Noel, and the three little boys whom he persuades to work against Santa find three lumps of coal for all their efforts. A demon from hell and an omniscient, aged man who lives in the clouds (albeit with a bad memory) are an interesting take on the archetypes of religion and their ties to the holidays.
Buried under all the trippy trimmings are the truly heartwarming stories of Billy and Lupita. Billy is the little rich boy who asks Santa only for the love of his parents, a young socialite couple who substitute their presence with materialism so they can go party out on the town. He’s so desperately seeking affection that he’s granted the ultimate privilege of seeing Santa in a dream. In the dream, he begs for even the love of Santa, and the jolly man explains that his parents really do love him. To drive the point home, he even goes and serves a cocktail of remorse to the absentee parents, inspiring them to race home and enfold Billy in their arms in the style of an Olan Mills portrait.
And then there’s Lupita, the most adorable little poor girl you’ve ever seen who wants only a doll for Christmas. Pitch almost talks her into stealing one at the marketplace, but she resists temptation because stealing is evil and she wants more than anything to be a good little girl. But teetering on the edge of a misstep does not go without punishment; Lupita has a nightmare in which life-size versions of the dolls overtake her in a sinister, choreographed dance, repeating to her from their terrifyingly masked faces that stealing one doll won’t make any difference. Luckily, Lupita stays strong and wakes up too scared to ever compromise her morals again. In the end, her mother is tearfully explaining that Santa loves all children, rich and poor, but that she will have to wait until the next year to be rewarded for her goodness. When she goes out to the patio to find that Santa has miraculously left a a beautiful doll for her, the spirit of making people happy is infectious.
Santa Claus is the perfectly weird and heartfelt antidote to cumbersome holiday traditions, i.e., Johnny Mathis singing carols, fruitcakes, and the serious physical dangers of Black Friday shopping. It dares to dream an uninhibited version of Christmas fancy, dripping with visual splendor and childlike morality. Whether stone-sober or hopped up on eggnog, this is a festival of fantasy you won’t soon forget or regret.
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