Working Class Hero
The character of Father Christmas is a metaphor for the status of the working class in the U.K. This story is not the usual presentation of Santa as a CEO overlooking a vast army of overworked and underpaid elves from his white tower at the North Pole. His home is distinctly within the working-class milieu. He is himself a guy who is expected to do his job on time, under stressful conditions, and with a certain expectation of thankfulness for being employed.
Christmas Haters
On another level, Father Christmas is a metaphor who takes his place alongside Scrooge and the Grinch and other Christmas haters. Like those and most people who claim to hate the holiday, he does not really hate Christmas as a concept so much as the odd secular traditions which have grown around it. Specifically, he hates the cold and one very much gets the sense that if the celebration of Christmas were reassigned to July 25th, he would not be so curmudgeonly.
Travel Posters
The walls of the modest home of Father Christmas are adorned with posters emblazoned with locations like Capri, Malta, and Majorca. Although most of the posters don’t actually show any graphic images of these places, just the very names indicate that they are a metaphor for the dream of Father Christmas to get away from the perpetually gloomier British climate. These travel posters adorning his walls are exclusively reserved for places where people enjoy summer vacations even during the other three seasons.
Tea
Throughout the story can be found multiple references to tea which is situated as a metaphor for Britishness. The title of this book is not Santa Claus, after all, but Father Christmas. That is the British term for Saint Nicholas. The visual imagery punctuates that the story takes place in England with the appearance of the residence of the British royal family. And the title character himself is given to repeating an idiosyncratically British slang term “blooming snow” to indicate his displeasure. It is the persistent appearance of tea, however, that becomes the central metaphorical imagery. Father Christmas begins the story by making tea and a large canister marked “TEA” is prominently displayed on a bathroom shelf, suggesting that he is abundantly supplied. A later illustration will further accentuate how Britons famously love their tea with two similarly marked containers given prominence in the attic of another home. Finally, the first thing Father Christmas does for himself upon returning from his Christmas Eve journey is brew another pot of tea for himself. As suspected, there is also a prominently displayed canister on a shelf in the kitchen this time.
Tie, Socks, and Liquor
As for Father Christmas himself, he receives three presents. One is an ugly tie from an Aunt while an equally hideous pair of socks was gifted by a cousin. The only one of the three presents he actually likes is a bottle of cognac sent by someone named Fred. The statistically unimpressive result of Father Christmas actually liking only one-third of the gifts he receives becomes the story’s final metaphorical statement on the reality of the holiday season. The tie and socks become, unfortunately, metaphors for the gift-exchange element of Christmas in which most people invest more time and money than actual thought about the appropriateness of the presents they buy.
