By Dan Friedman November 22, 2009

For decades people have fought to claim Bob Dylan’s legacy as their own. Jews, Christians and old african-american Blues Men. Actually only in Dylan’s own mind have the latter actually joined the fray, but his contribution to American culture has been so incisive that many people have identified and so varied that it has been difficult to pin down.

So his latest YouTube addition comes as both a surprise and no surprise. How long, in fact, before he fully embraced the vacuity of contemporary consumer culture in a possibly non-ironic way? “Must be Santa” joins Dylan and that other great appropriation of American consumer culture — Santa Claus.

Coca Cola dressed up the Christian St. Nicholas in their colors and used him to sell stuff. St Nicholas himself was an accretion of traditional green man legends from Central Europe. So, buy your soda because we’ve tamed nature. And now, buy Santa because we’ve tamed the arch-outsider critic, Dylan. Or perhaps the over-determination of the “must” is intended to tip us off that neither Dylan nor Santa are quite who we think they are.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis of the crisis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Something to ponder over the eight nights of Hanukkah.

Hat tips galore. Benjamin Ivry, Jeremiah Lockwood most insistently!

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount