Christmas 1951 in Dijon received an unusually gloomy prelude when, around three o’clock in the afternoon, a large group of children — several hundred according to French media at the time — hung an effigy of Santa Claus on the gates of the Gothic Cathedral of Sainte-Bénigne and set it on fire. In a press photo, the cloaked and long-bearded Santa figure is seen dangling helplessly and surrounded by children in wool coats, while a white blaze envelops him as the flames illuminate the excited children’s faces.

This ritual burning of Santa Claus was not due to dissatisfaction with the previous year’s gifts but came after prolonged protests among the city’s Christians. The Christians believed that Santa was a usurper and heretic who represented a growing paganism that threatened to overshadow the true message of Christmas: the birth of Jesus Christ. The episode was a dramatic instance of a near-universal conflict between the commodified world created by capitalist markets and the need of many people to preserve a sphere of life free from economic logic.

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who wrote about the fiasco shortly after it took place, saw it as a conflict between an older understanding of the world in crisis and the rise of a new, growing cult, with all the tensions that this might naturally bring. Ironically, Lévi-Strauss observed, the Christians of Dijon achieved exactly the opposite of their intentions. Rather than destroying the pagan challenger, they confirmed his mystical status by treating him as worthy of ritual sacrifice.