'Night before Christmas' never written

Out of season for a Christmas WI but I really like this idea.

Let us say that the author of the Night before Christmas, Clement Moore, dies of some childhood illness and the poem is never written.

Not a major POD it seems at first, but the Night before Christmas actually set the course for the creation of the modern day Santa Claus. It even set down the idea of him giving children presents!

What would Christmas be like without the poem?

Who would replace 'Santa Claus' as the focus of the holiday? Perhaps the original British 'Father Christmas' would be more dominant

Any thoughts?
 
Whoever wrote it, commercialized Christmas is probably inevitable with this POD. Department stores are still going to have the idea of marketing Christmas, they'll just find some other poem to do it with. You could play around with source material, make Santa aesthetically different. Maybe someone takes "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and changes the words to more expensive goods. Maybe a Jewish businessman somewhere tries to make Christmas look more like Hannukha and we get eight days of Christmas. Or maybe the candy companies beat the department stores to the claim and Christmas looks like Valentine's OTL.
If for some reason capitalism fails to capitalize, I guess it keeps going on looking like Mardi Gras.
 
If for some reason capitalism fails to capitalize, I guess it keeps going on looking like Mardi Gras.

Hmm. Christmas with Dixieland jazz band, gaudy floats and drunken women roaming around topless? I'll pull out the Yule Log for that, Merry Christmas everybody!!!
 
Hmm. Christmas with Dixieland jazz band, gaudy floats and drunken women roaming around topless? I'll pull out the Yule Log for that, Merry Christmas everybody!!!

Well I meant comparatively like Mardi Gras. A big, drunken party. Jazz bands probably only in New Orleans, but the parades are likely; we have those anyway. Topless women...eh, not so much in December.
 
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