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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: thf2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Subject: Japanese Crucify Santa Claus?
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 16:23:00 GMT

The first hint of this urban legend came as a surprise in response to the now-infamous Monty Hall-gives-a-Chevy-Nova-to-Winston-Churchill troll. Someone, in noting that the name of the Nova means "doesn't go" in Spanish, also told of the wax tadpole story, but of a twist we hadn't heard before: the Japanese department store that tried to do Christmas decorations, but ended up crucifying Santa Claus.

I shrugged it off at the time, but at the end of 1993, I heard the story from two other sources: the Economist mentioned it in passing in its year-end issue, and a Washington DC radio station being broadcast on the cable station that carries program listings mentioned it in passing.

Three times is too much for coincidence, so I did a little research. I think I uncovered the source, a 1984 Financial Times news article that's the earliest mention I could find, plus names names rather than FOAF. (Of course, as Douglas Adams demonstrates, first-hand accounts don't necessarily mean anything, especially if they're British.)

Can anyone find an earlier mention?

I'm also including a 1985 variant on the story, this from the Chicago Tribune, also ostensibly a first-hand account.

Financial Times, December 27, 1984:

'If Christmas cheer is easily assimilated into Japanese office parties and department store sales promotions, it can still sometimes gain or lose a little in translation. One Tokyo television channel ran as its seasonal treat this week a film, innocuously titled "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence," which is in facta particularly harrowing account of life in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. And Simon Smithson, of brokers Grieveson Grant, reports seeing festive decoration in a Tokyo department store with a centrepiece of Santa Claus -- crucified.'

Chicago Tribune, December 22, 1985:

'Philippe Bruneau, a French toy importer, is fond of telling the story of an innovative Japanese toy manufacturer who had come up with what he thought was the perfect Christmas toy.
' "It looked like a plastic crucifix with Jesus on it," said Bruneau. "But it really was a transformer that could be turned from a passive Christ on the cross into a vengeful monster robot. He was sure this would sell, he said, because it made Jesus Christ into a 'winner.' He was crushed when I told him to tear up his drawings."'