Dylan: Surfing Post-Irony or Has He Just Lost It?
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.
Something to ponder over the eight nights of Hanukkah.
Hat tips galore. Benjamin Ivry, Jeremiah Lockwood most insistently!
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.