Santa Claus (fictional character)

Santa Claus is a mythical figure who, according to world folklore, visits the homes of good children every Christmas Eve and leaves gifts. The traditional Santa Claus appears as a jolly, rotund old man with a white beard who wears a red suit, rings bells, and carries a sack full of toys while traveling around the world on a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer.

The character of Santa Claus is a blend of religious and secular traditions that fused over many centuries. Elements of ancient Christianity, Germanic folklore, and American art and commercialism all contributed to creating the figure of Santa Claus as he is known in the twenty-first century. Santa Claus is a central component of the Christmas season in many world cultures.

Background

Santa Claus was made from the gradual development of religious traditions and secular Christmas practices. The character's earliest influence is the fourth-century Turkish Christian bishop St. Nicholas. Nicholas was known during his life for being an especially holy, kind, and generous man. These qualities led his devotees to invent myths of his giving nature. The most well-known story tells of Nicholas saving three daughters from being sold into prostitution by supplying them with dowries, or money, so they could secure husbands.

Nicholas died on December 6 in the mid-fourth century. This day quickly became his feast day, observed by Christians to honor the legendary giver of gifts. Into the Renaissance, parents celebrated St. Nicholas Day by giving their children gifts. By this point, St. Nicholas had come somewhat to resemble the Norse god Odin, who traditionally was an old man with a white beard who could fly and who encouraged children to practice moral behavior. Nicholas remained a popular saint throughout Europe until the Protestant Reformation of the mid-1500s, when changing religious attitudes discouraged Christians from honoring saints as they once had.

The Dutch, however, never stopped appreciating St. Nicholas. To continue honoring him, they invented the character of Sinterklaas, whose name was the Dutch nickname for Sint Nikolaas, or St. Nicholas. Men dressed up as Sinterklaas by donning the robes and mitre, or traditional headdress, of the real fourth-century bishop and distributing candy and other treats to children and the poor. Dutch families and friends gathered to celebrate the saint on the night of December 5, the day before St. Nicholas Day. Children would then leave their shoes by the fireplace so that Sinterklaas would leave presents in them by the next morning.

These Sinterklaas traditions arrived in the United States, particularly in the New York region, by the late 1700s. New York boasted a heavy population of Dutch immigrants, who had brought their love of St. Nicholas with them from the Netherlands. It was in the United States that St. Nicholas started to modernize and transform into what he would become, the Christmas character known as Santa Claus, with this name being derived from the Dutch Sinterklaas.

Christmases in early America were raucous, alcohol-driven celebrations. Unlike what the holiday would become in later centuries, Christmas was not accommodating to children and did not feature a supernatural gift giver. In the early 1800s, several American writers and other figures were determined to reinvent Christmas as a family holiday, and they planned to use the Dutch St. Nicholas traditions to do it. The seeds of these Americans' work would go on to produce the Santa Claus figure that later became a Christmas centerpiece.

Impact

In 1804, John Pintard of the New York Historical Society passed out wood engravings of St. Nicholas to his fellow society members. The image featured stockings full of toys and food hanging by the fireplace, a setting that would eventually become associated with Santa Claus. In 1809, in his book Knickerbocker's History of New York, writer Washington Irving described St. Nicholas as a man wearing a three-cornered hat and red waistcoat, smoking a pipe, and flying through the air in a wagon delivering presents to good children.

The anonymously written 1821 poem "The Children's Friend" brought the emerging Santa Claus into modernity by describing a man dressed in furs carrying a birch rod and sitting in a sleigh being pulled by a reindeer. The furs and rod descended from various Germanic Christmas figures who wore furs and carried rods to threaten naughty children. In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore composed the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known as "The Night Before Christmas." It described a fat, jolly Santa Claus who rides a flying sleigh pulled by eight reindeer.

However, it was not until the late 1800s that the actual image of the Santa Claus character became standardized with cartoonist Thomas Nast's drawings of him in Harper's Weekly. Nast portrayed Santa Claus as an obese, white-bearded, Caucasian old man wearing a red suit and furs and smoking a pipe. Across his back he carried a sack full of toys. It was also Nast who suggested with some of these illustrations that Santa Claus could be contacted by writing to the North Pole.

Santa Claus was modernized once more in the early 1930s, when the Coca-Cola Company sought a realistic Santa image for one of its magazine advertisements. The company employed illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create the image. Sundblom referenced Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" when drawing his own Santa. The result was a friendly, gentle, rotund Santa Claus wearing a red coat and drinking a Coca-Cola. This Santa Claus first appeared in a 1931 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Later advertisements depicted the Santa figure delivering toys, reading a child's letter, and visiting with children who waited for him to arrive at their home. Coca-Cola's Santa became the globally known image of the mythical being from that point.

Santa Claus went on to influence global popular culture ubiquitously. He is a symbol of Christmas in many nations around the world, where children await his coming on Christmas Eve to receive their presents. Santa has appeared on merchandise, in parades, and on film, including works such as Miracle on 34th Street (1947), The Santa Clause (1994), and Elf (2003). Volunteers in many countries have also used the popularity of Santa Claus to perform charity work, dressing in Santa uniforms and delivering gifts to the poor.

Bibliography

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