How did we arrive at the modern day version of Santa Claus?
It’s that special time of year where many of the world’s most important holidays are celebrated. I grew up catholic, so Christmas time and Santa Claus were a big part of my childhood. As I grew older, my engagement in the religion became less and less; however, Christmas has always remained a special time for me. The spirit, the wonder, the magic of it; have always permeated in me. Even though it’s a religious holiday, I never really focused on that aspect of it. I mean, how could you? There’s Santa, and Rudolph, and Frosty to look forward to.
Around this time of year, I always ask myself, “How can a non-religious person love Christmas so much?” This lead me down a rabbit hole in search of the origin of our most famous Christmas mascot: Santa Claus. This origin, however, is quite complex, and dates back over a thousand years. So, I needed to refine my question from Santa Claus’s origin to this:
How did we arrive at the modern-day version of Santa Claus?
Reference to gift givers appear in many texts that predate the Santa Claus myth, but for the purposes of this report, “the true story of Santa Claus starts with St. Nicholas” as I’m sure many of you know.
St. Nicholas was born in the third century, in what today would be considered Turkey, to a very wealthy family. St. Nicholas inherited a large amount of wealth from his parents, and he used that wealth to help those less fortunate than himself. One example I found in my research centered around a time “he heard of the man’s predicament. Determined to help but unwilling to identify himself, he tied three hundred gold florins in a square of cloth. After dark he went up to the nobleman’s house and threw the coins in through an open window.”
St. Nicholas displayed, through the various legends about him, a willingness to help others without any recognition for it. It’s in these selfless deeds that elements of the modern-day Santa can be seen.
After his death, St. Nicholas was given December 6th as his feast day, and “Each year, on the night of December 5, the eve of his feast, Nicholas was believed to travel over the land. Dressed in elaborate ecclesiastical robes, he… rode across the sky on a white or pale gray horse… [and] came to the home of every child, bringing gifts and sweets for the good and obedient, and the rod, or birch switches, for the bad.” Arriving to home of children, giving gifts to good children, and a consequence for bad children. While St. Nicholas does not hail from the North Pole and fly through the air with reindeer, it’s apparent that some of Santa’s major characteristics are derived from him.
“During the reformation, new protestant churches were established… Devotion to the Roman Catholic saints was vigorously suppressed. The reformers all preached that all good things came directly from God.” St. Nicholas’s legends were downplayed in parts of Europe, but it remained strong in other places such as Holland, where the St. Nicholas tradition, or as the Dutch called him Sinter Klaas, flourished.
The Dutch were quite influential in shaping the modern-day Santa Claus. When they colonized the Americas during the 1600s, they brought with them the Sinter Klaas tradition. The Dutch settled in, what today is New York, and because these legends and myths were celebrated and shared by the people here, they lasted through the transfer of land to the British, through the American Revolution the founding of the United States.
New York would be the home of three men, who would inevitably take the Sinter Klaas legend, and shape it into the Santa Claus that we know today.
“Washington Irving [author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow] is… credited with performing Santa’s first makeover..he described Santa Claus…as an old burgher, who wore a broad-brimmed hat and …and smoked a long pipe. Irving’s saint cruised in a flying wagon over the rooftops, occasionally reaching into his pockets for presents, which he’d deposit in the chimneys of the children he liked best.” In this incarnation, Mr. Irving is adding to the myth that has been established.
Several years later, in 1823, Clement Moore released a poem titled “An Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas.” This poem is more commonly known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Moore’s poem is credited with turning “Santa into a lovable, laughing, jolly old fatty.” While Moore’s poem draws from other sources, “Twas the Night” helped “popularize the now-familiar image of a Santa Claus who flew from house to house on Christmas Eve in a miniature sleigh led by eight flying reindeer.”
Finally, we arrive at political cartoonist Thomas Nast. In 1881, Nast “drew on Moore’s poem to create the first likeness that matches our modern image of Santa Claus.” His pictures are quite famous, and I guarantee you have come across some of them at some point. It was Mr. Nast who gave Santa his red suit, his white beard, his elves, and even his wife, Ms. Claus.
It’s here where my own question starts to turn into others: How much or how little has been added to the Santa Claus myth since Nast’s drawings in the 1880s? How did the St. Nicholas legend manifest in places that underwent the reformation? And, how did Rudolph and Frosty, other popular Christmas characters, come about? Do they have long stretching origin stories as well?
And with that, I hope this report has generated your own interest into the topic.
Happy Holidays!
Works Cited
Stevens, Patricia B. Merry Christmas! : a History of the Holiday. Macmillan, 1979.
Marx, Patricia. “Put It in a Sock.” The New Yorker, vol. 85, no. 41, 14 Dec. 2009, p. 44. Gale In Context: High School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A214416764/GPS?u=nysl_li_vsnhs&sid=GPS&xid=83af8cdc. Accessed 24 Dec. 2020.
