 | The red robed figure of Santa Claus is one of the most loved images of many people’s childhood and the excitement doesn’t just stop with the children either. Usually the graphic tale of an old bearded man climbing down your chimney at night isn’t a story you would want to promote to your children but Santa is different. A kind and generous man based on an equally kind and generous historical figure, Santa leaves presents for all the well-behaved children and allows parents the privilege of at least a month of bribery and blackmail leading up to the big day. How many times have you, as a parent, said ‘If you don’t stop that Santa won’t leave you any presents this year’? So where does this mysterious man come from; to whom do we owe a debt of gratitude for well-behaved children in December?
Santa Claus as we know and love him now is an eclectic mix of many different historical figures and any quest to find his roots will stem back many centuries. It’s most commonly believed that the Santa Claus legend originally stems back to the third century and a monk named Nicholas in Turkey. He was renowned as being an incredibly generous man, giving away his wealth and riches to the needy, and in particular poor children. Possibly the most famous story of this generosity is how he saved three daughters from being sold to a life of slavery by providing them with a dowry. This meant they could be married and live a free life.
Undoubtedly many of the tales regaled of Saint Nick are exaggerated, however, it is known that he was very generous indeed. For his efforts the Orthodox church made Nicholas a Saint and awarded him an honorary day of celebration on the 6th December. The tales of his generosity spread around the world, becoming known as Sinter Klaas in Holland. As Dutch immigrants found their way to American shores his name soon became Americanized to Santa Claus.
Saint Nicholas himself as originally depicted as wearing a bishop’s robes and in all honesty was far from being the rotund figure with a bushy white beard we now assume. In 1809 Washington Irving gave America their first full description of Santa but this still didn’t depict him as a portly gentlemen and instead as an elf. 1823 saw the production of The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore naming the reindeer and giving Santa his characteristic laugh, nods and other expressions.
Harpers magazine was the first publication to show a picture of a fully fledged Santa Claus in the 1860s. 1925 saw the admission that Santa obviously doesn’t live in the North Pole because there would be nowhere for the reindeer to graze and so his new home was depicted as being at the Ear Fell in Finnish Lapland. It was really down to Coca Cola in 1931 that Santa finally became full sized and lost his image of being an elf and Rudolf, the now infamous ninth reindeer with a shiny red nose, finally came on the scene in 1939.
Now Santa is visited by millions of children every year in his new home and there is even a Post Office where all the letters are sent requesting gifts. And, of course, you can visit Santa’s little helpers when they’re not busy in the workshop. So, everything from a monk to Coca Cola has helped in the production of modern day Santa Claus, but will his transformation stop here?
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