The History of Santa Claus

I state in sermon #2 that I believe the role of the Magi in the Christmas story is vastly misunderstood, even corrupted. They have become the biblical basis for the Christmas tradition of gift-giving, i.e., giving gifts to one another (in the Bible’s story, it is JESUS who gets the gifts).

This gets us to the idea of Santa Claus and the modern practice of gift-giving. Where did this custom originate? (My thanks to Wikipedia here...)

When the Dutch came to America and established the colony of New Amsterdam, their children enjoyed the traditional ‘visit of Saint Nicholas’ on December 5th, for the Dutch had kept this Catholic custom even after the Reformation. St. Nicholas was said to have lived in Myra (Turkey) in about 300 CE. Born an only child of a wealthy family, he was orphaned at an early age when both parents died of the plague. He grew up in a monastery, and at the age of seventeen became one of the youngest priests ever. Many stories are told of his generosity as he gave his wealth away in the form of gifts to those in need, especially children. Legends tell of him dropping bags of gold down chimneys or throwing them through the windows where they landed in the stockings hung from the fireplace to dry.

Later, when England took over the formerly Dutch colony, which then became "New York," this kindly figure of Sinter Klaas soon aroused among the English children the desire of having such a heavenly visitor come to their homes, too. The British settlers were soon caught up in this custom. However, the figure of a Catholic saint and bishop was not acceptable in their eyes, since many of them were Presbyterians, to whom a bishop was repugnant. Also, they did not celebrate the feasts of saints according to the ancient Catholic calendar. Transferring the visit from December 5th to the winter solstice (Christmas) and reinventing ‘Santa Claus’ solved the dilemma. Thus, the Catholic saint was completely replaced by an entirely different character. Incidently, in 1809, Washington Irving published his satirical ‘A History of New York’, by ‘Diedrich Knickerbocker’, a work that poked fun at New York's Dutch past -- St. Nicholas included.

Each Protestant country or region eventually developed its own gift-giver. In France, he was known as Pare Noel ("Father Christmas"). In England he was Father Christmas, always depicted with sprigs of holly, ivy, or mistletoe. Germany knew him as Weihnachtsmann, or Christmas man -- this later mutated into Christkindlein and ‘Kriss Kringle’.

The 19th century and early 20th saw the final development of the modern image of Santa Claus. In 1821, a New York printer named William Gilley issued a poem about a ‘Santeclaus’, who dressed up in fur and drove a sleigh pulled by one reindeer. The man-sized version of Santa became the dominant image around 1841, when a Philadelphia merchant named J.W. Parkinson hired a man to dress in ‘Criscringle’ clothing and climb the chimney outside his shop. In 1863, a cartoonist for ‘Harper's Weekly’ named Thomas Nast began developing his own image of Santa. Nast gave his figure a flowing set of whiskers and dressed him in fur from his head to his booted feet. Nast's 1866 montage entitled ‘Santa Claus and His Works’ established Santa as a maker of toys; in 1869 a book of the same name collected new Nast drawings with a poem by George P. Webster that identified the North Pole as Santa's home. Finally, a Boston printer named Louis Prang introduced the English custom of Christmas cards to America, and in 1885 he issued a card featuring a red-suited Santa. Santa Claus in his red suit had become a standard image by the 1920s. The jolly, red-and-white garbed Santa Claus figure was established years before artist Haddon H. Sundblom drew his first Santa portrait for Coca-Cola in 1931. Sundblom, a commercial illustrator, began to work for Coca-Cola in 1924, and from 1931 on he created at least one painting of Santa Claus every year for use in advertisements by The Coca-Cola Company.

Thus, more and more, the emphasis of Christmas became the gift-giving, and Santa Claus. If one needed a biblical basis for this, the Magi were the perfect foils. Tomorrow we’ll look at their biblical role in Christmas.