A Brief Visual History of Santa Claus

On the 24th of December, every year, homes around the world are expecting to welcome a guest in their homes, who they have never met, don’t expect to ever meet, but about who they know exactly what he looks like and what he is like.

Santa Claus is coming to town each year to bring gifts and presents to children who were nice during the year that is about to end. And, even though nobody has ever seen the real Santa Claus, we all know what he looks like and what his personality is: St. Nick, Father Christmas or Kris Kringle, as he is also known, is an old man who travels through the sky on the evening of the 24th of December in a sledge carried by reindeer, and enters homes through the chimney only to leave presents under the Christmas tree or in stockings, depending on where you live. He is dressed in red and is quite heavy, but his jolly personality makes him very merry.

Have you ever wondered what Santa Claus looked like a hundred years ago or more and how his style and look have developed over the years? Where did Santa come from and how come, despite his imposing stature, he can easily glide through the chimney?

Our brief visual history of Santa Claus begins in Northern Europe, where during the month of December, and especially around the winter solstice (on December 21st), when some places don’t even receive one minute of sunlight, people created a series of characters that would bring gifts to brighten up the mood of the season. These characters were either elves, gods and even goats, but they were not very similar to what Santa is today.

The first Santa-like character is the Dutch Saint Nicholas, who was inspired by a real 4th century Greek bishop who was known for his kindness and for putting gifts in people’s socks. Sinterklaas, as the Dutch call him, is dressed like a bishop and wears red and white brings gifts to kids who were nice in early

December. A similar character existed in England, and was known by the name of “Father Christmas”. Father Christmas did not look very much like our version of Santa Claus and he was more interested in the festive aspect of Christmas (which was the central aspect of the holiday during the Middle Ages) than on focusing on children and gift-giving.

Once colonizers from Northern Europe, the Netherlands and the British Isles moved and settled in America, these images started to mix, which is why the US Santa has so many names: Father Christmas, Santa Claus (which is a re-interpretation of the Dutch word “Sinterklaas”).

But Santa’s image as we know him today was not the creation of popular belief. It was two New Yorkers who lived in the 19th century that defined Santa Claus as the man we know today.

Clement Clarke Moore (July 15, 1779 – July 10, 1863) was a New York professor of oriental and Greek literature who in 1822 wrote a 56-line poem named “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”.

Today, we know that poem by the name of “The Night Before Christmas”. In this poem, he singlehandedly created the modern American Christmas myth and set the basis for the way we see Christmas today. Moore drew his inspiration from the original Greek Saint Nicholas and from his Dutch version. Moore, however, added a few different visual elements to his American Santa: he dressed him in American fur and gave him a pipe and presented him not as the bishop he was in Europe, but as a merry elf with joyous spirit that was able to glide through the chimney due to his small size. Moore’s Santa carried a sack full of toys on his back and flew through the sky on a sleigh carried by eight reindeer, something which was inspired by the god Odin, who flew on a horse with eight legs.  However, Moore’s Santa had not elves, no letters from children and no North Pole workshop.

These elements were introduced by Thomas Nast, another New Yorker who lived in the 19th century. Nast was a caricaturist and editorial cartoonist who completed Moore’s image of Santa Claus. In 1862, he was commissioned by one of America’s biggest magazines, Harper’s Weekly, to create their Christmas illustrations. He based his drawings on Moore’s character, but transformed him from an elf into an old, big man who lives at the North Pole and has a big naughty or nice list.

Nast continued his drawings year after year and by the 1900s, the image of Santa Claus as we know him today was already created and was starting to spread throughout the world. Needless to say that some cultures were not very happy to welcome back a character they had exported several years ahead. Today in the Netherlands, Sinterklaas is still more popular than the classic Santa Claus.

There is one more interesting aspect that marks the evolution of Santa Claus’ image and style. Even though many people believe that it was Coca-Cola that dressed Santa Claus in red, this is not true. However, Coca-Cola did make use of Nast’s Santa Claus to promote their brand during the off-season and associated their red and white of their logo with the red and white Santa was dressed in. Furthermore, since Coca-Cola is an international brand, their ads contributed to the spread of the image of the American Santa throughout the world, especially in countries that did not have images of Santa Claus and therefore, for millions, the image of Santa from Coca-Cola commercials is the only one they have.

Today, in pure post-modern spirit, Santa Claus is reinterpreted and made to reference anything and everything, but the image that prevails is still the one created by two New Yorkers in the 1800s.

What Santa really looks like, we might never know, but what we know for sure is that we can each imagine him whatever we like and that history shows that he is a man who likes to keep up with the fashions and trends of the world.

Fraquoh and Franchomme

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