Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts during the late evening and overnight hours on Christmas Eve. Christmas elves are said to make the gifts in Santa's workshop, while flying reindeer pull his sleigh through the air.
The popular conception of Santa Claus originates from folklore traditions surrounding the 4th-century Christian Greek bishop Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children. Saint Nicholas became renowned for his reported generosity and secret gift-giving. The image of Santa Claus shares similarities with the English figure of Father Christmas, and they are both now popularly regarded as the same person.
Santa is generally depicted as a portly, jolly, white-bearded man, often with glasses, wearing a red coat with white fur collar and cuffs, white-fur-cuffed red trousers, a red hat with white fur trim, a black leather belt and boots, carrying a bag full of gifts for children. He is popularly associated with a deep, hearty laugh, frequently rendered in Christmas literature as "ho, ho, ho!"
This image originated in the United States during the 19th century, after Dutch settlers brought the legend of Sinterklaas to 17th-century New Amsterdam. The 1823 American poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas", written by an anonymous author, recounts Saint Nicholas arriving at the author's home on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. The poem laid the foundation for modern depictions of Santa Claus, strengthening the association between Santa Claus and Christmas. Over time, this connection has been maintained and reinforced through song, radio, television, children's books, family Christmas traditions, films, and advertising.
Predecessor figures
Saint Nicholas
Saint Nicholas was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra in the region of Lycia in the Roman Empire, today in Turkey. Nicholas was known for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes. He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. In continental Europe, he is usually portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes.In 1087, while the Greek Christian inhabitants of Myra were subjugated by the newly arrived Muslim Seljuq dynasty, and soon after their Greek Orthodox church had been declared to be in schism by the Catholic Church, a group of merchants from the Italian city of Bari removed the major bones of Nicholas's skeleton from his sarcophagus in the Greek church in Myra. Over the objection of the monks of Myra the sailors took the bones of Saint Nicholas to Bari, where they are now enshrined in the Basilica di San Nicola. Sailors from Bari collected just half of Nicholas's skeleton, leaving all the minor fragments in the church sarcophagus. These were later taken by Venetian sailors during the First Crusade and placed in Venice, where a church dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the patron of sailors, was built on the San Nicolò al Lido. Saint Nicholas's vandalised sarcophagus can still be seen in the St. Nicholas Church in Myra. This tradition was confirmed in two important scientific investigations of the relics in Bari and Venice, which revealed that the relics in the two Italian cities belong to the same skeleton. Saint Nicholas was later claimed as a patron saint of many diverse groups, from archers, sailors, and children to pawnbrokers. He is also the patron saint of both Amsterdam and Moscow.
During the Middle Ages, often on the evening before his name day of 6 December, children were bestowed gifts in his honour. This date was earlier than the original day of gifts for the children, which moved in the course of the Reformation and its opposition to the veneration of saints in many countries on 24 and 25 December. The custom of gifting to children at Christmas was propagated by Martin Luther as an alternative to the previous very popular gift custom attention on Saint Nicholas, to focus the interest of the children to Christ instead of the veneration of saints. Luther first suggested the Christkind as the bringer of gifts. But Nicholas remained popular as gifts bearer for the people.
Father Christmas
Father Christmas dates to 16th-century England during the reign of Henry VIII, when he was pictured as a large man in green or scarlet robes lined with fur. He typified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, bringing peace, joy, good food and wine and revelry. As England no longer kept the feast day of Saint Nicholas on 6 December, the Father Christmas celebration was moved to 25 December to coincide with Christmas Day. The Victorian revival of Christmas included Father Christmas as the emblem of good cheer. His physical appearance was variable, with one image being John Leech's illustration of the "Ghost of Christmas Present" in Charles Dickens's novella A Christmas Carol, as a great genial man in a green coat lined with fur who takes Ebenezer Scrooge through the bustling streets of London on the current Christmas morning, sprinkling the essence of Christmas onto the happy populace.Dutch, Belgian and Swiss folklore
In the Netherlands and Belgium, the character of Santa Claus competes with that of Sinterklaas, based on Saint Nicolas. Santa Claus is known as de Kerstman in Dutch and Père Noël in French. For children in the Netherlands, Sinterklaas remains the predominant gift-giver in December; 36% of the Dutch only give presents on Sinterklaas evening or the day itself, 6 December, while Christmas, 25 December, is used by another 21% to give presents. Some 26% of the Dutch population gives presents on both days. In Belgium, presents are offered exclusively to children on 6 December, and on Christmas Day all ages may receive presents. Saint Nicolas/Sinterklaas' assistants are called "Pieten" or "Père Fouettard", and they are not elves.In Switzerland, Père Fouettard accompanies Père Noël in the French speaking region, while the sinister Schmutzli accompanies Samichlaus in the Swiss German region. Schmutzli carries a twig broom to spank the naughty children.
Germanic paganism, Odin, and Christianisation
Prior to their Christianisation, the Germanic peoples celebrated a midwinter event called Yule. With the Christianisation of Germanic Europe, numerous traditions were absorbed from Yuletide celebrations into modern Christmas, such as the Wild Hunt, frequently attested as being led by the god Odin, bearing the names Jólnir, meaning "Yule man", and Langbarðr, meaning "long-beard", in Old Norse.Odin's role during the Yuletide period has been theorised as having influenced concepts of Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus in a variety of facets, including his long white beard and his grey horse for nightly rides or his reindeer in North American tradition. The folklorist Margaret Baker maintains that "the appearance of Santa Claus or Father Christmas, whose day is the 25th of December, owes much to Odin, the old blue-hooded, cloaked, white-bearded Giftbringer of the north, who rode the midwinter sky on his eight-footed steed Sleipnir, visiting his people with gifts. Odin, transformed into Father Christmas, then Santa Claus, prospered with St Nicholas and the Christchild, became a leading player on the Christmas stage."
In northern Europe, the Yule goat was an earlier bearer of gifts, which has to some degree become conflated with Santa Claus, for instance in the Finnish Joulupukki tradition.
History
Origins
Early representations of the gift-giver from Church history and folklore, especially Saint Nicholas, merged with the English character Father Christmas to create the mythical character known to the rest of the English-speaking world as "Santa Claus".In the English and later British colonies of North America, and later in the United States, British and Dutch versions of the gift-giver merged further. For example, in Washington Irving's History of New York, Sinterklaas was Anglicised into "Santa Claus" but lost his bishop's apparel, and was at first pictured as a thick-bellied Dutch sailor with a pipe in a green winter coat. Irving's book was a parody of the Dutch culture of New York, and much of this portrait is his joking invention. Irving's interpretation of Santa Claus was part of a broader movement to tone down the increasingly wild Christmas celebrations of the era, which included aggressive home invasions under the guise of wassailing, substantial premarital sex and public displays of sexual deviancy; the celebrations of the era were derided by both upper-class merchants and Christian purists.
19th century
In 1821 the book A New-year's present, to the little ones from five to twelve was published in New York. It contained "Old Santeclaus with Much Delight", an anonymous poem describing Santeclaus on a reindeer sleigh, bringing rewards to children. Some modern ideas of Santa Claus seemingly became canon after the anonymous publication of the poem A Visit From St. Nicholas in the Troy, New York Sentinel on 23 December 1823; Moore later claimed authorship, though others have argued that the author was Henry Livingston Jr., although he had never claimed authorship of the piece and died nine years before Moore revealed himself as the author. Saint Nicholas is described as being "chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf" with "a little round belly", that "shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly", in spite of which the "miniature sleigh" and "tiny reindeer" still indicate that he is physically diminutive. The reindeer were also named: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem.By 1845 "Kris Kringle" was a common variant of Santa in parts of the United States. A magazine article from 1853, describing American Christmas customs to British readers, refers to children hanging up their stockings on Christmas Eve for "a fabulous personage" whose name varies: in Pennsylvania he is usually called "Krishkinkle", but in New York he is "St. Nicholas" or "Santa Claus". The author quotes Moore's poem in its entirety, saying that its descriptions apply to Krishkinkle too.
File:Santa Claus 1863 Harpers.png|thumb|upright|Nast's 1863 depiction of Santa Claus distributing gifts in a Union army camp introduced our modern image of Santa Claus
As the years passed, Santa Claus evolved into a large, heavyset person. One of the first artists to define the modern image of Santa Claus was Thomas Nast, a German-born American cartoonist of the 19th century who immortalised Santa Claus with an illustration for the 3 January 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly in which Santa was dressed in an American flag, and had a puppet with the name "Jeff" written on it, reflecting its American Civil War context. Nast was inspired by the Belsnickel, part of the folklore in southwestern Germany, where he was born. In this drawing, Santa is also in a sleigh pulled by reindeers.
The story that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole may also have been a Nast creation. His Christmas image in the Harper's issue dated 29 December 1866 was a collage of engravings titled Santa Claus and His Works, which included the caption "Santa Claussville, N.P." A colour collection of Nast's pictures, published in 1869, had a poem also titled "Santa Claus and His Works" by George P. Webster, who wrote that Santa Claus's home was "near the North Pole, in the ice and snow". The tale had become well known by the 1870s. A boy from Colorado writing to the children's magazine The Nursery in late 1874 said, "If we did not live so very far from the North Pole, I should ask Santa Claus to bring me a donkey."
The idea of a wife for Santa Claus may have been the creation of American authors, beginning in the mid-19th century. In 1889, the poet Katharine Lee Bates popularised Mrs Claus in the poem "Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride". "Is There a Santa Claus?" is the title of an iconic editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church in the 21 September 1897 edition of The New York Sun that became the most reprinted in the US and included the famous reply, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus".