THE LEGEND OF SANTA CLAUS

Just how did the legend of Santa Claus begin. The custom of giving gifts on a special day in winter was practised before Christianity was founded. After Christianity was well established, Saint Nicholas became a symbol of the custom among Christians. During the Reformation of the 1500's, Protestants substituted non-religious characters for Saint Nicholas. In England, for example, the saint was replaced by a gentleman called Father Christmas. This character was called Père Noël in France and Weihnachtsmann in Germany.

The people of the Netherlands were especially fond of Saint Nicholas. When the first Dutch settlers went to America they had a figure of Saint Nicholas on the front of their ship. These settlers maintained their custom of celebrating the saint's feast day on 6th. December. They told their children that Sinterklaas visited their homes and left gifts on Saint Nicholas Eve. In time, English settlers adopted the legends and festivities associated with Saint Nicholas. And when the English-speaking children spoke the Dutch name for the saint, they did it so quickly and excitedly that it sounded like Santa Claus.

Santa Claus is perhaps the most remarkable of all the figures associated with Christmas. To most people today, Santa Claus has always been an essential part of the Christmas celebration, but the Santa that we know in this modern age did not develop until well into the 19th century. Unlike images such as Superman and James Bond, he did not suddenly appear fully-formed (as did his famous reindeer). Santa Claus was an evolutionary creation, brought about by the fusion of two religious personages, St. Nicholas and Christkindlein, the Christ child, to become the main symbol of the non-religious Christmas celebration.

In the beginning, Santa Claus was pictured as a tall, thin, stately man who wore a bishop's robe and rode a white horse, rather as people imagined Saint Nicholas himself. In 1804, the New York Historical Society was founded with Nicholas as its patron saint, its members reviving the Dutch tradition of St. Nicholas as a gift-bringer. And in 1809, the American author Washington Irving published "A History of New York" by "Diedrich Knickerbocker", in which he described Saint Nicholas as a stout, jolly man who wore a broad-brimmed hat and huge breeches, who smoked a long pipe, and who rode over the treetops in a wagon and filled children's stockings with presents. In 1821, a New York printer named William Gilley issued a short poem about a "Santeclaus" who dressed all in fur and drove a sleigh pulled by one reindeer. Two years later, on 23rd. December, 1823, a poem entitled "An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" appeared in the Troy (New York) Sentinel, the poem which begins with that familiar line "'Twas the night before Christmas". There seems to be some doubt about who actually wrote the poem. Clement Clarke Moore, the American scholar, is generally credited with the authorship, but it may have been written by an American land surveyor called Henry Livingston. In the poem, Saint Nicholas is presented as a stout, jolly man with twinkling eyes and a red nose, wearing a suit trimmed with white fur. It was this poem that introduced the idea that Saint Nicholas made his visits on Christmas Eve riding a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer and using the now-familiar entrance of the chimney. This latest twist to the story was further enhanced when, around 1841, a Philadelphia merchant named J.W. Parkinson hired a man to dress in "Criscringle" clothing and climb the chimney outside his shop.

The image of Santa Claus was further advanced when the American cartoonist Thomas Nast created a series of drawings for Harper's Weekly magazine between 1863 and 1886. In these drawings Nast began developing his own image of Santa, giving his figure a flowing set of whiskers and had him working in his shop making toys, driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer, or placing toys in stockings hung over a fireplace. Nast also identified the North Pole as Santa's home. He never settled on one size for his Santa figures, though. Throughout the series he varied from an elf-like figure to man-sized, though his 1881 'Merry Old Santa Claus' drawing is quite close to the modern-day image.

The Santa Claus figure was still varying up to the late 19th. century. Santa would appear both large and small. He was usually, but not always, round - sometimes he was of normal or even of slight build - and he was dressed in furs or cloth suits of red, blue, green, or purple. Slowly, the chubby Santa with a red suit began to replace the fur-dressed multicoloured Santas.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the Coca-Cola company was looking for ways to increase the sales of their product during the winter months. Nobody seemed to want cold drinks in cold weather. For their new advertising campaign they contacted a commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who produced a series of memorable drawings of a larger than life Santa Claus decked out in the company colours, red and white. These advertisements featured Santa holding bottles of Coca-Cola, drinking Coca-Cola, and, most importantly, enjoying Coca-Cola, and they helped to increase the sales of Coca-Cola throughout the winter. The success of this advertising campaign has helped fuel the legend that the Coca-Cola Company actually invented the image of the modern Santa Claus. This is not true. Although some versions of the Santa Claus figure still had him attired in outfits of various colours after the beginning of the 20th century, the jolly, ruddy, sack-carrying Santa with a red suit and flowing white whiskers had become the standard image of Santa Claus by the 1920s, several years before Sundblom drew his first illustration of Santa.

BILL HUTCHINGS