Whether you think of him as St. Nick or as Santa Claus, that rotund and jolly white-bearded man is the embodiment of the spirit of giving at Christmas. So who exactly is the man in the red suit?
It all starts with St. Nicholas. According to historic accounts, Nicholas was born around 280 A.D. in the Greek village of Patara, now located in modern-day Turkey, and was raised by wealthy parents to be a devout Christian. Left a young orphan when they died in an epidemic, Nicholas gave away his entire inheritance, became a monk, and traveled the countryside helping those who were sick and in need. Much admired for his piety and acts of charity and kindness, St. Nicholas became Bishop of Myra, and was the subject of many legends over the decades. He was widely known as a protector of children and sailors until his death on December 6, 343 A.D. To this day St Nicholas continues to be venerated by Catholics and Orthodox and honored by Protestants as a model of compassionate life. By the Renaissance, St. Nicholas was the most popular saint in Europe.
St. Nicholas Bishop of Myra
St. Nicholas’ feast day, celebrated on the anniversary of his death, kept alive the stories of his goodness and generosity. In much of Europe, December 6th is still the main day for gift-giving. But in Belgium, instead of a reindeer and sleigh for transportation, St. Nicholas arrives via steamship from Spain to ride a white horse to deliver gifts. In the Netherlands, St. Nicholas is celebrated the evening before the feast day by sharing candies, initial letters made of chocolate, small gifts, and riddles. Carrots and hay are placed in Dutch children’s shoes for St. Nicholas’ horse in hopes that they’ll be exchanged for small gifts.
When the first Europeans arrived in the New World, they brought their love of St. Nicholas with them. On December 6, 1942, Columbus named a Haitian port for St. Nicholas. Closer to home, the Spaniards first established Jacksonville as St. Nicholas Ferry. Since the Protestant Reform tried to stamp out the importance of saints, the first colonists, who were primarily Puritans, did not commemorate or celebrate St. Nicholas. After the American Revolution, however, New Yorkers proudly resurrected the nearly-forgotten Dutch roots of their colony. At the New York Historical Society’s annual meeting in 1804, member John Pintard distributed woodcuts of St. Nicholas which featured stockings filled with toys and fruit hung over a fireplace in the background of the image. It is the Dutch nickname “Sinter Klaas,” short for Sint Nikolaas, from which the name “Santa Claus” evolved. In 1809, Washington Irving contributed to the popularity of Sinter Klaas stories when he referred to St. Nicholas as the patron saint of New York in his book The History of New York. As the popularity of Sinter Klaas grew, the attire of this “rascal” ranged from descriptions of a red hooded cloak, to a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, and yellow stockings, to a broad-brimmed hat and a “huge pair of Flemish trunk hose.”
However, in the church, Christmas had been eliminated as a holy season. December 25 was regarded as a day for normal business, without any religious significance. Christmas celebrations in the early 19th century were characterized by drunken revelry by mobs celebrating the harvest's end and leisure time from work. The cultural changes of the times and attempts to “domesticate” the holiday and shifting the focus to children and family are captured well by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol.
It was Episcopal minister Clement Clarke Moore’s well-known 1822 poem An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas, (or The Night Before Christmas) that can be credited with tying together St. Nicholas with our modern-day idea of Santa Claus and the Christmas holiday. The poem’s widespread popularity spread the image it evoked of this “jolly old elf” flying from house to house on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to deliver presents to deserving children. New life was breathed into the holiday as a family gift-giving celebration and stores began to advertise using Santa. The first likeness of our “modern Santa” is a cartoon by Thomas Nast that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1881. The cartoon, inspired by Moore’s poem, depicted Santa as a happily rotund white-bearded fellow with a sack full of toys. Nast continued his Santa drawings through 1886, and Santa’s bright red and white fur-trimmed suit, his North Pole workshop and elves, and his wife, Mrs. Claus, can all be attributed to him.
Illustration by Thomas Nast from Harper's Weekly, 1881
In an ironic twist, it was this newfound popularity of Christmas that returned the holiday to churches. Though this “secular” Santa had been stripped of the religious mantle of the saint from whom he had evolved, the influence of Dutch and German immigrants who loved Christmas, the writings of Moore, Irving and Dickens, and church musicians embracing the singing of carols, all served to bring Christmas observances back into the lives of churchgoers, making it once more acceptable in the church.
Today, Santa is virtually synonymous with Christmas. From the holiday parades to commemorative Coca-Cola bottles to the Rankin/Bass TV classics like Santa Claus is Coming to Town that we all love, Santa is everywhere. But, like Buddy the Elf, we’re awfully fond of the big guy and proud to say “WE KNOW HIM!” and we hope that there’s never really a year without a Santa Claus!
