From Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus

We all know of the jolly, chubby man, dressed in red and white fur, smiling with his warm arms open to all children during the holidays. With the cheer he brings to others, Santa Claus has become a universal symbol of the Christmas season; however, not many people know about the origin of Santa Claus.

In fact, red-cheeked and white-bearded man looks nothing like the depictions of his original ancestor, St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas was a Greek born in 280 A.D. He became bishop of Myra, a small Roman town in modern Turkey, and was an avid defender of church doctrine during the “Great Persecution,” when Bibles burned and priests made to renounce Christianity or face execution.

Nicholas rose to prominence among the saints because of his generosity towards many groups of people, ranging from sailors to entire nations. History shows he gave away all of his inherited wealth to those less fortunate than him. By the Renaissance, about a thousand years after his death, he was the most popular saint in Europe and was known as a patron of children and sailors.

In the Netherlands, kids and families refused to give up the belief of St. Nicholas as a gift bringer even when they moved to the New World Colonies. The Dutch nickname “Sinterklaas” was a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas.

Christmas was not originally celebrated as a magical holiday like celebrated now: The holiday was shunned in New England, while elsewhere, it was treated as an outdoor, alcohol-fueled, rowdy community blowout. This all changed during the early 19th century, when a series of poets and writers strove to make Christmas a family celebration. Writers and poets worked together to revive and remake the American image of St. Nicholas.

Washington Irving’s 1809 book “Knickerbocker’s History of New York,” first depicts a pipe-smoking St. Nicholas soaring over the rooftops in a flying wagon, delivering presents to good girls and boys and switches to bad ones. This was the first major work that popularized Sinterklaas stories throughout the nation.

In 1821, a poem entitled “The Children’s Friend” illustrated the appearance of a Santa Claus dressed in the furs of shaggy Germanic gift bringers. The author tried to remove the outfit of any religious characteristics, and was quite similar to that of the modern-day Santa Claus. That figure brought gifts to good girls and boys, but he also carried a birch rod to act as a parent’s hand in guiding bad children on a road of virtue. This Santa’s wagon was pulled by a single reindeer.

A year later, Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” also known as “The Night Before Christmas,” for his six children, with no intention of contributing to the Santa Claus phenomenon. The book was published anonymously in 1833 and immediately rose in popularity; Santa became established as riding a sleigh driven by eight familiar reindeer. There was no universal image of Santa Claus: He appeared in different-colored clothing, in all shapes and sizes, and in a variety of different guises.

This phenomenon resolved in the late 19th century, the image of Santa Claus was standardized as a full-size adult, dressed in red with white fur trim, venturing out from the North Pole in a reindeer-driven sleigh and keeping an eye on children’s behavior. The jolly, chubby, grandfatherly face of this Santa was largely developed by Thomas Nast, the well-known political cartoonist in the era.

Once firmly established, North America’s Santa Claus propagated to Europe, replacing scary gift bringer traditions and adopting local names like Père Noël (France) or Father Christmas (Great Britain).

In 1939, Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, was last added to Santa’s sleigh through the creation of Robert L. May. His Christmas-themed poem told the story of Rudolph, a young reindeer who was teased by the other deer because of his large, glowing, red nose. But, when Christmas Eve turned foggy, Santa Claus was worried that he could not deliver gifts that night. The former outcast then saved Christmas by leading the sleigh by the light of his nose.