|
NEAT-O
Each week I dig up a story that talks about the origin of
something, well…quotidian. Since today is St. Nick’s
day, I thought this would be fitting.
THE
ORIGIN OF SANTA CLAUS
The modern Santa can best be described as the creative offspring
of innumerable artists and cultures, which each put their
own spin on a real-life person, St.
Nicholas of Myra. St. Nick was a 4th
century bishop and Christian saint who lived in the area now
known as Turkey. He is renowned for his charitable gift-giving,
which is popularized in a story of three young women who were
too poor to afford a dowry for their marriages. As each reached
a marriageable age, Nicholas surreptitiously left a bag of
gold in the house at night. Some versions of the legend say
that the girls’ father, trying to discover their benefactor,
kept watch on the third occasion, but Nicholas dropped the
third bag down the chimney instead (and hence the tradition
of Santa climbing down the chimney). For his helping those
less fortunate, St. Nick became the patron saint of pawnbrokers—the
three gold balls traditionally hung outside a pawnshop are
symbolic of the three sacks of gold. People then began
to suspect that St. Nick was behind a large number of other
anonymous gifts to the poor, using the inheritance from his
wealthy parents.
Santa
also borrows heavily from the English Father
Christmas, who dates back to at least the 17th
century. This figure was a rotund old man dressed in long
green robes. His jolly disposition and extended waistline
typified the traditional spirit of good cheer around Christmastime.
Many
traditions surround St. Nick, notably the one on his birthday,
December 6. (It is also surmised this date was chosen to smother
the Pagan celebration of the birth of Diana, a Roman goddess
of the hunt and symbol of fertility.) Dutch children would
leave a shoe outside their door with a carrot and hay for
St. Nick’s horse, in the hope that a gift would await
them in the morning.
Wait…St. Nick rode a horse? According to the Dutch traditions
he did—over the rooftops! This is likely a throwback
to the Germanic god Wodan (aka Odin), who rode through the
sky on an eight-legged horse, and often traveled the earth
disguised as a bearded man.
The
St. Nick traditions were brought to the US by the Dutch in
the late 17th century, and were quickly
popularized, most notably in Washington Irving’s “A
History of New York.” It was here
that the Dutch word for St. Nicholas—Sinterklaas—was
Americanized to Santa Claus. In this satirical lampooning
of Dutch culture, Irving painted Santa Claus as a rotund Dutch
sailor with pipe and green winter coat, who rode into town
on a horse to deliver presents. He later revised his story
so that Santa rode over the treetops in a wagon.
|
 |
Perhaps the greatest develop-
ment to Santa’s character
came in 1823, when an anonymous poem entitled “A Visit
From St. Nick” appeared in a New York newspaper. The
author most widely credited for this poem is Clement Clarke
Moore, though Dutch-American Henry Living-
ston is also considered a prime candidate. Prior
to this poem— which portrayed St. Nick as a “jolly
old elf”—Santa was decidedly less jolly,
for he often disciplined children (and perhaps ate a bit less).
The poem also provided Santa with a sleigh
and reindeer, two of which come from the German Donner
und Blitz, which translates as “Thunder
and Lightning.”
American illustrator Thomas Nast further popularized this
image of Santa when he drew him for Harper’s
Weekly in 1863. The modern
Santa, however, owes most of its influence to Haddon Sundblom,
who drew the famous red-suited elf for the Coca-Cola company
from 1931 to 1964. Sundblom, who was of Swedish origin,
got his Santa idea from the Swedish tomte,
|
