Who
is that man in red? The man who, every Christmas Eve, brazenly breaks into
people's homes, helps himself to cookies and milk, and leaves things behind
resulting in a mess of wrapping paper and ribbon for others to clean up the
next morning. Reindeer and a heavily laden sleigh can't be good for the roof.
Soot from a chimney tracked all over the floor…something else left behind for
others to clean.
Yet
every year we anxiously anticipate his arrival, track his progress through the
skies, and welcome him into our homes.
The
legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St.
Nicholas. It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280 A.D. in
Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey. Much admired for his piety and
kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends. It is said that he
gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the
poor and sick. One of the best known of the St. Nicholas stories is that he
saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their
father when he provided them with a dowry so they could be married. Over the
course of many years, Nicholas' popularity spread and he became known as the
protector of children and sailors. His feast day is celebrated on the
anniversary of his death, December 6. This was traditionally considered a lucky
day to make large purchases or to get married. By the Renaissance, St. Nicholas
was the most popular saint in Europe. Even after the Protestant Reformation,
when the veneration of saints began to be discouraged, St. Nicholas maintained
a positive reputation, especially in Holland.
Sinter Klaas Comes to
New York
St.
Nicholas made his first inroads into American popular culture towards the end
of the 18th century. In December 1773, and again in 1774, a New York newspaper
reported that groups of Dutch families had gathered to honor the anniversary of
his death.
The
name Santa Claus evolved from Nick's Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas, a shortened
form of Sint Nikolaas (Dutch for Saint Nicholas). In 1804, John Pintard, a
member of the New York Historical Society, distributed woodcuts of St. Nicholas
at the society's annual meeting. The background of the engraving contains
now-familiar Santa images including stockings filled with toys and fruit hung
over a fireplace. In 1809, Washington Irving helped to popularize the 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 his prominence grew, Sinter Klaas was
described as everything from a rascal
with a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, and yellow stockings to a man
wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a "huge pair of Flemish trunk hose."
Shopping Mall Santas
Gift-giving,
mainly centered around children, has been an important part of the Christmas
celebration since the holiday's rejuvenation in the early 19th century. Stores
began to advertise Christmas shopping in 1820, and by the 1840s, newspapers
were creating separate sections for holiday advertisements, which often
featured images of the newly-popular Santa Claus. In 1841, thousands of
children visited a Philadelphia shop to see a life-size Santa Claus model. It
was only a matter of time before stores began to attract children, and their
parents, with the lure of a peek at a live
Santa Claus. In the early 1890s, the Salvation Army needed money to pay for the
free Christmas meals they provided to needy families. They began dressing up
unemployed men in Santa Claus suits and sending them into the streets of New
York to solicit donations. Those familiar Salvation Army Santas have been
ringing bells on the street corners of American cities ever since.
A Santa by Any Other
Name
18th-century
America's Santa Claus was not the only St. Nicholas-inspired gift-giver to make
an appearance at Christmastime. Similar figures were popular all over the
world. Christkind or Kris Kringle was believed to deliver presents to
well-behaved Swiss and German children. Meaning Christ child, Christkind is an angel-like figure often accompanied
by St. Nicholas on his holiday missions. In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named
Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats. English
legend explains that Father Christmas visits each home on Christmas Eve to fill
children's stockings with holiday treats. Pere Noel is responsible for filling
the shoes of French children. In Russia, it is believed that an elderly woman
named Babouschka purposely gave the wise men wrong directions to Bethlehem so
that they couldn't find Jesus. Later, she felt remorseful, but could not find
the men to undo the damage. To this day, on January 5, Babouschka visits
Russian children leaving gifts at their bedsides in the hope that one of them
is the baby Jesus and she will be forgiven. In Italy, a similar story exists
about a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch who rides a broomstick down the
chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into the stockings of lucky children.
The Ninth Reindeer
Rudolph,
"the most famous reindeer of all," was born over a hundred years
after his eight flying counterparts. The red-nosed wonder was the creation of
Robert L. May, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward department store.
In
1939, May wrote a Christmas-themed story-poem to help bring holiday traffic
into his store. Using a similar rhyme pattern to Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, May 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 and Santa worried that he
wouldn't be able to deliver gifts that night, the former outcast saved
Christmas by leading the sleigh with the light of his red nose. Rudolph's
message—that given the opportunity, a liability can be turned into an
asset—proved popular. Montgomery Ward sold almost two and a half million copies
of the story in 1939. When it was reissued in 1946, the book sold over three
and half million copies. Several years later, one of May's friends, Johnny
Marks, wrote a short song based on Rudolph's story (1949). It was recorded by
Gene Autry and sold over two million copies. Since then, the story has been
translated into 25 languages and been made into a television movie, narrated by
Burl Ives, which has charmed audiences since 1964.
PEACE ON EARTH
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