Yet
every year we anxiously anticipate his arrival, track his progress through the
skies, and welcome him into our homes.
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 his 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. British 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.
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