Santa Claus is an essential part of the secular Christmas celebration. The chubby red-suites, man appears in almost all forms of advertising, movies, department stores, parades, and sidewalks. The ubiquitous Santa Claus, however, has origins in the 19th century and didn’t come to the form we so easily recognize until almost 1927.
An urban legend has Santa being created in the 1930’s for a Coca-Cola advertising campaign. While Santa in red was certainly around before this time, the popular drawings help solidify Santa as rotund and dressed in red and white.
In 1822, a New Yorker named Clement Clarke Moore wrote down and read to his children a series of verses. His poem was published a year later as “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” although now more commonly known as “Twas the night before Christmas…” Moore gave St Nick a sleigh and eight reindeer (and named them all), and he devised the now familiar entrance by chimney.
A caricaturist for Harper’s Weekly, Thomas Nast, developed his own image of Santa in an 1866 montage entitled “Santa Claus and his works”. He established Santa as a maker of toys. An 1869 book with the same name combined newer Nast drawings with a poem by George P. Webster and identified the North Pole as Santa’s home.
About Santa’s Reindeer:
The Reindeer
had their origin in Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem “An Account of a
Visit from St. Nicholas” (now more commonly known as “Twas the night
before Christmas…”). The names he gave are:
*Donner
or Donder and Blitzen were named Dunder and Blixem (the Dutch words for
Thunder and lightning) in the original printing from “A Visit from St.
Nicholas. In reprints of the poem, the names became Donder and Blixen,
then Donder and Blitzen (the latter being German for lightning). By the
time Johnny Marks wrote “Rudolph” it was Donner and Blitzen (possibly
because Donder was musically awkward). In modern times, other reindeer
have been named in books, movies, and television shows (such as
Fireball, Leroy, Pablo, and Olive), but none have become permanent
fixtures of the team.
