The Long, Strange, Fascinating History of Santa Claus

Have you ever wondered where the story of Santa Claus comes from, why he is said to bring presents to children at Christmas, why he is said to live at the North Pole, or why he is said to have a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer? Well, as it turns out, the history of Santa Claus is an incredibly long, twisted, and strange one.

It involves a building project by a Byzantine emperor, a story about a father preparing to sell his own daughters into prostitution, a hoard of stolen human bones reputed to have magical properties, armies of Crusading knights, Protestant zealots, the author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “Sleepy Hollow,” a poem you probably read as a child but didn’t realize how influential it was, a “Nast”-y nineteenth-century political cartoonist, and Coca-Cola.

This may seem like a bizarre assortment incredibly disparate things, but I promise you, everything I just mentioned is actually vital to the development of Santa Claus as we know him today. Let’s go all the way back to the beginning of it all in late antiquity and embark on this odyssey together to discover the origins of Santa Claus!

Saint Nikolaos of Myra

The long, fascinating history of Santa Claus begins with Saint Nikolaos of Myra (traditionally said to have lived 270 – 343 AD), who is said to have been the bishop of the Greek city of Myra, which is located on the southwest coast of what is now modern-day Turkey. Nikolaos was probably a real person, although we cannot be completely sure of his historicity. He is undoubtedly a shadowy figure who abides more within the realm of legend than within the realm of history.

The earliest mentions of Saint Nikolaos of Myra come from mentions of Byzantine emperors constructing churches dedicated to him. For instance, the Byzantine historian Prokopios of Kaisareia (lived c. 500 – after c. 565 AD) mentions in his treatise On Buildings 1.6 that the emperor Justinian I (ruled 527 – 565 AD) built shrines in Constantinople dedicated to Saint Nikolaos and Saint Priskos. Prokopios writes, as translated by Henry Bronson Dewing for the Loeb Classical Library:

“Further on he established a shrine to St. Priskos and St. Nikolaos, an entirely new creation of his own, at a spot where the Byzantines love especially to tarry, some worshipping and doing honour to these saints who have come to dwell among them, and others simply enjoying the charm of the precinct, since the Emperor forced back the wash of the sea and set the foundations far out into the water when he established this sanctuary.”

This is one of the earliest known mentions of Saint Nikolaos of Myra. Another early mention of Saint Nikolaos of Myra comes from a hagiography titled The Life of Saint Nikolaos of Sion, written sometime around 600 AD, roughly two hundred years after Nikolaos of Myra is said to have died. This account, The Life of Saint Nikolaos of Sion, briefly mentions another saint named Nikolaos of Sion visiting the tomb of Nikolaos of Myra.

The fact that there was a tomb in the city of Myra that was claimed to be the tomb of Saint Nikolaos of Myra as early as c. 600 AD does not necessarily prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nikolaos of Myra was a real person, since it is quite common for towns to misidentify tombs as belonging to legendary individuals in order to attract tourists. For instance, although Betsy Ross was a real person, there is no evidence to support the popular claim that so-called “Betsy Ross House” in Philadelphia ever actually belonged to her or anyone in her family. Furthermore, the remains in the courtyard of the Betsy Ross House, which were moved there from another location, probably aren’t really hers.

We cannot be completely sure that the tomb of Saint Nikolaos in Myra was not someone else’s grave deliberately misidentified as Saint Nikolaos’s in order to attract pilgrims. If the tomb was created as a hoax to attract pilgrims, though, it certainly worked. There is evidence that, over the centuries, it became revered as a holy site. Pilgrims traveled to the tomb from all across the Byzantine Empire to pay homage to the holy saint whom they all revered. As the cult of Saint Nikolaos grew, a large body of legends became attached to him.

ABOVE: Thirteenth-century Byzantine icon of Saint Nikolaos of Myra from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt

The legend of Saint Nikolaos of Myra

The earliest surviving detailed account of Saint Nikolaos’s life is the hagiography The Life of Saint Nikolaos, which was written in Greek by the Byzantine hagiographer Michael the Archimandrite (floruit c. 814 – c. 842). Michael the Archimandrite’s account is full of miracles and legends and it is almost certainly almost completely fiction from beginning to end. As far as the historical Nikolaos of Myra is concerned, there is very little it can tell us.

Nonetheless, the account preserves detailed information about the stories that people in the Byzantine Empire were telling about Saint Nikolaos of Myra in the ninth century AD. According to the account, Nikolaos was born in the city of Patara in Lykia, located along the coast of what is now southwest Turkey. His parents were extremely wealthy, but they both died not long after he came of age and he inherited all their vast wealth. Nikolaos, being a holy and devout man, resolved to as Jesus had instructed and give away all his wealth to the poor.

Saint Nikolaos learned that there was a local man who was very virtuous, but, “owing to the plotting and envy of Satan,” had lost nearly all his wealth and was trapped in a desperate situation. This man had three teenaged daughters who were all very beautiful, but, because the man was so poor, he could not afford to pay a dowry for any of them, meaning he would not be able to marry them off. In those days, women who could not be married off were almost invariably forced to become prostitutes. The man, who was totally out of options, was ready to station his own daughters to work in a brothel.

Nikolaos, upon hearing this, was moved with compassion for the girls. Nikolaos would have offered to pay the daughters dowries for the man, but he did not want to embarrass the poor man by forcing him to accept charity. Therefore, that night, while the man and his daughters were all sleeping, he took a large sack filled with gold coins, went to the man’s house, and tossed the sack of coins in through the window. The next morning, the man found the sack of coins and he overjoyed. he immediately used the money to pay the dowry for his eldest daughter, allowing her to marry.

ABOVE: The Charity of Saint Nicholas of Bari, painted between c. 1330 and c. 1340 by the Italian painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti

The next night, Nikolaos came back to the house and threw another bag filled with gold coins in through the window. The man found the bag again the next morning and was once again overcome with joy. He used the money to pay the dowry for his second daughter. By this point, only the youngest daughter was left without a dowry.

The poor man, however, wanted to know who it was that was doing this wonderful and kind thing for him, so, on the third night, he stayed awake and hid, hoping to see the mysterious give-giver who was coming in the night, so he could thank him. When Saint Nikolaos came to the house and threw the third and final sack of gold in through the window, the father heard the bag land on the floor and immediately ran out of the house.

Running after him, he caught up with Saint Nikolaos and threw himself on the ground at his feet, thanking him and praising him for his generosity. Saint Nikolaos raised the man up from the ground, made him promise that he would never tell anyone who had helped him, and sent him back home. The man married off his youngest daughter and none of his daughters were forced into prostitution.

This heartwarming tale about the secret generosity of Saint Nikolaos was one of the most beloved tales about the saint during the Middle Ages. It was told and retold countless times and is depicted in countless images and icons. It is from this famous tale, first recorded by a Byzantine hagiographer around 1,200 years ago, that the modern story of Santa Claus was eventually born.

ABOVE: Painting by the Italian International Gothic painter Gentile da Fabriano dated to c. 1425 depicting the young Saint Nikolaos of Myra secretly tossing the bags of gold in through the poor man’s window

Santa’s magical bones get stolen

The sarcophagus where Saint Nikolaos’s putative bones were held in the Saint Nikolaos Church in Myra remained a major pilgrimage site. The bones were said to exude a mysterious watery substance every year on December 6th that smelled like rosewater. This substance was known as “myrrh” or “manna” and was widely believed to possess miraculous powers.

In the eleventh century, however, events began unfolding that would change the future of Saint Nikolaos’s cult forever. First, in 1054, the “Great Schism” occurred, in which the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the Roman Catholic legates sent to Constantinople by the Pope excommunicated each other. The Christians of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire and the Christians of the Latin west had already been very distant from each other both in terms of their beliefs and in terms of their practices for many centuries, but the events of 1054 nonetheless marked a major increase of tensions.

On 26 August 1071, the Byzantine Empire was decisively defeated by the Seljuk Turks in the Battle of Manzikert. The emperor Romanos IV Diogenes was captured and the Byzantines temporarily lost control of most of Asia Minor, including the city of Myra, which fell under the rule of the Seljuk Turks. Many Christians became fearful that pilgrims would no longer be able to travel to Myra to visit Nikolaos’s tomb.

In spring 1087, a group of sailors from the historically Greek city of Bari in Apulia in southern Italy set out to steal the bones of Saint Nikolaos. They barged into the Church of Saint Nikolaos where Nikolaos’s remains were held. The Greek Orthodox clergy at the church protested and tried to stop the Italians, but the Italians were armed and Greek Orthodox clergy are forbidden from violence. Since there was no one else there to stop them, the sailors from Bari stole all the large pieces of Saint Nikolaos’s skeleton from his sarcophagus and brought them back with them by ship to their home city of Bari.

ABOVE: Photograph of the desecrated sarcophagus of Saint Nikolaos in the Saint Nikolaos Church in Myra. Saint Nikolaos’s putative remains were held in this sarcophagus for centuries. The larger pieces of his remains were stolen by sailors from Bari in 1087. The smaller pieces were stolen by sailors from Venice during the First Crusade.

The sailors arrived in Bari in triumph on 9 May 1087, where they were hailed by the people as heroes for having supposedly “rescued” Nikolaos’s relics from the heathen Turks. The people almost immediately began building a new church, the Basilica di San Nicola, to house the sacred relics of Saint Nikolaos that they had stolen from Myra. In 1088, Pope Urban II himself dedicated the basilica, lowering Saint Nikolaos’s bones into the tomb that had been built for them underneath the altar in the sanctuary of the church.

Before his bones were stolen and taken to Bari, Saint Nikolaos had been primarily an Eastern Orthodox saint. He was certainly known to some extent in western Europe before 1087, but he was never a very popular or well-known saint there until that point. After 1087, the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari became a major pilgrimage spot. People from all across Europe came to Bari to venerate Saint Nikolaos’s relics.

To the great jubilation of the people of Bari, it was discovered that, every December 6th, the bones of Saint Nikolaos continued to produce the holy myrrh they had produced when they were in Myra. The myrrh continued to be revered for its allegedly miraculous powers. Even today, the clergy in Bari still harvest the myrrh from Nikolaos’s sarcophagus.

ABOVE: Painting by Gentile da Fabriano depicting pilgrims exuberantly venerating the tomb of Saint Nikolaos in the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari

The Crusaders pray to Santa

On 27 November 1095, Pope Urban II delivered an impassioned sermon at the Council of Clermont urging people to go east to fight the Seljuk Turks. The attendees of the council supposedly responded to this speech by chanting “Deus vult!” which is Latin for “God wills it!” In any case, the speech directly resulted in the beginning of the First Crusade.

In autumn 1096, Frankish and Norman forces preparing to sail east mustered in Bari. The Crusaders generally preferred to pray to warrior saints for protection, but, because Saint Nikolaos was the patron saint of Bari and his relics were held in the basilica there, many Crusaders chose to pray to Saint Nikolaos for success in their campaigns. When the Crusaders returned to Europe, many brought back the veneration of Saint Nikolaos to their hometowns all across western Europe, believing that the holy saint had served them well and protected them in battle.

Santa goes to Venice

According to a single account written by an anonymous Venetian monk, the sailors from Bari who had collected Saint Nikolaos’s putative bones from his sarcophagus in Myra only took the large pieces of his skeleton. They left somewhere around 500 tiny bone fragments in the sarcophagus. In 1100, a fleet of Venetian ships was sailing along the coast of western Turkey and they happened to pass by Myra.

The bishop who was accompanying them told them that they absolutely had to stop in Myra to collect the remaining relics of Saint Nikolaos. There were only a few Greek Orthodox monks guarding the Saint Nikolaos Church there, so the Crusaders were easily able to plunder the remaining bones of Saint Nikolaos as well as the bones of the other bishops of Myra who were also buried there. The Venetians brought the bones of Saint Nikolaos that they found in his sarcophagus in Myra back to Venice, where they were deposited in the San Nicolò al Lido, a church of Saint Nikolaos there.

Scientific examinations of the relics held in the San Nicolò al Lido in the twentieth century concluded that they were anatomically compatible with the bones held in the Basilica di San Nicolo in Bari, meaning the bones may have indeed come from the same man. Whether that man was truly Saint Nikolaos of Myra remains uncertain.

Meanwhile, the clergy at Bari sought to promote the cult of Saint Nikolaos, so, over the years, they strategically gave away small samples of his bones. At first, most of these fragments wound up in Constantinople. In 1204, however, the warriors of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople and brought many of these minor relics back with them to western Europe. Thus the minor relics of Saint Nikolaos were dispersed across western Europe. Chapels, churches, and basilicas dedicated to Saint Nikolaos were constructed to house these relics.

ABOVE: Photograph of the San Nicolò al Lido, where around 500 bone fragments purportedly from Saint Nikolaos of Myra are held

Santa resurrects dismembered and pickled children

As Saint Nikolaos (who became known in English as “Saint Nicholas”) became increasingly popular in western Europe, new stories about him and his reputed miracles began to emerge. One of the most famous such stories is one which led to him becoming regarded as the patron saint of children.

According to the famous story, which is first attested in the Late Middle Ages, there was a terrible famine in Myra. The people were starving and meat was in short supply. A wicked butcher lured three young boys into his shop. Then he murdered them, chopped them up into pieces, and pickled them in a barrel of brine, planning to sell them to unsuspecting customers as ham.

Then good old Saint Nicholas came along. The butcher told him he was selling pickled ham, but Nicholas easily saw that he was lying. He made the Sign of the Cross over the barrel and, instantly, through the power of Christ, the three innocent children who had been murdered, dismembered and pickled, were resurrected without even the slightest blemish from their ordeal.

This story, as utterly gruesome, horrifying, and bizarre as it may seem to us, was wildly popular in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. It is depicted in hundreds of depictions in every medium: manuscript illustrations, stained glass windows, fresco paintings, icons, tapestries, you name it. The story was so well-known that it became incorporated into Saint Nicholas’s iconography; he was often portrayed standing next to a barrel and three naked children. Thus, Saint Nicholas became regarded as the patron saint of children.

ABOVE: Illustration of the story of Saint Nicholas resurrecting the pickled children, from the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany, dating to between 1503 and 1508

Santa slaps heretics

Another famous legend about Saint Nikolaos that is first attested in around the fourteenth century AD holds that Saint Nikolaos attended the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. According to the legend, at the council, Nikolaos, a passionate defender of the orthodox teaching of the Holy Trinity, became so infuriated by one of the Arian heretics at the council that he slapped the heretic right across the face. Constantine I, the emperor who had convened the council, supposedly confiscated Nikolaos’s miter and pallium as punishment for this act of violence.

In even later versions of the story, Nikolaos is said to have slapped not just any Arian heretic, but the arch-heretic Areios of Ptolemais (lived c. 256 – c. 336 AD), the founder of the Arian heresy himself. In these versions of the story, Nikolaos was not only stripped of his miter and pallium, but thrown in prison for the night. Then Christ and the Virgin Mary appeared to him in his cell. They set him free and restored to him his miter and pallium, saying that he was justified in slapping Areios.

In reality, this story is almost certainly apocryphal. The earliest known version of the story is first attested in the fourteenth century, around a millennium after Saint Nikolaos supposedly lived. Furthermore, we have no reliable record that Saint Nikolaos was even at the First Council of Nicaea. Athanasios of Alexandria (lived c. 296 – 373 AD), who was the foremost defender of the Holy Trinity at the council, never mentions Nikolaos at all in any of his extant writings. Furthermore, the historian Eusebios of Kaisareia (lived c. 260 – c. 340 AD), who was also present at the council and wrote about it in his Life of Constantine, never mentions Saint Nikolaos either.

Nikolaos of Myra is listed by the early sixth-century AD Byzantine church historian Theodoros the Lector as having attended the First Council of Nicaea. Theodoros, however, was writing nearly two hundred years after the council took place. The fact that no one who was actually at the council seems to have thought Nikolaos was there strongly indicates that he was not.

ABOVE: Russian icon dating to the Late Middle Ages depicting the famous legend of Saint Nikolaos of Myra slapping the heretic Areios at the First Council of Nicaea

The birth of the tradition of presents in the name of Saint Nicholas

By around the fifteenth century or thereabouts, Saint Nicholas was now being venerated all over western Europe. He was seen as a secret gift-giver, thanks to the still-popular story about him throwing the bags of gold in through the window of the poor man’s house for his daughters’ dowries. Meanwhile, he was also seen as the patron saint of children, thanks to the popular story about him resurrecting the murdered and pickled boys.

People in western Europe—especially, it seems, in parts of Germany and the Netherlands—began to put all these traditions together. A tradition arose of parents giving their children gifts on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, which fell on December 5th in some places and on December 6th in others. These presents would often be left overnight tucked in shoes or in stockings that had been left by the fire to dry, so that, in the morning, the children would find the gifts Saint Nicholas had left for them.

In the old days, the gifts given on the feast day of Saint Nicholas do not seem to have been terribly extravagant. In fact, they often seem to have often been fairly simple: a coin or two, a couple sweets, and so forth. Obviously, wealthy parents could always afford to give their children more and better presents than poor parents, but even wealthy parents do not seem to have been giving their children extravagant gifts on the same scale that wealthy parents give their children presents for Christmas today.

There is evidence that parents were giving their children toys on December 6th in the name of Saint Nicholas at least as early as the mid-1600s. For instance, a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Havickszoon Steen of the feast of Saint Nicholas being celebrated in a wealthy household between c. 1665 and c. 1668 shows a little girl receiving a doll for the feast of Saint Nicholas.

ABOVE: The Feast of Saint Nicholas, painted between c. 1665 and c. 1668 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Havickszoon Steen, depicting children receiving gifts for the feast day of Saint Nicholas. The little girl in the foreground has received a doll.

The Protestant Reformation’s Crusade against Saint Nicholas

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, it looked as though Saint Nicholas’s cult in western Europe was only growing. He was one of the most beloved of all saints. The tradition of parents leaving presents for their children in his name was beginning to emerge. Then the Protestant Reformation happened.

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation were vehemently opposed to the veneration of saints, which they regarded as a form of idolatry. They declared that venerating and praying to saints was hardly any different from worshipping and praying to pagan deities and that all saints were human beings guilty of Original Sin who did not deserve to be worshipped.

As one of the most popular of all saints, Saint Nicholas came under special attack. The German Reformation leader Martin Luther (lived 1483 – 1546) declared that people should not leave gifts for their children on December 6th in the name of Saint Nicholas. Instead, he advocated that people should leave gifts for their children on Christmas Day in the name of the Christ Child (Christkind in German).

German Lutherans eventually came to largely abandon the cult of Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas survived as a December 6th gift-bearer in some parts of Germany, especially in parts where people were predominately Roman Catholic, but, in predominately Lutheran areas, Saint Nicholas was largely replaced with the Christkind.

ABOVE: Portrait of the German Reformation leader Martin Luther, painted in 1529 by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Martin Luther advocated that, instead of leaving gifts for their children in the name of Saint Nicholas on December 6th, people should leave gifts in the name of the Christ Child on December 25th.

Sinterklaas

Thanks largely to Martin Luther, to this day, the Christkind rather than Saint Nicholas remains the primary December gift-bringer in many parts of Germany. In other parts of Germany and in neighboring countries, however, Saint Nicholas lingered. In the Netherlands, many people held onto Saint Nicholas long after the Reformation and continued the tradition of parents leaving gifts for their children in their stockings for the feast day of Saint Nicholas on December 6th.

The Dutch version of Saint Nicholas became known as Sinterklaas, a corruption of his more proper Dutch name Sint-Nicolaas. Sinterklaas continued to be portrayed in the garb of a Catholic bishop, complete with a miter and often a crozier as well. He was not usually portrayed as fat or jolly, but rather tall and thin. He did usually have a white beard, though.

Father Christmas

In England, after the English Reformation, Saint Nicholas was replaced with “Father Christmas,” who was envisioned as a fundamentally very similar figure to Saint Nicholas from the very beginning. The main difference between Father Christmas and Saint Nicholas was that, while Saint Nicholas brought presents on December 6th, Father Christmas did it on December 25th. Father Christmas was usually portrayed wearing a long coat, often bearing a close resemblance to a bishop’s robe.

During the Commonwealth (lasted 1649 – 1653) and the Protectorate (lasted 1653 – 1659), the Puritans tried to completely ban Christmas, deeming it an immoral remnant of Catholicism. After the Puritans lost power, Christmas was restored. During this period, multiple writers wrote allegorical defenses of Christmas using Father Christmas as the personification of the holiday itself. Since Father Christmas was supposed to represent everything good about Christmas, he was portrayed as jolly and cheerful.

ABOVE: English woodcut cartoon from The Vindication of Christmas, published in 1652, depicting Father Christmas as a white-bearded man wearing a garment similar to a bishop robe saying “O Sir, I bring good cheer” to an angry Puritan

In 1658, an Englishman named Josiah King published a pamphlet titled The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas. In the pamphlet, Father Christmas is portrayed as the white-haired, bearded personification of the holiday of Christmas, who has been taken as a prisoner and placed on trial for his life by the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has accused him of encouraging idleness, drunkenness, profligacy, and all manner of other sins and debaucheries. In the pamphlet, the defense poses this argument in favor of Father Christmas’s acquittal:

“Methinks my Lord, the very clouds blush, to see this old Gentleman thus egregiously abused; if at any time any have abused themselves by immoderate eating and drinking, or otherwise spoyl the creatures, it is none of this old mans fault, neither ought he to suffer for it: for example, the Sun and the Moon are by the heathens worshipt, are they therefore bad because idoliz’d, so if any abuse this old man, they are bad for abusing him, not he bad for being abused: These Bastard of Amon, have abused him, and therefore now would banish him: far be it from my Lord, to casheir a good thing, with the base use annexed thereunto: They term his charity wasting and spoiling, the making of Idlers, and incresing of Beggars: but where too much charity hath slain her thousands, too little hath slain her ten thousands: some of these witnesses did hint at Religion, but I believe they are Maidens for that, the first that woos them may win them: they tax him of Rebellion and sedition, but how can love and peace be the Author of that? For that is his Motto.”

In other words, the defense is saying that Father Christmas himself cannot be blamed if people use Christmas as an excuse for immorality and debauchery, for such things are contrary to the nature of the holiday. Ultimately, the witnesses testify in favor of Father Christmas. The jury, after deliberating for only a short time, return with their verdict: “Not guilty, with their own judgement upon it. That he who would not fully celebrate Christmas, should forfeit his estate.”

Josiah King’s pamphlet is especially significant because a detailed illustration for the pamphlet depicts Father Christmas as a man bearing a strong resemblance to older depictions of Saint Nicholas. He is shown in the illustration with a white beard and long hair, wearing a long fur coat.

ABOVE: Illustration from the 1658 edition of Josiah King’s pamphlet The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas, depicting Father Christmas as a elderly gentleman with white hair and a beard wearing a fur coat. His appearance resembles that of older depictions of Saint Nicholas.

An American Saint Nicholas

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the various December gift-givers that had emerged from Saint Nicholas during the Protestant Reformation began to re-coalesce in the United States into a single, uniquely American figure: the figure we all know today as “Santa Claus.” Sinterklaas had been introduced to New York by the Dutch settlers of the seventeenth century. Father Christmas was introduced by the English settlers of the same time period. The Christkind was introduced by German immigrants arriving in the British colonies in North America in the eighteenth century.

In terms of how we imagine him, Santa Claus most closely resembles the jolly, rosy-cheeked, English Father Christmas. His name, meanwhile, is derived from Dutch Sinterklaas. Furthermore, like the Christkind, Santa comes to bring presents on Christmas Day, not on December 6th. The Christkind has also made another surprising contribution to the figure of Santa Claus; it is from German Christkind that we get the name “Kris Kringle,” which originally referred to the Christ Child, but today everyone just takes it as an alternative name for Santa.

On 6 December 1809, the American author Washington Irving (lived 1783 – 1859), who is best known today for his short stories ‘Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” published a satirical book A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker in which he made fun of New York’s original Dutch settlers. In the book, Irving wrote about the Dutch Commodore Olaf Van Cortlandt experiencing a dream of Saint Nicholas riding in a wagon over the treetops, bearing presents for all the little boys and girls:

“And the sage Oloffe dreamed a dream—and, lo! the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children. And he descended hard by where the heroes of Communipaw had made their late repast. And he lit his pipe by the fire, and sat himself down and smoked; and as he smoked the smoke from his pipe ascended into the air, and spread like a cloud overhead. And Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread over a great extent of country—and as he considered it more attentively he fancied that the great volume of smoke assumed a variety of marvelous forms, where in dim obscurity he saw shadowed out palaces and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then faded away, until the whole rolled off, and nothing but the green woods were left. And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe he twisted it in his hatband, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished Van Kortlandt a very significant look, then mounting his wagon, he returned over the treetops and disappeared.”

It is unclear exactly how much basis Irving’s description of Saint Nicholas actually has in Dutch folklore. After all, Irving was writing satire, not history. Furthermore, Irving was the sort of man who cared more about a good story than the truth; as I discuss in this article I published in February 2019, Irving’s wildly popular 1828 pseudo-biography of Christopher Columbus is the book primarily responsible for popularizing the widespread misconception that people during the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat.

In any case, even if Washington Irving was just making stuff up, his book certainly helped popularize the image of Saint Nicholas riding around in a cart full of presents for children in the United States. Irving’s description of Saint Nicholas is not totally in line with our modern conception of Santa Claus. You will notice that Irving does not mention anything about reindeer, a red fur coat, or the North Pole. Nonetheless, his description does represent an early—and recognizable—form of the Santa Claus we know today.

ABOVE: Illustration from the frontispiece of Washington Irving’s A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty of the alleged author, Diedrich Knickerbocker

The birth of the modern Santa Claus

In 1821, an anonymous illustrated poem titled “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” was published in New York City in a paperback book titled The Children’s Friend: A New-Year’s Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve. The poem with its accompanying illustrations is the earliest known work to portray Santa Claus riding in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. The poem, however, only describes Santa as having one reindeer to pull his sleigh rather than eight. The first verse of the poem reads as follows:

“Old SANTECLAUS with much delight
 His reindeer drives this frosty night,
 O’r chimney tops, and tracts of snow,
 To bring his yearly gifts to you.”

The accompanying lithograph illustration to this verse depicts Santa as a man with a long brown beard wearing a red fur coat riding in a green sleigh pulled by a single reindeer. He wears a large brown fur hat and carries whip.

ABOVE: Illustration to the first verse of the poem “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” published in 1821, the earliest known work to portray Santa riding in a sleigh pulled by a reindeer

On 23 December 1823, the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” (which is better known today by the title “The Night before Christmas,” derived from the poem’s incipit) was published anonymously in the Sentinel, a newspaper for Troy, New York. The poem, which seems to have drawn heavy inspiration both from Washington Irving’s description of Saint Nicholas in his History of New York and from the poem “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” quickly spread in its popularity and has become by far the best-known description of Santa Claus ever written.

Even today, nearly two full centuries after it was initially published, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” is still commonly read to children all over the United States at Christmastime. It is estimated to be one of the most instantly recognizable works of poetry ever written in the United States.

Although originally published anonymously, the poem is usually thought to have been written by Clement Clarke Moore (lived 1779 – 1863), a poet and professor at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City. Moore’s authorship of the poem has been challenged, but he remains the man most commonly named as the poem’s author.

“A Visit from Saint Nicholas” canonized many aspects of the mythos of Santa Claus. Nearly every depiction of Santa Claus produced in the United States since 1823 has been based on the detailed description of Santa Claus given in “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,’ which reads as follows:

“He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;”

You may remember hearing this description when your parents read you this poem as a child, but you probably never realized that this poem is the work that actually defined how Santa is supposed to look. Prior to the publication of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” Saint Nicholas had been depicted in various ways. As I noted above, in the first two illustrations to “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” his beard is brown rather than white. “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” however, canonized the idea that “Saint Nick” was short, plump, and jolly, dressed in a fur coat, with a white beard.

The poem also canonized the idea that Santa flies around in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. In the original poem, the reindeer are named as follows: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, and Blixem. In later versions, the names Dunder and Blixem, which come from Dutch meaning “Thunder” and “Lightning” respectively, are changed to Donner and Blitzen. The poem also canonized the idea that Santa Claus comes down the chimney.

ABOVE: The illustration to the second verse of the 1821 poem “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” which depicts Santa’s beard as brown rather than white. “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” canonized Santa’s beard as white.

Santa’s elves

Santa Claus himself is described as “a right jolly old elf” in the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas.” This reference to Santa himself as a elf is likely what established the association of elves with Santa. Ultimately, though, it was in the middle of the nineteenth century that the idea of “Santa’s elves” seems to have first emerged. In 1850, the American writer Louisa May Alcott (lived 1832 – 1888) wrote a book titled Christmas Elves. She never published it, though, so it did not influence the development of the idea of “Santa’s elves.”

On 26 December 1857, the influential American political magazine Harper’s Weekly published a poem titled “The Wonders of Santa Claus.” The second stanza of the first chapter reads as follows, describing Santa’s house:

“In his house upon the top of a hill,
 And almost out of sight,
He keeps a great many elves at work,
 All working with all their might,
To make a million of pretty things,
 Cakes, sugar-plums, and toys,
To fill the stockings, hung up you know
 By the little girls and boys.”

The idea of Santa’s elves seems to have been further popularized by a cover illustration on the 1873 Christmas Issue of the influential women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. The illustration shows Santa Claus seated in the midst of a workshop, surrounded by tiny elves manufacturing toys.

ABOVE: Cover illustration from Godey’s Lady’s Book of Santa surrounded by elves manufacturing toys for Christmas

The growth of the modern Santa Claus mythology

The mythology of Santa Claus continued to develop over the course of the nineteenth century. One of the most influential individuals in shaping the figure of Santa Claus during the late nineteenth century was the German-American political cartoonist Thomas Nast (lived 1840 – 1902), who drew many cartoons and illustrations of Santa Claus over the course of his career. Most of Nast’s cartoons were published in the influential magazine Harper’s Weekly.

Although Nast’s depictions of Santa Claus were certainly heavily influenced by popular perceptions of Santa Claus and by the description of Saint Nicholas in “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” he nonetheless gave his illustrations his own unique touch that made them instantly iconic. Nast is credited with having practically created the modern image of the fat, jolly, old Santa Claus.

Thomas Nast is also responsible for inventing the idea of Santa living at the North Pole. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the North Pole was seen as a mysterious, unreachable place because there had been multiple well-publicized expeditions to reach the Pole, but none of them had succeeded. Meanwhile, it was widely known at this point that Santa flew around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer and, since reindeer live only in the far north, it was recognized that this meant Santa needed to live somewhere in the far north as well.

On 29 December 1866, Harper’s Weekly published an illustration by Thomas Nast depicting Santa living at the North Pole. The idea of Santa living at the North Pole just seemed to fit. Thus, the idea stuck around and eventually became canonical. In 1926, the first undisputed expedition to actually reach the North Pole, led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (lived 1872 – 1928), flew over the North Pole in a dirigible. Since then, the North Pole has ceased to be seen as mysterious. Nonetheless, the legend about Santa living at the North Pole continues.

ABOVE: Cartoon illustration of Santa Claus produced in 1881 by the German-born American cartoonist Thomas Nast. Although Nast drew many illustrations of Santa, this one is probably the most iconic.

In 1902, the American children’s author L. Frank Baum (lived 1856 – 1919), who is more famous as the author of the classic children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published his novel for children The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which presents a highly developed mythology of Santa Claus.

In the book, Santa Claus is raised by a wood nymph in the Forest of Burzee. He becomes renowned for his kindness and generosity and, in his old age, when he is on the brink of death, all the immortals have a meeting in which they decide to grant him immortality so that he can continue bringing joy to the hearts of children all around the world forever.

Much of the mythology presented in the book differs significantly from the modern Santa Claus legend. For instance, in Baum’s version, Santa’s reindeer have different names and Santa doesn’t live at the North Pole. Baum’s version is also much more heavily influenced by traditional European fairy tales than most modern versions of the Santa Claus legend are.

Nonetheless, Baum’s book was very popular and it shaped many children’s views of Santa Claus. Baum’s novel may have also contributed to the idea of Santa leaving presents under the Christmas tree rather than in stockings. For most of the book, Santa leaves presents in stockings by the fireplace, but when he finds people who live in tents and do not have fireplaces, he puts the presents on the branches of trees just outside the tents, thus providing an etiology for Christmas trees.

ABOVE: Front cover of the first edition of the popular children’s novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, written by the American children’s writer L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Santa’s red coat

In the nineteenth century, Santa’s fur coat was not normally regarded as being any particular color. “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” never describes the color of Saint Nicholas’s fur coat. Meanwhile, Thomas Nast’s iconic illustrations of Santa were in black-and-white. In color illustrations from the nineteenth century, Santa was sometimes portrayed wearing a red coat, sometimes a coat of some other color. For instance, the original cover of L. Frank Baum’s Life and Adventures of Santa Claus shows him wearing a green coat.

Santa first began to be commonly portrayed wearing red in the early twentieth century. Contrary to what you may have heard, the Coca-Cola Company did not invent Santa Claus, nor were they the first ones to portray Santa wearing red. In fact, there are depictions of Santa wearing red from as early as 1821. Depictions of Santa wearing red became very common around the turn of the twentieth century—several decades before Coca-Cola produced their iconic advertisements featuring Santa Claus in the 1930s.

Nonetheless, Coca-Cola’s advertisements featuring Santa wearing a red fur coat were no doubt influential in cementing the conception of red as the canonical color for Santa’s coat. Ever since the 1930s, Santa has virtually always been portrayed in the United States wearing red.

ABOVE: Illustration from the American satirical magazine Puck from 1905. Contrary to popular belief, Coca-Cola did not, in fact, invent Santa’s red coat. Santa actually became commonly portrayed wearing red sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, several decades before Coca-Cola’s iconic advertisements were produced.

ABOVE: One of many images of Santa Claus wearing a red coat produced in the 1930s by Swedish-American artist Haddon Sundblom as advertisements for Coca-Cola

Rudolph joins Santa’s team

The character of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 by Robert L. May (lived 1905 – 1976), an advertising copywriter for the department store Montgomery Ward. Montgomery Ward was doing a free giveaway of children’s books for Christmas. In past years, they had bought up children’s books to give away, but it was too expensive to buy so many books and they realized it would be cheaper if they just made their own book.

The store told May to create a book that they could give away. May remembered how much his daughter loved reindeer, so he decided to make the book a story about a reindeer. He convinced a fellow Montgomery Ward employee named Denver Gillen to illustrate the book. May’s book ended up being extremely popular. Montgomery Ward distributed 2.4 million copies of it over the course of the 1939 holiday season alone.

In 1949, May’s brother-in-law, the American songwriter Johnny Marks (lived 1909 – 1985), adapted May’s original children’s book into a song, which has now become a Christmas classic. The lyrics of Marks’s song are directly taken from May’s book, but with an added introduction listing the names of the eight reindeer from “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”:

“You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,
 Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen,
 But do you recall
 The most famous reindeer of all?”

The American singer Gene Autry (lived 1907 – 1998) recorded the song. His recording hit #1 on the charts the week of Christmas.

In 1964, Videocraft International, Ltd. produced a fifty-five-minute-long stop motion animation television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, based on Johnny Marks’s song adaptation of Robert L. May’s book. The special has been broadcast every single year since 1964. Partly as a result of the song and partly as a result of the television special based on it, Rudolph has become a canonical figure in the Santa Claus mythos.

Ironically, both Robert L. May and Johnny Marks were Jewish. (Does this mean “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is actually a Hanukkah song?)

ABOVE: Image of the characters Rudolph and Hermey from the 1964 stop motion animation television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Santa goes international and starts bringing more presents

The twentieth century brought with it several more major changes to Santa’s mythology. One change is that, largely as a direct result of American global hegemony for much of the twentieth century, the American version of Santa began to become an international figure. Ever since the end of World War II, the American Santa has been becoming ever more popular in countries that have traditionally had other December gift-bringers or no gift-bringers at all. The British Father Christmas has become increasingly identical to the American Santa, as has the German Sankt Nikolaus or Weihnachtsmann.

Meanwhile, over the course of the twentieth century, as the result of growing capitalism and drive for consumption, Santa also started bringing more and more presents, especially to children from wealthy families. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Santa was most often only said to leave presents in stockings, but, over the course of the twentieth century, the idea grew popular of Santa leaving presents not only in stockings as in the earlier tradition, but also underneath the Christmas tree. This expansion of where Santa is allowed to leave presents has led to parents buying even more presents for their children in the name of Santa Claus.

Santa quits smoking

For almost the entirety of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Santa was nearly always portrayed smoking a pipe, since this is how he is described in the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” from 1823. The pipe was seen as an integral part of his iconography. In the late twentieth century, however, as the public grew increasingly aware of how astonishingly dangerous smoking really is, Santa gradually became shown smoking a pipe less often. People realized that, by portraying Santa smoking, they were encouraging children to smoke.

Now, in 2019, Santa is rarely ever depicted smoking. This is a major departure from how he was usually portrayed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, it is actually a return to an older iconography; prior to the early nineteenth century, Santa does not seem to have usually been seen as a smoker. Certainly, Saint Nikolaos of Myra was never portrayed smoking.

Appendix: Santa Claus and Odin

It has become extremely common for people to claim that Santa Claus has been influenced by the god Odin, from Germanic mythology. There is, however, almost no good evidence for this. People often point to Odin’s title Langbarðr, meaning “Longbeard,” as the source for Santa Claus’s long, white beard. A long beard does not make Odin Santa, though. Lots and lots of figures in mythology have long beards, including Saint Nicholas, who has historically often been portrayed—dating back to Byzantine depictions at least as old as the twelfth century—with a long white beard.

ABOVE: Twelfth-century AD Byzantine fresco from the ancient Saint Nikolaos Church in Myra depicting Saint Nikolaos saving the innocent soldiers condemned to death. That guy with the halo and the long white beard is Saint Nikolaos.

Many people also point to Odin’s horse Sleipnir as the source for Santa’s flying reindeer. This is completely implausible. For one thing, in Norse mythology, Sleipnir was an eight-legged horse, not a reindeer. Furthermore, Odin was imagined riding on Sleipnir’s back, not riding in a sleigh pulled by him.

In the Gesta Danorum, a source written in Latin by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (lived c. 1160 – c. 1220), a horse that is believed by many to be Sleipnir is described as flying. Therefore, it seems the only thing Sleipnir even has in common with Santa’s reindeer is that they both fly, which is hardly a significant parallel, since many steeds in mythology are capable of flight. There is no more reason to think that Santa’s sleigh and reindeer are derived from Sleipnir than there is to think that Santa’s sleigh and reindeer are derived from Pegasos, the winged horse in Greek mythology.

It is also important to point out that Santa only seems to have started being portrayed riding in a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer in around the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, mainly in North America. Unless a shockingly large number of people in the United States who were part of the same generation as Andrew Jackson were secretly Germanic Neopagans, I don’t think it very likely that a fairly obscure eight-legged horse from Norse mythology would be a major source of inspiration for figures in their folklore, especially figures that have nothing in common with Sleipnir except flight.

It is often claimed on the internet that Odin was believed by the Norse to bring presents for children at Yule, but no site that I have seen has ever even tried to cite any kind of historical evidence to support this claim and, as far as I can tell, there is simply none. The idea of Odin bringing presents for children at Yule seems to have originated as a backformation based on the pre-existing assumption that Santa Claus has been influenced by Odin. Since Santa Claus is said to bring presents to children at Christmas today and people already assumed Santa has been influenced by Odin, they seem to have concluded that Odin must have brought presents in midwinter as well, despite having no evidence.

Some people claim that Father Christmas is directly descended from Odin. There are two problems with this, the first of them being that Father Christmas and Odin really are not very much alike. They both have long white beards and that’s basically it. The other problem is that Father Christmas is first attested in a solidly Protestant context in the sixteenth century; there is no good reason to think that he goes back to pre-Christian times. It is far more likely that Father Christmas is just a Protestant take on Saint Nicholas who was used as the personification of Christmas.

Most of the time, if you encounter someone claiming that a modern holiday tradition is of pagan origin, that holiday tradition probably is not really pagan. For instance, as I discuss in this article I wrote last year, there is no evidence that Christmas trees have any connection to any pre-Christian religion. In fact, Christmas trees actually only emerged in western Europe in around the sixteenth century. They only became popular in the English-speaking world around the early nineteenth century. They just aren’t old enough to actually be pagan.

ABOVE: Detail of a depiction of a figure riding an eight-legged horse, probably Odin riding Sleipnir, from the Tjängvide image stone, an eighth-century AD stone from Sweden

Conclusion

We have just completed quite an exciting voyage. Our exploration of the history of Santa has taken us from a passage in a sixth-century AD Byzantine treatise on architecture to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and beyond. The figure of Saint Nikolaos of Myra goes all the way back to ancient times. Nonetheless, the figure of Santa Claus as we know him in the United States today is largely the product of the past two hundred years.

ABOVE: Modern icon of Saint Nikolaos of Myra painted by the Czech painter Jaroslav Čermák (lived 1830 – 1878)