Inventing Santa - the modern Santa Claus

In the 19th century Christmas traditions underwent enormous changes, when most of what is now familiar in the modern Christmas including St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, and Christmas trees, became popular.

In the early 1800s, Christmas celebrations only vaguely resembled the holiday season we know today. But by the century's end, Christmas traditions had become established to the point where Santa's very existence was proclaimed in a legendary newspaper editorial.

Early Dutch settlers of New York considered St. Nicholas to be their patron saint and practiced a yearly ritual of hanging stockings to receive presents on St. Nicholas Eve, in early December.

Washington Irving, in his fanciful History of New York, mentioned that St. Nicholas had a wagon he could ride “over the tops of trees” when he brought “his yearly presents to children.”

The Dutch word “Sinterklaas” for St. Nicholas evolved into the English “Santa Claus,” thanks in part to a New York City printer, William Gilley, who published an anonymous poem referring to “Santeclaus” in a children’s book in 1821.

The poem was also the first mention of a character based on St. Nicholas having a sleigh, in this case pulled by a single reindeer.

Inventing Santa - Clement Clarke Moore and The Night Before Christmas Perhaps the best known poem in the English language is “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” or as it’s often called, “The Night Before Christmas.” Its author, Clement Clarke Moore, a professor who owned an estate on the west side of Manhattan, would have been quite familiar with the St. Nicholas traditions followed in early 19th century New York. The poem was first published, anonymously, in a newspaper in Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823.

Reading the poem today, one might assume that Moore simply portrayed the common traditions. Yet he actually did something quite radical by changing some of the traditions while also describing features that were entirely new - inventing Santa in a new way.

For instance, the St. Nicholas gift giving would have taken place on December 5, the eve of St. Nicholas Day. Moore moved the events he describes to Christmas Eve. He also came up with the concept of “St. Nick” having eight reindeer, each of them with a distinctive name.

Inventing Santa - Santa Claus Drawn by Thomas Nast The famed American cartoonist Thomas Nast is generally credited as having invented the modern depiction of Santa Claus. Nast, who had worked as a magazine illustrator and created campaign posters for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, was hired by Harper’s Weekly in 1862.

For the Christmas season he was assigned to draw the magazine’s cover, and legend has it that Lincoln himself requested a depiction of Santa Claus visiting Union troops.

The resulting cover, from the Harper’s Weekly dated January 3, 1863, was a hit. It shows Santa Claus on his sleigh, which has arrived at a U.S. Army camp festooned with a “Welcome Santa Claus” sign.

Santa’s suit features the stars and stripes of the American flag, and he’s distributing Christmas packages to the soldiers. One soldier is holding up a new pair of socks, which might be a boring present today, but would have been a highly prized item in the Army of the Potomac.

The Santa Claus illustrations proved so popular that Thomas Nast kept drawing them every year for decades. He is also credited with creating the notion that Santa lived at the North Pole and kept a workshop manned by elves.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria Made Christmas Trees Fashionable

The tradition of the Christmas tree is thought to come from Germany, and there are accounts of German settlers, as well as Hessian mercenaries, having them in early America. But the custom wasn’t widespread outside German communities.

The Christmas tree first gained popularity in British and American society thanks to Queen Victoria’s husband, the German-born Prince Albert. He installed a decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1841, and woodcuts of the Royal Family’s tree appeared in London magazines in 1848.

Such illustrations, published in America a year later, created the fashionable impression of the Christmas tree in upper class homes.

The first electric Christmas tree lights appeared in the 1880s. An associate of Thomas Edison introduced them, but they were too costly for most households. People in the 1800s lit their Christmas trees with small candles.

The First White House Christmas Tree

The first Christmas tree in the White House was in 1889, during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. The Harrison family, including his young grandchildren, decorated the tree with toy soldiers and glass ornaments for their small family gathering.

Other presidents continued the tradition of having a Christmas tree in the White House, and over the years it has evolved into an elaborate and very public production.

Inventing Santa - "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus"

In 1897 an eight-year-old girl in New York City wrote to a newspaper, the New York Sun, asking if her friends, who doubted the existence of Santa Claus, were right. An editor at the newspaper, Francis Pharcellus Church, responded by publishing, on September 21, 1897, an unsigned editorial. The response to the little girl has become the most famous newspaper editorial ever printed.

The second paragraph in particular is often quoted:

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS.

Inventing Santa

Church’s eloquent editorial asserting the existence of Santa Claus seemed a fitting conclusion to a century that began with modest observances of St. Nicholas and ended with the foundations of the modern Christmas season firmly intact.

Inventing Santa

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