Saint Nicholas and the Origin of Santa Claus

How did the kindly Christian saint, good Bishop

Nicholas, become a roly-poly red-suited
American symbol for merry holiday festivity and
commercial activity? History tells the tale.

The first Europeans to arrive in the New World

brought St. Nicholas. Vikings dedicated their
cathedral to him in Greenland. On his first
voyage, Columbus named a Haitian port for St.
Nicholas on December 6, 1492. In Florida,
Spaniards named an early settlement St.
Bishop St. Nicholas, early American Nicholas Ferry, now known as Jacksonville.
St. Nick, & American Santa, from However, St. Nicholas had a difficult time
Santa Claus Comes to America, by during the 16th century Protestant Reformation
Caroline Singer & Cyrus Baldridge, which took a dim view of saints. Even though
Alfred Knopf, 1942 both reformers and counter-reformers tried to
stamp out St. Nicholas-related customs, they had
very little long-term success except in England where the religious folk traditions were
permanently altered. (It is ironic that fervent
Puritan Christians began what turned into a
trend to a more secular Christmas observance.)
Because the common people so loved St.
Nicholas, he survived on the European
continent as people continued to place nuts,
apples, and sweets in shoes left beside beds, on
windowsills, or before the hearth.

The first Colonists, primarily Puritans and other

Protestant reformers, did not bring Nicholas
traditions to the New World. What about the
Dutch? Although it is almost universally "New Year's Hymn to St. Nicholas,"
believed that the Dutch brought St. Nicholas to colonial Dutch life, Albany, NY.
New Amsterdam, scholars find scant evidence Harper's New Monthly Magazine,
of such traditions in Dutch New Netherland. March 1881
Colonial Germans in Pennsylvania kept the St. Nicholas Center Collection
feast of St. Nicholas, and several later accounts
have St. Nicholas visiting New York Dutch on New Years' Eve, thus adopting the
English custom (New Year gift-giving had become the English custom in 1558,
supplanting Nicholas, and this English custom lasted in New York until 1847).

In 1773 New York non-Dutch patriots formed the Sons of St. Nicholas, primarily as a
non-British symbol to counter the English St. George societies, rather than to honor St.
Nicholas. This society was similar to the Sons of St. Tammany in Philadelphia. Not
exactly St. Nicholas, the children's gift-giver.
 After the American Revolution, New Yorkers remembered with
pride their colony's nearly-forgotten Dutch roots. John Pintard,
the influential patriot and antiquarian who founded the New
York Historical Society in 1804, promoted St. Nicholas as
patron saint of both society and city. In January 1809,
Washington Irving joined the society and on St. Nicholas Day
that same year, he published the satirical fiction,
Knickerbocker's History of New York, with numerous references
to a jolly St. Nicholas character. This was not the saintly bishop,
rather an elfin Dutch burgher with a clay pipe. These delightful
flights of imagination are the source of the New Amsterdam St.
Nicholas legends: that the first Dutch emigrant ship had a
figurehead of St. Nicholas; that St. Nicholas Day was observed
in the colony; that the first church was dedicated to him; and that
St. Nicholas comes down chimneys to bring gifts. Irving's work
was regarded as the "first notable work of imagination in the
New World."
Detail from broadside
by Alexander The New York Historical Society held its first St. Nicholas
Anderson, December 6, anniversary dinner on December 6, 1810. John Pintard
1810 commissioned artist Alexander Anderson to create the first
St Nicholas Center American image of Nicholas for the occasion. Nicholas was
Collection shown in a gift-giving role with children's treats in stockings
hanging at a fireplace. The accompanying poem ends, "Saint
Nicholas, my dear good friend! To serve you ever was my end, If you will, now, me
something give, I'll serve you ever while I live."

The 19th century was a time of cultural transition. New York writers, and others, wanted
to domesticate the Christmas holiday. After Puritans and other Calvinists had eliminated
Christmas as a holy season, popular celebrations became riotous, featuring drunken men
and public disorder. Christmas of old was not the images we imagine of families gathered
cozily around hearth and tree exchanging pretty gifts and singing carols while smiling
benevolently at children. Rather, it was characterized by raucous, drunken mobs roaming
streets, damaging property, threatening and frightening the upper classes. The holiday
season, coming after harvest when work was eased and more leisure possible, was a time
when workers and servants took the upper hand, demanding largess and more. Through
the first half of the 19th century, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and other
Protestants continued to regard December 25th as a day without religious significance, a
day for normal business. This was not a neutral stance, rather Christmas observance was
seen as inconsistent with gospel worship. Industrialists were happy to reduce workers'
leisure time and allowed many fewer holidays than existed in Europe.

All of this began to change as a new understanding of family life and the place of
children was emerging. Childhood was coming to be seen as a stage of life in which
greater protection, sheltering, training and education were needed. And so the season
came gradually to be tamed, turning toward
shops and home. St. Nicholas, too, took on new
attributes to fit the changing times.

1821 brought some new elements with

publication of the first lithographed book in
America, the Children's Friend. This "Sante
Claus" arrived from the North in a sleigh with a
flying reindeer. The anonymous poem and
illustrations proved pivotal in shifting imagery
away from a saintly bishop. Sante Claus fit a
didactic mode, rewarding good behavior and
punishing bad, leaving a "long, black birchen
rod . . . directs a Parent's hand to use when Sante Claus
virtue's path his sons refuse." Gifts were safe The Children's Friend, 1821
toys, "pretty doll . . . peg-top, or a ball; no William B. Gilley, publisher
crackers, cannons, squibs, or rockets to blow
their eyes up, or their pockets. No drums to stun their Mother's ear, nor swords to make
their sisters fear; but pretty books to store their mind with knowledge of each various
kind." The sleigh itself even sported a bookshelf for the "pretty books." The book also
notably marked S. Claus' first appearance on Christmas Eve, rather than December 6th.

The jolly elf image received another big boost in 1823, from a poem destined to become
immensely popular, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," now better known as "The Night Before
Christmas."

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 peddler 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. . . .
 1848 1862 ca 1869
T. C. Boyd F. O. C. Darley Thomas Nast
A Visit from Saint A Visit from Saint Santa Claus and his
Nicholas Nicholas Works
Facsimile, St Nicholas St Nicholas Center First red suit for a Nast
Center Collection Collection Santa
St Nicholas Center
Collection

Washington Irving's St. Nicholas strongly influenced the poem's portrayal of a round,
pipe-smoking, elf-like St. Nicholas. The poem generally has been attributed to Clement
Clark Moore, a professor of biblical languages at New York's Episcopal General
Theological Seminary. Moore was a friend and neighbor of William Gilley, who had
published Sancte Claus in 1821:

Old Santeclaus with much delight

His reindeer drives the frosty night
O'er chimney tops and tracks of snow
To bring his yearly gifts to you.

However, a case has been made by Don Foster in Author Unknown, that Henry
Livingston actually penned it in 1807 or 1808. Livingston was a farmer/patriot who wrote
humorous verse for children. In any case, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" became a defining
American holiday classic. No matter who wrote it, the poem has had enormous influence
on the Americanization of St. Nicholas.
 1881 1905 1908
Thomas Nast Carl Stetson Crawford E. Boyd Smith
Harper's Weekly St. Nicholas for Young Santa Claus and All
January 1, 1881 Folks About Him
Val Berryman Vol. XXXIII, No. 2
Collection St Nicholas Center
Collection

The New York elite succeeded in domesticating Christmas through a new "Santa Claus"
tradition invented by Washington Irving, John Pintard and Clement Clarke Moore.
Moore's poem was printed in four new almanacs in 1824, just one year after it was in the
Troy, New York, paper. The poem and other descriptions of the Santa Claus ritual
appeared in more and more local papers. More than anything else, "A Visit From St.
Nicholas" introduced the custom of a cozy, domestic Santa Christmas tradition to the
nation.

Other artists and writers continued the change to an elf-like St. Nicholas, "Sancte Claus,"
or "Santa Claus," unlike the stately European bishop. In 1863, during the Civil War,
political cartoonist Thomas Nast began a series of annual black-and-white drawings in
Harper's Weekly, based on the descriptions found in the poem and Washington Irving's
work. These drawings established a rotund Santa with flowing beard, fur garments, and
an omnipresent clay pipe. Nast's Santa supported the Union and President Lincoln
believed this contributed to the Union troops' success by demoralizing Confederate
soldiers. As Nast drew Santas until 1886, his work had considerable influence in forming
the American Santa Claus. Along with appearance changes, the saint's name shifted to
Santa Claus—a natural phonetic alteration from the German Sankt Niklaus.

Churches, influenced by German immigrants who loved Christmas, Clement Clarke

Moore, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, the Oxford Movement in the Anglican
church, and church musicians embracing carol singing, began to bring Christmas
observances into their lives. The growth of Sunday Schools in cities exposed hundreds of
thousands of children to Christianity. Initially oopposed to Christmas observance, by the
1850s Sunday Schools had discovered that a Christmas tree, Santa and gifts, greatly
improved attendance. So, in a strange twist of fate, the new "secular" Santa Claus, no
longer seen as a religious figure, helped return Christmas observance to churches.
 1922 1925 1925
Norman Rockwell N. C. Wyeth J. C. Leyendecker
Saturday Evening Post Old Kris Saturday Evening Post
December 2, 1922 The Country December 26, 1925
Michigan State Gentleman Michigan State
University Museum Print: St Nicholas University Museum
Used by permission Center Collection Used by permission

Santa was then portrayed by dozens of artists in a wide variety of styles, sizes, and colors.
However by the end of the 1920s, a standard American Santa—life-sized in a red, fur-
trimmed suit—had emerged from the work of N. C. Wyeth, J. C. Leyendecker, Norman
Rockwell and other popular illustrators. The image was solidified before Haddon
Sundblom, in 1931, began thirty-five years of Coca-Cola Santa advertisements that
further popularized and firmly established this Santa as an icon of contemporary
commercial culture.

1931 1939 1955

Haddon Sundblom Norman Rockwell Haddon Sundblom
First Coca-Cola Santa Saturday Evening Post Time December 12,
Permission courtesy of the December 16, 1939 1955 St Nicholas
Coca-Cola Company Print: St Nicholas Center Collection
Center Collection
This Santa was life-sized, jolly, and wore the now familiar red suit. He appeared in
magazines, on billboards, and shop counters, encouraging Americans to see Coke as the
solution to "a thirst for all seasons." By the 1950s Santa was turning up everywhere as a
benign source of beneficence, endorsing an amazing range of consumer products. This
commercial success led to the North American Santa Claus being exported around the
world where he threatens to overcome the European St. Nicholas, who has retained his
identity as a Christian bishop and saint.

It's been a long journey from the Fourth Century

Bishop of Myra, St. Nicholas, who showed his
devotion to God in extraordinary kindness and
generosity to those in need, to America's jolly
Santa Claus, whose largesse often supplies
luxuries to the affluent. However, if you peel
back the accretions, he is still Nicholas, Bishop
of Myra, whose caring surprises continue to
model true giving and faithfulness.

There is growing interest in reclaiming the

original saint in the United States to help restore
Nast Santa, Bishop Nicholas, Coke a spiritual dimension to this festive time. For
Santa, illustration by Renee Graef, A indeed, St. Nicholas, lover of the poor and
Special Place for Santa Roman, Inc., patron saint of children, is a model of how
1991. Permission pending. Christians are meant to live. A bishop, Nicholas
put Jesus Christ at the center of his life, his
ministry, his entire existence. Families, churches, and schools are embracing true St
Nicholas traditions as one way to claim the true center of Christmas—the birth of Jesus.
Such a focus helps restore balance to increasingly materialistic and stress-filled Advent
and Christmas seasons.

How St. Nicholas Became Santa Claus: One Theory

An interview with Jeremy Seal, author of Nicholas: the Epic Journey from Saint to Santa
Claus
St. Nicholas and American Christmas Customs
Which American holiday traditions reflect distinctive St. Nicholas characteristics?

Knickerbocker Santa Claus

Scholar Charles W. Jones recounts the evidence telling how Santa Claus was created in
19th century New York

Flemish Sinterklaas Influence in "Nieuw Nederland"

Not everyone in the Dutch colonies was Dutch

St. Nicholas Timeline

See St. Nicholas through the centuries, including Santa

1902 Santa in Chicago

How has Santa changed?

Meet the Man Behind the Beard

Bishop Michael Curry interviews Santa Claus

Father Christmas
Is he the same as Santa Claus?

Links

NPR: The Story of St. Nicholas an interview with Jeremy Seal by Renee Montagne,
Morning Edition, December 23, 2005
How Santa Saved N.Y. by Michael Grady, Tribune columnist, East Valley Tribune,
Phoenix, December 15, 2007. A good summary of how Christmas changed and Santa
Claus came to be in the 19th century.
St. Nicholas to Santa: The Surprising Origins of Mr. Claus by Brian Handwerk, for
National Geographic, December 20, 2013. A fine account of the development of Santa
Claus (click "register later" to read the article).

Rotating images: Luca Brühart, Musée d'art et d'histoire, Fribourg, Switzerland. Used by
permission.

Sources and further reading:

Bowler, Gerry, Santa Claus: A Biography McClelland & Stewart Ltd, Toronto,
2005
Carefully researched account uses history, literature, advertising, and art to
show development of the American Santa; primarily about Santa

Purchase from amazon.com, amazon.ca or amazon.uk.

Christoph, Peter R., "Saint Nicholas," The Encyclopedia of New York State, Sample
Entries

Felix Octavius Carr Darley Website

Elliott, Jock, Inventing Christmas: How our Holiday Came to Be Abrams,

New York, 2001
Generously illustrated large format easy-to-read account of how American
Christmas developed.

Purchase from amazon.com, amazon.ca or amazon.uk.

"A Glimpse of an Old Dutch Town," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Harper and
Brothers, New York, Vol. 62, Number 370, March 1881.

Hageman, Howard, Book review: Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan:
Biography of a Legend by Charles W. Jones, Theology Today, October 1979

Jones, Charles W., "Knickerbocker Santa Claus,"The New-York Historical Society

Quarterly, Volume XXXVIII Number 4, October 1954

Nissenbaum, Stephen, The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of

America's Most Cherished Holiday Vintage, Random House, New York, 1996
This social history chronicles the transition from a raucous, carnival holiday
with drunkeness and riot into a warm, domesticated family and consumer-
centered festival.

Purchase from amazon.com, amazon.ca or amazon.uk.

Seal, Jeremy, Nicholas: The epic journey from Saint to Santa Claus
Bloomsbury, New York & London, 2005; UK edition: Santa: A Life
Nicholas' transformation into Santa told through careful historical detail,
travelogue, and personal reflection; extensive material on Nicholas as Saint,
as well as Santa

Purchase from amazon.com, amazon.ca or amazon.uk.

Walsh, Joseph J., Were They Wise Men or Kings, Joseph J. Walsh,
Westminster John Knox, 2001
Short chapters present a wealth of information on Christmas traditions,
answering many common questions