Santa Claus

by Gerry Bowler

  In some Protestant countries where the Calvinist version of the faith took hold, it was not just Saint Nicholas who was abolished, it was Christmas itself. In Scotland, in Puritan New England, in Swiss cities, and from 1645 to 1660 in England, the celebration of the Lord’s Nativity was forbidden by law as were all its trappings. Christmas food and decorating the house with greenery were banned. Staying home from work on December 25, going to church, singing carols, playing traditional games, or feasting one’s family and neighbours might well incur a fine or even imprisonment. In London, Puritan troops broke up Christmas church services, checked to see if businesses were open, and tore down decorations. In Aberdeen, fourteen women were arrested for “playing, dancing and singing filthy carols on Yule Day.” Glasgow church authorities in 1583 excommunicated those who celebrated Christmas, and throughout Scotland bakers who made the yule bread and those who sang carols were prosecuted; the Calvinist minister at Errol went so far as to equate carol singing with fornication. In Puritan America, the General Court of Massachusetts in 1659 forbade the observation of Christmas on pain of a five-shilling fine, while Connecticut banned Christmas and saints’ days, mince pies, card playing, and musical instruments. In Geneva, observing Christmas merited twenty-four hours in the town jail!

  As we have seen, the Calvinist rulers of the Netherlands attempted a similar regimen of anti-Christmas legislation. The December 5 traditions of gift-giving, gingerbread cookies, puppet shows, doll sellers’ booths, and the Saint Nicholas market were all legislated against as idolatrous displays plainly transgressing the word of God. While there was evidence of resistance to this sort of action in other countries, and signs of covert Christmas observance in other Calvinist jurisdictions, in the Netherlands the resistance was quite open and remarkably successful. When Amsterdam legislated against the making of cookies and candles in effigy forms, a rebellious group of eleven-year-olds protested and with the help of their parents saw to it that the proclamation was never enforced. The survival of the Saint Nicholas traditions in Dutch cities are eloquently portrayed in a painting by Jan Steen, The Feast of St. Nicholas, which depicts a Dutch middle-class family on the morning of December 6. One lad cries as he surveys a shoe with only switches in it, a little girl hugs a new doll and a pail of toys, while the gaze of another child is directed to the chimney where the saint had made his entrance and exit the previous night. All around are signs of seasonal treats: nuts, waffles, and special loaves. Clearly, Sinterklaas had evaded his attempted extinction in the Netherlands.

  Some historians have claimed that the veneration of Saint Nicholas was never carried across the Atlantic in the seventeenth century to the Dutch overseas territory of New Netherland, and its capital New Amsterdam, the colony that was transformed by a British invasion into New York. Yet the first mention of the saint in print occured only in December 1773 when Rivington’s Gazetteer, a New York newspaper, reported that the anniversary of Saint Nicholas, “otherwise called St. a Claus,” had recently been marked by “a great number of Sons of that ancient Saint,” there is some evidence of a lingering survival of a Nicholas cult in the New World in the form of a two-foot-tall colonial-era cookie-press shaped like a bishop resurrecting the three pickled boys (which a New York museum preserves to this day) and the words to an eighteenth-century children’s rhyme.

  In 1809, a young New York writer named Washington Irving published a satirical history of his city entitled A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Irving claimed that Dutch colonial families revered Saint Nicholas as the local patron and guardian. It was Saint Nicholas whose image was carved on the prow of the vessel that brought the colonists to the New World, a ship Irving claimed was built “by the ablest ship carpenters of Amsterdam, who, it is well known, always model their ships after the fair forms of their country-women. Accordingly, it had one hundred feet in the beam, one hundred feet in the keel, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the sternpost to the tafferel … full in the bows, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, a copper bottom, and withal a most prodigious poop!” The saint was depicted (in 1809 and in even more detail in later editions) flying over the city in a wagon and climbing down chimneys to deliver presents on his name day. Though the book irritated the descendants of the Dutch colonists, the Knickerbocker History was read widely in the United States and Europe, making its author a famous man and Saint Nicholas an American.

  The year after Irving reacquainted his fellow citizens with the Nicholas legend, historian John Pintard, founder of the New-York Historical Society, presented a pamphlet to the group’s annual meeting featuring a picture of the saint. Pintard was a great supporter of a tasteful and domestic Christmas and opposed to the raucous, alcohol-fuelled street celebrations favoured by the lower orders. The woodcut that decorated his pamphlet showed Saint Nicholas as a stern, haloed bishop holding a rod. Beside him is a scene from a home on the morning of December 6: a little girl, presumably well behaved, holds an apron full of goodies, while her brother wails in lamentation over the rods that have been left for him. A blazing fire lights the stuffed stockings hanging on the mantel and a breakfast of sausages and waffles. The verse beneath is printed in both Dutch and English and reads:

  Saint Nicholas, good holy man!

  Put on the Tabard [jacket], best you can,

  Go, clad therewith, to Amsterdam

  From Amsterdam to Hispanje [Spain],

  Where apples bright of Oranje,

  And likewise those granate [pomegranate] surnam’d,

  Roll through the streets, all free unclaimed.

  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 observant reader will have noted that while America in 1810 was aware of a supernatural gift-bringer, that benevolent figure’s name was clearly Saint Nicholas and his form was that of an austere foreign bishop. Where in all this literature was the furry and roly-poly form called Santa Claus? Patience, please; we are drawing closer to our quarry. That rough beast is about to be born.

  Less than two weeks later, on December 15, 1810, another poem, anonymously written, appeared in the New York Spectator praising the “good holy man! whom we Sancte Claus name” for the gifts he brings, asking him to spare the rod, and promising him good behaviour in return for his benevolence:

  Oh good holy man! whom we Sancte Claus name,

  The Nursery forever your praise shall proclaim;

  The day of your joyful revisit returns,

  When each little bosom with gratitude burns,

  For the gifts which at night you so kindly impart

  To the girls of your love, and the boys of your heart.

  O! Come with your panniers and pockets well stow’d,

  Our stockings shall help you to lighten your load,

  As close by the fireside gaily they swing

  While delighted we dream of the presents you bring.

  Oh! Bring the bright Orange so juicy and sweet,

  Bring almonds and raisins to heighten the treat;

  Rich waffles and dough-nuts must not be forgot, Nor Crullers and Oley-Cooks [cookies] fresh from the pot.

  But of all these fine presents your Saintship can find,

  O! Leave not the famous big Cookies behind;

  Or, if in your hurry, one thing you mislay,

  Let it be the Rod – and ah! keep it away.

  Then holy St. Nicholas! all the long year,

  Our books we will love, and our parents revere;

  From naughty behavior we’ll always refrain,

  In hopes that you’ll come and reward us again.

  There we have it: the first mention in print of a “Sancte Claus” who brings holiday gifts. This Infant Phenomenon clearly resembles Saint Nicholas, an elderly bishop of Dutch extraction, operating under an alias; his presents are largely food items; and h
e is frightening enough that he has to be begged to leave his weapon behind, but we may consider this little poem the birth announcement of Santa Claus.

  * Originally branches from the sacred grove of the goddess Strenia, strenae came to mean the gifts exchanged at the Kalends of January – Roman New Year.

  * Ernest Kutz and Katherine Ketcham make the interesting point that Nicholas was one of the very first saints who was not venerated for having suffered martyrdom and that Christians of late antiquity revered him for his “constant and singularly unselfish kindness in everyday life.” The Spirituality of Imperfection (New York: 1993), p. 37.

  * A number of authors have attempted to link Saint Nicholas, and by extension Santa Claus, to pagan progenitors. For the most part they grossly overstate the case, but curious readers are directed to Tony Van Renterghem, When Santa Was a Shaman (St. Paul: 1995) and Phyllis Siefker, Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men (Jefferson, NC: 1997).

  * Bari later donated a fragment of Saint Nicholas to a church in New York, but, alas, the church and the relic were destroyed in the terrorist attacks on Manhattan on September 11, 2001.

  * The reformer was referring here to pferdopfel – horse manure.

  II

  His Youth and Character Development

  This is the gift-bringer as depicted in the first book-length version of Clement Clarke Moore’s “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The 1848 illustration shows him as an itinerant peddler in a round fur cap. (photo credit 2.1)

  In 1821, William Gilley of New York published a remarkable book: the first lithographed work in the United States of America was also the first to print a picture of Santa Claus. The Children’s Friend: A New Year’s Present, to Little Ones from Five to Twelve included eight illustrative plates (hand-coloured upon additional payment) and eight verses about the American gift-bringer’s activities. The poem reads:

  Old Santeclaus with much delight

  His reindeer drives this frosty night.

  O’er chimneytops, and tracks of snow,

  To bring his yearly gifts to you.

  The steady friend of virtuous youth,

  The friend of duty, and of truth,

  Each Christmas eve he joys to come

  Where love and peace have made their home.

  Through many houses he has been,

  And various beds and stockings seen,

  Some, white as snow, and neatly mended,

  Others, that seem’d for pigs intended.

  Where e’er I found good girls or boys,

  That hated quarrels, strife and noise,

  I left an apple, or a tart,

  Or wooden gun, or painted cart;

  To some I gave a pretty doll.

  To some a peg-top, or a ball;

  No 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.

  But where I found the children naughty,

  In manners rude, in tempers haughty,

  Thankless to parents, liars, swearers,

  Boxers, or cheats, or base tale-bearers,

  I left a long, black, birchen rod,

  Such, as the dread command of God

  Directs a Parent’s hand to use

  When virtue’s path his sons refuse.

  Authorship of the poem and its graphics is not known,* but its influence in shaping the American view of Santa Claus was paramount. The Children’s Friend introduced to the world the notions of Santa Claus’s connection with the northern winter; the reindeer and sleigh (an inspired bit of fancy quite at odds with the lumbering wit displayed in the rest of the piece); and the timing of his visits on Christmas Eve and not December 6. Never again would the North American gift-bringer look as sternly episcopal or as holy as he had in Pintard’s woodcut. Here Santa is portrayed smiling, wearing a tall fur hat helpfully labelled “Santeclaus,” and wielding a switch with which to encourage his beast of burden, a miraculous flying reindeer pulling a sleigh bearing the strange device: “Rewards.” (This is the only sleigh in the history of Santa Claus illustration to feature a built-in bookshelf.) The gift-bringer has not lost his menacing nature; the poem is one long meditation on the conditional nature of his benevolence and there is something chilling about the three adjectives of “long, black, birchen rod.” In 1821, Santa Claus was still an all-seeing agent of didactic forces and an ally of strict parenting. Notably absent from the side of Santeclaus was any dark and shaggy helper of the sort that European gift-bringers were wont to bring along on their delivery rounds. This young American Christmas visitor would need no sidekick either to carry his sack or to intimidate the children.

  A far less dread version of the gift-bringer appeared in private in 1822 at the home of wealthy New York landowner and scholar Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863). Tradition maintains that Moore was riding home from a Christmas Eve trip to fetch the fowl that would grace the dinner table when the figure of his stout Dutch driver prompted poetic stirrings. Back at home he wrote a poem, dedicated to his children, that became inextricably linked with Christmas and Santa Claus. His verses would become the most frequently reprinted poem in history, but they might have remained confined to the bosom of the Moore family had a friend not copied them. A year later, Orville L. Holley, the editor of the Troy, New York, Sentinel, told his readers:

  We know not to whom we are indebted for the following description of that unwearied patron of children – that homely, but delightful personification of parental kindness – SANTE CLAUS, his costume and his equipage, as he goes about visiting the fire-sides of this happy land, laden with Christmas bounties; but, from whomsoever it may have come, we give thanks for it. There is, to our apprehension, a spirit of cordial goodness in it, a playfulness of fancy, and a benevolent alacrity to enter into the feelings and promote the simple pleasures of children, which are altogether charming. We hope our little patrons, both lads and lasses, will accept it as proof of our unfeigned good will toward them – as a token of our warmest wish that they may have many a merry Christmas; that they may long retain their beautiful relish for those unbought, homebred joys, which derive their flavor from filial piety and fraternal love, and which they may be assured are the least-alloyed that time can furnish them; and that they may never part with that simplicity of character, which is their own fairest ornament, and for the sake of which they have been pronounced, by authority which none can gain-say, the types of such as shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.

  It went like this:

  ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house,

  Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

  The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

  In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

  The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

  While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads,

  And Mama in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,

  Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap –

  When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

  I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

  Away to the window I flew like a flash,

  Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.

  The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

  Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;

  When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

  But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,

  With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

  I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

  More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

  And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:

  “Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer, and Vixen,

  “On! Comet, on! Cupid, on!
Dunder and Blixem;

  “To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

  “Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

  As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,

  When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

  So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

  With the sleigh full of Toys – and St. Nicholas too:

  And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof