Santa Claus

by Gerry Bowler

  “My dear,” said I after a pause, “speaking of children I wish you would not teach the young ones so many of your Philadelphia phrases.… Mrs. Sparrowgrass, next Christmas Santa Claus, if you please – no, Kriss Kringle. Santa Claus is the patron saint, Mrs. Sparrowgrass, of the New Netherlands, and the ancient Dorp of Yonkers; he it is who fills the fireside stockings; he only can come down Westchester chimneys, and I would much prefer not to have the children’s minds and the flue occupied with his Pennsylvania prototype.”

  If Santa Claus was not a roistering boozer – a mascot of the older hard-drinking Christmas – nor a quaint bishop, what shape would he take? Here Moore’s “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” points the way: Santa Claus would be one of the Faery Folk. The miniature gift-bearer was harmless and lovable; he could be trusted to stay away from the bottle and not to frighten the children; as one of the Little People he would be the standard-bearer for generosity inside and outside the family.

  If Santa Claus was small, just how small was he? In J.H. Ingraham’s 1844 novel, Santa Claus, or The Merry King of Christmas, we get a clue when he describes ten thousand magic riders and musicians bursting out of a single tree on Christmas Eve, none bigger than a thumb, except their chief – Santa himself – who is half an inch taller. Despite his size, the ruler is nonetheless regal: clad all in fur, with a white star on his hat, wrapped in a purple robe lined with ermine, his chariot is pulled by six tiny horses in silken harness. His white beard is long (speaking relatively, of course), and he carries with him a wooden cross. We learn that his appearance on Boston Common is an annual event. His minuscule myrmidons fill their little sacks from his ever-replenished bag and then dart off to deliver the gifts. Each of these imps has a favourite child, whom it chooses from birth and “continues to be its Christmas ‘Fay’ year by year, deserting it only when it commits its first sin: and then weeping, it ceases to visit it more.”

  Ingraham wasn’t the only one to envision a near-microscopic gift-bringer. An anonymous poet of 1852 somehow convinced the editors of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine to publish his account of “What Santa Claus sung / Or a change that he rung, / On his voluble tongue, / As he sat and swung, / Last night about one, / On a pot-hook that hung / In my fireplace!” But most writers who described Santa as a member of the fairy race had someone bigger in mind. The size of the chimney seemed to be the sticking point; storytellers who were prepared to admit the existence of a magic, levitating elf who owned flying reindeer and possessed a never-empty sack of toys suddenly became all literal when they considered how Santa might negotiate a trip up and down the exhaust system. Most of the antebellum descriptions of Santa Claus saw him as a kind of mid-sized model: big enough to tote a large sack but small enough, as we can see in Weir’s paintings, to go through the chimney.

  A standard description of the elf, and how he dressed, would prove elusive. One of the most bizarre representations of the gift-bringer can be found in The Little Messenger Birds. This Santa sports an Elizabethan doublet, short pants, and an Arabian headdress that, combined with a cruel moustache and goatee, give him the appearance of a villainous magician out of The Arabian Nights. Judging by Santa’s menacing treatment of his employees in this book, the artist seems to have captured the inner man correctly: Santa’s magic spectacles can spot the tiniest flaw in workmanship, an attribute that causes his elves no little anxiety “because they know if their work was not done well, they should be banished to the Dark Room, where they made such ugly things for bad children, as bags of soot and ashes, pots of elbow-grease, sharpened birch twigs, and put in order cats-o’-nine-tails, which, when properly used, make the most dreadful screaming of any cats in the world!”

  Truly one-of-a-kind is the character trying to pass himself off as Saint Nick in Santa Claus and Jenny Lind, likely a promotional piece for the P.T. Barnum-sponsored tour of America in 1850 by the Swedish Nightingale. Here, Santa Claus has dressed up as George Washington (presumably to associate himself with patriotic impulses) complete with eighteenth-century tricorn, pigtail, and spurs on his boots, and sits astride a winged broom piloting the soprano through the skies, singing, “I’m a jolly old man – I ride the wind; / The lady behind me is Miss Jenny Lind; / The horse that we ride is a broomstick, you see – / Oh! This is the horse for Miss Jenny and me.” So much about this Santa Claus is different from his rivals: he is a clean-shaven, full-sized gentleman of late-middle years with nothing Dutch, elfin, or fur-clad about him; he carries no sack and all his toys emerge from his pockets; he goes through the world during daylight hours; and instead of waiting for Christmas Eve to reward the good behaviour he finds, he disburses his praises and gifts then and there. His behaviour is neither solemn nor jolly but rather downright queer – a word he uses several times to describe himself – and if he were to enter a doctor’s office today, he might not escape without a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. On the least impulse he bounds away over the landscape: “I was happy to see such a good little boy, / And took from my pocket a beautiful toy: / I shouted and threw it, I couldn’t keep still, / And then I was off, over valley and hill.” He won’t stay in one place long enough even to hear Jenny Lind sing; he hies himself to a mountaintop “where winds whistle bleak” and confesses, “I am dancing a jig, I am having a freak.”

  Other never-to-be-repeated images of Santa Claus included “a little old negro,” a “fearful fire-breathing monster,” a young, beardless fiddler, and a “yeoman farmer in the German style.”

  Amid all of these variously sized Santas, appearing with or without facial hair in a bewildering assortment of costumes, and a menagerie of midget horses, moose, brooms, hummingbirds, and turkeys, it is a relief to come upon a description of our hero that seems comfortingly familiar. This is a Harper’s piece of December 26, 1857, entitled “The Wonders of Santa Claus.” Here is a rotund old man, clad in a red suit with white fur trim and long black boots; here are the elves busy in their workshop; and here, for the first time, is an Arctic setting, a castle of ice where Santa and his helpers can labour undisturbed. He is neither bishop nor proletarian; betokening his elevated status of polar castellan and employer, his pipe is a long one. Among the wonders of his establishment is its ability to disappear into the frosty mist when a stranger happens by. It is reported that one clever boy drew close enough to see this moral admonition on the gate: “Nobody can ever enter here / Who lies a-bed too late.” The poet then advises: “Let all who expect a good stocking full, / Not spend much time in play; / Keep book and work all the while in mind / And be up by the peep of day.” (The Arctic hideaway was later revealed to be under Iceland’s Mount Hecla, a volcano that provided Santa with central heating and hot running water – cold water came from a stream of “melted-snow water, contrived with a patented congelator, which thawed when you wanted cold water and froze when you didn’t.”)

  The anonymous poet and illustrator of this wondrous Santa Claus might well be considered among the more important shapers of the gift-bringer’s character but for the appearance a few years later of the genius that was Thomas Nast, the artist to whom Santa Claus owes the most. The German-born Nast was only twenty-two years old when his first drawing of Santa Claus appeared in 1863, but he was already an experienced illustrator for American magazines. In the January 3, 1863, issue of Harper’s Weekly, a drawing entitled “Santa in Camp” showed the gift-bringer distributing packages from the back of his fur-lined reindeer-drawn sleigh to Union soldiers. He is dressed in an outfit of Stars and Stripes and from his hand dangles a jumping jack made to resemble the despised Confederate leader, Jefferson Davis. With his little pointed hat and harsh expression, this is not the Santa Claus that would be clasped to the nation’s bosom. We catch a glimpse of that Santa as a minor character at the top of Nast’s tear-inducing illustration in the same issue entitled “Christmas Eve.” In two central cartouches, Nast portrays a mother praying for her absent soldier husband beside the bed of her sleeping children and a homesick soldier
gazing on portraits of the loved ones he has left behind. Above them a fur-clad Santa descends a chimney to fill the stockings of the children and speeds by a row of Union tents, throwing presents from his sleigh.

  Nast would become a national political figure through his cartoon attacks on corrupt city bosses and his invention of the Republican Party elephant and the Democratic donkey, but it is through his annual portrayals of Santa Claus during the last half of the nineteenth century that his fame was assured. Especially important was a set of drawings in 1869 entitled “Santa Claus and his Works,” where much of what we know about the gift-bringer appears for the first time. Here we return to the polar setting, not Mount Hecla but “Santa Clausville, N.P.” (North Pole); from here Santa Claus spies, with godlike omniscience, on children’s activities using an enormous telescope and records his findings in a huge ledger. He labours diligently away making all the toys he will deliver; there are no elves in this workshop. Santa Claus is still the mid-sized bearded elf described by others, but here his clothing is unique: a furry set of long underwear with a broad belt (purpose unknown) around his expansive waist. It is likely that Nast was drawing on memories of the shaggy Pelznichol figure of his Bavarian childhood. If so, there was none of that creature’s frightening demeanour about Nast’s Santa Claus, who is always beaming goodwill toward children and who is portrayed as the object of their anticipation and love. In 1889, Thomas Nast’s Christmas Drawings for the Human Race brought together some of the artist’s best images of Santa Claus and showed the gift-bringer adapting to modern technology and communicating with his devotees by telephone.

  By this time, America’s view of Santa Claus was becoming more standardized – a stout, intensely jolly man of more than mature years, bearded and clad in garments of fur or fur trim, often (but not always) in a red-and-white motif. Gone were outfits of Dutch or American colonial or Elizabethan cut. Nast’s furry union suit had not caught on, but his gift to Santa of a broad belt would become a fashion constant for the gift-bringer. While Santa Claus might be depicted in the company of elfish helpers, he himself was now of human stature. Brooms and fairy horses had been retired as his means of locomotion; children abed on Christmas Eve listened now only for the prancing and pawing of each tiny hoof of the reindeer team. As the twentieth century dawned, Santa Claus would occasionally be tempted to use a dirigible, automobile, or flimsy biplane, but these would be showy novelties and he would always return to his sleigh.

  Saint Nicholas, as befitted a bishop and saint, had to make do over the centuries without long-term female companionship.* Santa Claus, however, broke free of those constrictions. In the mid-nineteenth century, he was a well-to-do bachelor, master of his own spacious (albeit remote) country home with extensive holdings in the manufacturing and delivery industries. Moreover, this was an age when portliness was no drawback to romance, when a tight waistcoat drew no reproaches or hints about the need to visit the gym more regularly; on the contrary, a full-figured man was someone of eye-catching substance. This stirring defence of obesity, by George P. Webster, accompanied one of Nast’s drawings: “He is large round the waist, but what care we for that – / ’Tis the good-natured people who always are fat”. His baldness was no handicap either: “See, the top of his head is all shining and bare – / ’Tis the good men, dear children, who lose all their hair.” Such an attractive character would not remain unattached for long. By the 1880s, Santa Claus had a wife, and American magazines were quick to describe her.

  At first, Mrs. Claus was seen as a valuable help-meet for her busy husband, someone who gladly shouldered not only domestic burdens but also took part in the business end of things. With Santa busy in the workshop or reindeer stables, it was natural that his wife should oversee the baking and candy production, as this saccharine poem of 1881, “Mistress Santa Claus” by Margaret Eytinge, illustrates.

  Much you have heard about old Santa Claus,

  But naught, I think, of his good-natured wife,

  And I must tell you of her, dears, because

  In sweet’ning life for you she spends her life.

  She’s small and plump, her eyes are brown and bright,

  And in a cave she lives that’s full of toys,

  Where, with her servant-elves, from morn till night

  She’s busy working for the girls and boys.

  Yes, quite three hundred days out of the year

  Never a single idle hour have they,

  For well they know there would be many a tear

  Should sugar-plums fall short on Christmas-day.

  And oh! and oh! the sugar-plums!

  Some brown, some red, and some as white

  As snow-flakes when they first alight;

  Some holding grapes, some holding cherries,

  Some bits of orange, some strawberries,

  Some tasting like a peach or rose,

  And some that dainty nuts inclose;

  Some filled with cream, and some with spice,

  And all so very, very nice.

  And oh! and oh! the sugar plums!

  As the role of women in American society became a matter of political debate, the Claus family found that they were not immune from social tensions. In an 1884 poem by Sarah J. Burke, “Mrs. Santa Claus Asserts Herself,” some long-stifled emotions come to the surface.

  Oh, it’s all very fine for that husband of mine

  To be courted and praised and invited to dine;

  Though late in the day, I’ll take while I may

  My woman’s one privilege of “saying her say.”

  It’s “Santa Claus, dear” – “ah, no, Santa Claus here”

  (Pray pardon this poor little tricklesome tear);

  Complimentary strife is the breath of his life,

  But who ever mentions his desolate wife?

  Now I’ve nothing to say in a slanderous way

  Of the man I have promised to love and obey:

  He’s a jolly old soul, he acts up to his rôle,

  And as husbands go, he may pass, on the whole.

  Oh, I’d never have spoken – my heart might have been broken,

  I’d have died without leaving one remnant of token –

  Did a gossip not say in my hearing one day,

  “Santa Claus is a bachelor, tireless and gay.”

  “You mistake,” was my cry, with a flash of the eye;

  “I’m his patient and hard-working wife, by-the-bye;

  And the world I will stun, when the gamut I run

  Of all that I’ve suffered and all that I’ve done.”

  * * *

  Oh, women, whose days are made radiant with praise,

  Whose trumpets are blown on the high and by ways,

  Pray stifle your scorn for a woman forlorn

  Who is driven to sounding her own little horn.

  In “Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride,” a poem about the domestic arrangements of the Claus family by Katherine Lee Bates (best known as the author of “America the Beautiful”), Mrs. Claus complains that Santa does little to produce the toys he delivers – they are grown on the magic trees that his wife alone tends, and while he is inside toasting his toes she is running around chasing the lightning bolts that will be used to manufacture their fireworks. Alternating doses of guilt with seductive feminine wiles (“While I tie your fur cap closer, I will kiss your ruddy chin”), she persuades her husband to take her along on his Christmas Eve rounds and, in the end, saves the day with her sewing skills when a little boy’s stocking needs mending. In a Christmas cantata written for Sunday-school presentations, we learn that Santa Claus’s female companion is “Santalady,” whose particular care is poor children whom Santa might otherwise miss.

  The struggle for female suffrage was also fought at the North Pole. “The New Christmas Régime,” a wry 1912 satire in Life magazine, explored the outcome:

  It was just beginning to be Christmas morning as little Bobbie Banderly awoke with a start. Still dark, he was obliged to turn on th
e light for an instant to see what time it was. One o’clock. Suddenly he heard from the regions below a slight noise. He jumped softly out of bed.

  Now Bobbie, in spite of his sex, was a brave little boy. Determining not to disturb his sister, who lay calmly sleeping in the next room, he stealthily made his way down stairs. The light in the hall was turned low, but he could see the fireplace very plainly in the distance. He waited. The sound of bells overhead on the roof indicated that some one was coming. Who could it be? His heart was in his mouth. Fortunately he had not long to wait. There was sound of falling brick, and then –

  A short dumpy person stood in the fireplace, on her back a large-sized bag of toys. Bobbie, inspired by the fatal curiosity that his sex had suddenly developed, bounded forward.

  “Who are you?” he exclaimed.

  The fat lady bowed.

  “Don’t you see? I am Mrs. Santa Claus.”

  “And Mr. Santa Claus?”

  “Oh! He has permanently retired. He found that he wasn’t equal to the job. Being only a man, he was limited in his capacities.”

  Bobbie was silent for a moment. Then his face brightened.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Now I know. You are a suffragette, are you not? And oh!” – he clapped his hands in glee – “You are my mother.”