Christmas Traditions - Santa Claus

I guess that most people know that the name of Santa Claus has evolved from Saint Nicholas so it is interesting to follow the history of the tradition from those very early days.  It begins in the 4th century when Saint Nicholas was the Greek Christian bishop of Myra in what is modern day Turkey.  He was known to be a very generous man, especially devoted to children.  One legend in particular tells of how he gave money to the three daughters of a very poor devout Christian so that they would each have a dowrie for their future instead of having to raise money by becoming prostitutes.  He died and was buried in Myra in 340 AD but it is alleged that Italian sailors stole his body and took it to Bari, Italy in 1087.  There the popularity of Saint Nicholas increased throughout Europe.  He became the patron saint of Russia.  In Greece he was the patron saint of sailors while the French thought of him as the patron saint of lawyers and of children and travellers in Belgium.  Around the 12th century the churches created an official holiday for the Feast of Saint Nicholas on the 6th December.  After the Reformation, his followers dwindled but the tradition was kept alive mainly by the Dutch who called him Sint Nikolaas that eventually became Sinterklaas.  It was when the Dutch took the tradition to America in the 17th century that the name Santa Claus emerged.

A vintage Coca Cola advert of the 1930s

In Britain, in the 17th century there was the tradition of Father Christmas.  Pictures of him survive from that era, portraying him as a jolly, well-nourished bearded man dressed in a long, green, fur-lined robe.  He typified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas.  This character and the gift-giver of church history merged into Santa Claus.  It is often thought that the first images of the modern day Santa Claus with his red and white clothes was due to the advertising of Coca Cola in the 1930s.  In fact, according to church history the patron saint of Russia, Saint Nicholas was portrayed with a red cloak and the first mention of Santa Claus was in the American press of 1773.  He had lost his bishop’s apparel, and was at first pictured as a thick-bellied Dutch sailor with a pipe in a green winter coat.  Santa Claus also  appeared dressed in red and white and essentially in his current form on several covers of Puck magazine in the first few years of the twentieth century before the Coca Cola adverts.  But I guess that the adverts in the 1930s did much to popularise the image we now have of Santa Claus.

I do feel that it's a shame that the original idea of Saint Nicholas and his generosity together with the whole Father Christmas idea of giving gifts and cheer has somewhat been overtaken in our materialistically orientated ways of the 21st century.  I always remember as a child and asking my mother whether Santa Claus existed or not and her reply was, 'I believe in the spirit of giving at Christmas'.  That, of course began with God's greatest gift on the very first Christmas.