It’s the 1st of February, so what better subject for today’s facts than Father Christmas? For reasons best known to myself, I know lots of Santa facts, and intend to trundle them out whenever I’m stumped for a topical subject.
So, ’twas the night before Christmas (in 1823) when Clement Clarke Moore’s poem ‘A Visit from Saint Nicholas’ appeared in New York’s Sentinel newspaper.
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through 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 poem described Saint Nicholas’s attire and general jollity for the first time: ‘Dressed all in fur… his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot… a bundle of toys he had flung on his back… His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! … And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow… He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!’
Later that century (3 January 1863, to be precise), German-American caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa as a portly, bearded, fur-clad, sleigh-driving fellow who visited Civil War camps in order to demonstrate his loyalty to the Unionist cause. If this image from Harper’s Weekly were available in higher res, you’d see that he is apparently lynching a puppet of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis. Who knew he cared?
Santa’s glorious victory in the Civil War served only to strengthen Nast’s obsession with the character, and he continued to sketch him for thirty years. Gradually, Santa’s jacket changed from tan to red, and the image of a jolly – but borderline morbidly obese – little chap was born. This is him in 1881.
It is a common misconception that Father Christmas was dressed in red by the Coca-Cola Company – but that’s another story.
So, ’twas the night before Christmas (in 1823) when Clement Clarke Moore’s poem ‘A Visit from Saint Nicholas’ appeared in New York’s Sentinel newspaper.
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through 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 poem described Saint Nicholas’s attire and general jollity for the first time: ‘Dressed all in fur… his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot… a bundle of toys he had flung on his back… His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! … And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow… He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!’
Later that century (3 January 1863, to be precise), German-American caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa as a portly, bearded, fur-clad, sleigh-driving fellow who visited Civil War camps in order to demonstrate his loyalty to the Unionist cause. If this image from Harper’s Weekly were available in higher res, you’d see that he is apparently lynching a puppet of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis. Who knew he cared?
Santa’s glorious victory in the Civil War served only to strengthen Nast’s obsession with the character, and he continued to sketch him for thirty years. Gradually, Santa’s jacket changed from tan to red, and the image of a jolly – but borderline morbidly obese – little chap was born. This is him in 1881.
It is a common misconception that Father Christmas was dressed in red by the Coca-Cola Company – but that’s another story.
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