Ask any child about what happens at Christmas and they will you about "Santa", this "Santa" is very symbolic of Christmas. Santa Claus alias Father Christmas and Saint Nicholas appears at "Yuletide" along with Christmas Trees and presents.
Nicholas is lived in southern Turkey, then Asia Minor, during the first half of the fourth century, but nothing was recorded about his life until more than two hundred and fifty years after his death. Less than a hundred years after his death, he was worshipped as a saint for his legendary deeds, such as :
The city of Bari in southern Italy claims to be the spiritual home of Santa Claus, the
City boasts, the final resting place of St. Nicholas, the man the Church believes is both
the essence and the inspiration for our modern-day Santa. While the cathedral boasts of
having the holy relics of this miracle-worker, St. Nicholas never put a foot in Italy
while alive. His remains were actually seized seven hundred years after he'd been buried.
The city of Bari, and the Catholic Church, keen to increase their power and wealth,
conspired to steal the bones to make the city a magnet for pilgrims. At the end of the
eleventh century, forty seven armed men from Bari set sail for Asia Minor. They
overpowered four monks and seized the valued relics of St. Nicholas. The Church agreed to
pay the thieves, and then their heirs, a percentage of the offerings, but later the Church
reneged on this deal, keeping all the money for itself. Ever since, the Catholic Church
has helped to promote an annual festival to celebrate this profitable act of piracy.
In the northern European countries, modern Scandinavia, St. Nicholas was not at first
given the same warm reception. The people here had their own pagan gods to protect them
during the long, cold winter nights. One of these god's who was a sky god and at
mid-winter, the sky god came down to earth, kissed the horizon and started off the process
for the birth of Spring, the rebirth of the new year and the animals would be born, the
fruit would start to grow, the little crops from beginning agriculture would start to come
up several months later. So this was a really crucial moment, a pivotal moment in the
turning of the year, when the sky god coming down to the earth.
Later came the northern god Odin, who had a character for every month of the year. His
kindly December character, Yulekatid, left money for the poor. People used to say that
when the winter clouds scudded across the sky, it was Odin flying across the sky on his
white horse, and he used to come to earth dressed in a long, hooded cloak, with a bag of
coins, bread, to give to people who were poor, in his winter guise.
Around the same time, we had the Saxons who gave everyone and everything,
personifications. So the weather, the elements, they all has personifications: Father Ice,
King Frost, King Winter. They were all welcomed into the halls of the Saxon thanes because
they believed that by welcoming them, they would be less harsh. The Saxons' tradition of
mid-winter gods and festivals to honour them became widely accepted in Britain, but a
clash between this pagan religion and emerging Christianity produced new mid-winter
figure: Father Christmas, character part pagan, part Christian.
Father Christmas came from the old northern traditions of Odin and the personification of
winter, which in the Middle Ages had come into a melting-pot together with St. Nicholas,
and the parishes in the Middle Ages used to send out a man, either an actor or someone
from outside the parish who wasn't known in the parish, and he would be dressed in a long
cloak and he would go around the houses to each family in the parish saying 'is all well?'
and leaving something for the children.
The Church, believed it needed to replace he, the misguided ways of the indigenous peoples
and they went about it in a very organised manner. Pope Julius set the official date of
Jesus's birth at the height of the pagan mid-winter festivals, and that just shows us how
important it was to the Christian missionaries, to try to replace the Odin figure. They
also came up with Bishop Nicholas, who was put forward as the figure who would represent
the Christian Christmas and would replace this figure of Odin. And in fact they asked
people, to dress up as St. Nicholas.
In the Russian Orthodox Church, St. Nicholas was seen as a demi-god, a symbol of eternal
goodness and righteousness, a figure almost as popular as Christ. Where some East European
saints were seen as stern, even forbidding, St. Nicholas was recalled as a kind and
generous saint, a protector of young people.
He was a benefactor of children and on his commemoration, on the sixth of December,
parents and other friends liked to give presents to children and because it was rather
close to December the twenty fifth, where they also, gave presents, and that's a
pre-Christian custom at that time of the year, because it was near to Christmas, therefore
the two things became fused and Nicholas became a kind of mix-up with the Christmas
festival of present's for children.
Despite the cult of St. Nicholas, which led to over four hundred churches in Britain being
dedicated to him, pagan customs still had their undeniable attractions. The vast majority
of people still lived in the countryside and worked in farming, and so in country, houses
in villages and, little hamlets around the country, then the festivities would have been
very much as they'd been in the very old times, the sorts of things that we associate with
Christmas feasting, drinking, parties, present-giving, holly, ivy, mistletoe, Christmas
sorts of activities that, that have sustained through the centuries.
But in 1642, the Puritans seized power and outlawed many act's that had no Christian or
divine basis. The Puritans realised that the the sort of things that we associate with our
popular Christmas today, which were still current then had nothing to do with Christianity
and they, tried to dissuade people from partying, from drinking, from dressing up and
giving gifts, they introduced an Act of Parliament which officially abolished the popular
Christmas customs and it was, decreed that stores should stay open on Christmas day and
that anyone found partying would be arrested. From Canterbury to London, there were bloody
riots when shops were forced to stay open on Christmas day.
In Holland, St. Nicholas was untouched by political uncertainties or by pagan mid-winter
characters. Even today, they celebrate the arrival of their saint in Holland and the
anniversary of his death during a month of religious festivities before Christmas. Yet it
was the Dutch who unwittingly helped to turn St. Nicholas, who they called Sinterklaas,
into an icon of commercialism, when they set out for the New World in 1626. After St.
Nicholas was transformed from Sinterklaas to Santa Claus.
The "Santa" Character was further developed in 1809 when an amusing but
inaccurate history of Dutch traditions was written. Washington Irving, influenced by north
European Christmas customs, pictured St. Nicholas riding in a wagon merrily over rooftops,
dropping presents down chimneys, the first time this had been sighted.
In 1821, Clement Moore, a theology professor and an expert in European folklore, developed
this character in a poem he wrote for his children, which went like this.
'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 hope that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came With a bound
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!
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed like a bowl of jelly !
He was chubby and plump, oh a jolly old elf
And I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself!
Moore saw St. Nick as an Elf dressed in fur riding across rooftops on a sleigh with
eight tiny reindeer, rather than a wagon, a vision not witnessed in Britain by writers
struggling to popularise Christmas. Charles Dickens was one of the writers trying to
revive ancient Christmas traditions which had survived in the country but not in the
growing cities. His creation of Scrooge in 1844 captivated the new middle class. Dickens
used Scrooge to pillory misers who despised traditional Christmas festivities.
What Dickens did was make Christmas middle-class and personal and, it wasn't merely,
a repetition Christmas for Dickens was an occasion for summing up. An occasion for
remembering. An occasion for calling to mind everything, the good times, fee bad times. He
made Christmas an occasion for memory. Scrooge goes wrong because he fails to remember.
Scrooge is encouraged to recall the benefits of middle-class family life by the
Ghost of Christmas Present - that was Father Christmas for Dickens. The first illustrated
version of A Christmas Carol shows a Father Christmas from the Middle Ages, partly pagan
and partly Christian. About this time, the Americans were seeing an elf called St. Nick,
partly descended from tiny Nordic house-gods. Thomas Nast, one of America's most talented
cartoonists, turned the elf into a Santa. Nast had made his name as a political cartoonist
with a gift for populist imagery. He used these characters to make political statements.
Strongly supporting President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, he
looked for an image which embodied goodness and righteousness. His first Santa Claus, for
instance, was in 1863 and it was a Santa Claus in cap, and it was a little gnome-like
figure in a starred jacket and striped trousers handing out gifts to the soldiers.
He was created to give softer and "romantic" view of war and President
Lincoln at the time was supposedly quoted as saying that Nast was his best recruiting
agent, because Nast in a way glorified the Northern cause. Twenty years later, Nast's
Santa was again Intervening politically. Now elderly, Santa had put on weight, his
elf-life appearance had long gone.
Nast created the image of Santa Claus as we now know it and if you follow the Nast
Santa Claus drawings from 1863 until the Christmas Drawings for the Human Race were
published in 1889, you will see that Nast evolved his figure from the gnome-like figure
that other artists had used before into a self-portrait of himself. He always portrayed
himself as fat and jolly and his was his own self-portrait.
Nast's popular portraits of himself as the Santa in Twas The Night Before Christmas
sold well in Europe and his image was taken up by other artists. By the 1870s, Christmas
cards started to appear with versions of Nast's image.
At this time European Christmas traditions had barely changed. With gift-giving,
which dates back to early times. With a Christmas tree, which first appeared in Britain
about 1790. And with a slim Santa, more in keeping with the early Father Christmas, who
was still in Europe the most popular visitor at Christmas.
The Globalisation of red and white American Santa was performed by Coca-Cola, a company
struggling to sell cold drinks in the cold season, the company wanted to figure out a way
to associate the product with the holiday season, and so they turned to, an illustrator
named Haddon Sunblum. Sunblum concluded the spirit of the holiday was really Santa Claus,
and Santa Claus had this enormous task facing him every Christmas Eve and that was to go
around the world, in an evening, distributing, toys to children everywhere and obviously
he would, you know, get tired and he would get thirsty and he would need some refreshment,
so what better idea than to have Santa pausing in his rounds in various scenes enjoying a
Coca Cola?
Sunblum's Santa Claus really became American Santa Claus and in real terms the
global Santa Claus, because his characterisation of Santa Claus was the one that people
saw over thirty years. He came into their homes, he became a part of their lives and so,
in a very real sense, here is imagery created for a commercial product that has now become
a part of popular culture. In Britain, the post-war years saw Santa's final assault on the
throne occupied by Father Christmas. The department stores started getting visits from
Santa Claus who was very much the American image of Santa Claus with the curly white
whiskers, dressed in red and white and the fat jolly appearance, and was thought to be
less frightening than Father Christmas.
Santa's story shows commercialisation has never been far from Santa's grotto. The
relics of St. Nicholas have brought wealth to everyone who has possessed them. And St.
Nicholas's papal protector is perfectly happy about the revered saint being reincarnated
as Santa Claus.
Source:University of Northumbria at Newcastle. Islamic Society. |