The Santa Claus blog
From Saint Nicholas to 19th-century illustrators: how Santa Claus took the shape we know.
Sourced, dated, checked
History and originsPeople keep saying the red-and-white Santa came out of a 1931 soda ad. Magazine covers, newspapers and print ads from before that year tell a different story.
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History and originsA bag of gold tossed through a window, wooden clogs lined up by the hearth in Lorraine, a stocking found “miraculously filled” in New York in 1809: the Christmas stocking has a history, and it is older than Santa Claus himself.
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History and originsBefore they ever reached a mailbox, letters to Santa went up in smoke. Then mothers, rule-breaking postmasters and three national post offices gave them an address and a reply.
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History and originsThe oldest record of a feast of the Nativity on December 25 fits on one line of Latin, copied in Rome in the fourth century. Everything else, from the manger scene to the tree, came later, and each addition left a date behind.
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History and originsA fourth-century bishop, a Dutch nickname overheard in colonial New York, an unsigned poem from 1823 and a magazine artist's engravings: this is how Santa Claus got the face we know.
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History and originsA poem read aloud to a New York family, printed without a byline in a Troy newspaper, claimed by a professor of Hebrew and contested by the descendants of a Revolutionary War major. Here is what the documents say.
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History and originsSaint Nicholas arrived on a donkey, then in a wagon that sailed over the treetops. The sleigh appears in New York in 1821, turns “miniature” in 1823 and takes off for good with the illustrators and the songwriters.
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History and originsOne reindeer in 1821, eight in 1823, a ninth with a red nose in 1939. Along the way, real reindeer crossed the Atlantic with their Sámi herders. Here is how the team came together, date by date.
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History and originsA bishop from Asia Minor about whom little is known, legends copied for a thousand years, bones carried off by Italian sailors and a finger bone that reached eastern France: meet the man behind Saint Nicholas Day.
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History and originsLong before it was Santa's way in, the chimney was the heart of the home and the doorway of night visitors. Here is how it became his entrance, and what he does when a house has none.
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History and originsBefore he was red, Santa was green, brown, yellow and wrapped in fur from head to foot. Red won late, and the dates prove it.
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Four shelves, kept by the archivist