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Friday Slide Show: A History of Santas
30 December 2022
In the previous century when business was conducted in person, often over three-martini lunches, it was a custom to exchange business gifts. Among those we trot out at Christmas is this set of six Santa ornaments which illustrate a history of Santas.
We thought we'd share them with you as the last slide show of 2022. And tell you their stories.
Kriss Kringle
Carrying an Evergreen tree, the "Christkind" of Holland is thought to have brought a tree inside for the holiday. He traveled with Black Peter who punished bad children while Kriss Kingle rewarded good ones.
St. Nicolas
The Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor around 200 AD, had survived a storm at sea and gone into a church to give thanks when the council looking for a new bishop enlisted him on the spot. When he heard of three sisters who couldn't marry for lack of a dowry, he left bags of gold pieces for each of them.
Santa
In the Middle Ages, the myth of magical flight became a part of the Santa mystery. His first flights were on a horse while his beard was still black. But it had grown white before he harnessed Rudolph.
Thomas Nast's Santa Claus
For centuries Santa was thought to be rather priest-like and somber, dressed in a full-length robe with a hood. But in his 1847 A Visit from Santa, Clement C. Moore described him as a "jolly old elf." That inspired newspaper cartoonist Thomas Nast to conjure up the Santa we know today in a fur-trimmed jacket with a bag full of goodies.
Father Ice
The Siberian version of Santa happened upon a gentle stepdaughter of a woman who favored her ill-tempered but natural daughter. The woman, angered by the stepdaughter, had thrown her out into the cold. but Dedt Moroz, or Father Ice, gave the girl diamonds to reward her good heart. The stepmother sent her daughter out into the cold for more diamonds but she screamed with rage and Father Ice turned her into a column of ice.
St. Nicolas of Russia
Nicolas because the patron saint of Russia (when Russia had saints) at the beginning of the 10th century. A Russian Duke, who had once had to convert to Christianity to marry, learned about Nicolas in Byzantium 500 years after his death. He returned to Russia, telling stories about the saint until he became the patron saint of sailors, maidens and pawnbrokers.
We can't vouch for any of those descriptions. Our letters to the North Pole were never answered.
But after a three-martini lunch, we tend to find the wisdom in them.
