Christmas Traditions: Santa Is Not Bipolar

Happy Holidays everyone...I just love this time of year, I usually start getting the bug around this time. Probably one of the biggest reasons is that my birthday is in just a few days, and when I was a kid, my birthday was often forgotten in the shuffle of the holidays. But that’s all right. As an adult I always make sure I do something to reward myself for the last years worth of survival. 9 years ago I rewarded myself with a girl that has been rewarding me ever since too...have to mention that, you understand!

This year I thought I would do something a little different, and since I haven't written anything here in a long while, (it has been blessedly busy for me in the ghosting area,) here is my birthday gift to me, an anniversary gift to my girl, (there's more babe,) and I hope you. I am interested in all things trivia...and usually they are trivial matters. But this year, due to a question I came across on Facebook, I became interested in Christmas, (or X-Mas,) trivia, and here's a few of the things I have been learning...

I'm going to start out with today's most recognizable fictional, (?) character...Santa. I'm starting with him because he is probably the figure that has changed the most through history...Santa wasn't always the jolly old chubby elf we know today, he had PR issues early in his career. There have been so many changes, I will dedicate this entire first article of my Christmas Traditions series to his biography.

The legend of Santa evolved from the tales of the canonized Bishop Nicolas of Myra. Saint Nicolas was famed for his freely giving spirit, and many peasants in the regions he traveled wold leave their shoes on their doorstep at night in the hopes that he would see them deserving, and leave the a few coins...he was that generous, but also that secretive. To this day many countries honor the Saint Nicolas on December 6^th and give gifts, leaving Christmas day for feasting and other celebrations. The Bishop lived from 270 until 343, and is the patron Saint of children, sailors, falsely accused and repentant thieves. This is where most historic scholars attribute the beginning of Santa's history...I have my own theories, but proof on this subject is hard to come by.

In the beginning, in spite of his apparent fame as being extremely generous, illustrations, and other historical documentation, show Saint Nicolas as a stern individual, and more of a disciplinarian than the happy-go-lucky elf. It was no wonder he didn't get much positive PR when folks started moving to the new world. He arrived in Iceland with the Vikings, and even rode with Columbus on that famous adventure.

In those days though, when people revolted, they also tried to throw out old customs and traditions, and our good Saint was almost done in by the Reform movement. He was no longer loved in England, where religious traditions had changed so radically, and soon after, the Puritans also tried to do him in...but when the masses love you, it's hard to get completely killed.

In order to make the counter the British newly formed St. George's Society, in 1773 New York colonists formed their own society, and named it the St. Nicolas Society to make the English mad, there was a similar society in Philadelphia at that time too, but the society enlisted the assistance of a new member of theirs, Washington Irving, a writer and publisher of some note at the time, and he published a book called “Knickerbockers History Of New York.” This was a humorous story that refereed to the older Saint as an elf-like Dutch Burgher that carried a clay pipe.

This first story gave rise to the legends of his descending down the chimney, flying using reindeer, (though this is theorized to have stemmed from the viking god Odin's warhorse, the 8 legged Slepnir,) and his being an elf...he has never had pointed ears in any of the pics I have ever seen, so this is also disputed. In 1810 the good Saint was depicted by the society in his best light, giving presents to children...finaly a good PR firm!

As the new Americas started to settle and calm down in their newfound freedoms, they also decided that the child development in this new place was becoming more important. So to help transition the wild revolutionary attitude that prevailed at the time, our hero donned a brand new guise, and to help maintain an air of mystery, (so the PR guys said,) he moved to a new location...the North pole, at that time it was the least explored place in the world.

In the 1821 Children's book “The Children's Friend,” Saint Nicolas had changed his name...to Sancte Claus. And his PR guys had gotten him a flying reindeer, (more on that later,) that helped him to deliver simple safe presents to the good kids, and a birch rod to the kids that hadn't been so good. His idea was to encourage the parents of the bad kids to “spare not the rod.” Children loved the story, and then most of them did their level headed best to maintain their good standings throughout the year. This was also the year that he changed the delivery date...from December 6^th to the 25^th, though no one really understood the reasoning behind this decision.

After a couple of years like this, our good Saint was starting to enjoy some of his old popularity, but the PR team wasn't anywhere near finished...they had designs of taking the world by storm. In 1823 a poet published “A Visit From Saint Nicolas,” (later to become more famous as “The Night Before Christmas,”) and though Clement Clark More is attributed to the poem, there have been strong arguments saying another poet, Henry Livingston wrote it...I personally know it was 3 guys on the PR staff, done while drinking bourbon late one night. Whatever explanation you accept for the poem, it served to be not a jumping board, but a flipping trampoline for his next couple of hundred years.

As I stated before, for a good long while after “The Night Before Christmas” our great friend Santa Claus enjoyed fame and popularity to the extreme. It was a craze that went viral. But the PR team wasn't finished yet. One more makeover...

Until the early 1900's Sancte Claus was also starting to become known as Santa Claus, it almost seemed a natural transition, and though he had been spotted by few, they did have a good description of him according to the best sources at the time. N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, and other famous guys had narrowed the description down to the red fur trimmed suit, clay pipe, red nose and cheeks, and portly girth. We knew what he looked like. But the PR guys wanted it all, so they conspired with Coca-Cola, and Haddon Sundblom, and Santa got something for Christmas...The white fur trimmed red suit, oh, and all the Coca-Cola he could stand to drink.

This was the start of a beautiful friendship. Since then Santa hangs ourt at the malls, does commercials, movies, and promotes only God knows how many products. Oh, and I can prove he is highly progressive...through his reindeer team, though he doesn't want us to know it.

Oh nothing is really truly wrong with his flying reindeer. It's just that Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen, are all male names, reindeer bucks lose their antlers a couple of weeks before Christmas, but Santa's team always has antlers...

If you have managed to suffer through my long-windedness, and have a yen for more Christmas trivia, check out my next article in this series, Christmas Traditions: The Art Of Remaining Politically Correct.