Imagine, you are a child living in the 1950s. It is nearing Christmas and you are just waiting to see whether Santa thought you were good this year. You hope the jolly man in the red suit will make a stop at your house and bring you something nice. One of your friends actually thinks Santa is a she, because only a mother would know so much about children. Of course, nobody really knows, because Santa only visits when everybody is sleeping.
At this time of the year, many of the children I know begin long and involved discussions about who Santa is, what he looks like and whether he is real. Usually, these discussions are not resolved, and frankly the children aren’t all that interested in what the answer actually is, but this year, one of the children told his friends all about La Befana, the primary Italian gift-bringer, and a woman! Since then, the children have been fascinated to discover who ‘Santa’ really is, and why Santa is so often depicted as a jolly old man in a red suit. I took them a variety of images to look at, including these images of ‘Santa’, and they were fascinated by the differences in what Santa looked like. Most interesting though, even the children who were doubtful about whether Santa was real thought that the number of different cultures in which a ‘Santa’ figure appears made it more likely that Santa actually is real.
Having discovered that the jolly old man wasn’t the only gift-giver to arrive around Christmas, the children asked two specific questions which they wanted me to answer. The first question was why do we imagine an old, overweight man dressed in a red suit is ‘Santa’? This isn’t a question with a straight forward answer. Many will tell you that ‘Coke invented him’, but this isn’t strictly true. The image of Santa Claus as a rotund man with a full beard, ruddy red cheeks, decked out in a red suit fringed with white fur is actually older than the 1930s Coke advertising campaign which featured him! In fact, you can see images of similar figures from earlier times by clicking here. However, Coke probably does have a lot to do with why this image is so strong – they popularised him very successfully.
The second question was, if this image of Santa isn’t the only image of him, or indeed the only name for him, who are the other Christmas gift-givers? There are a range of different names for ‘Santa’ including the common Saint Nicolas, Kriss Kringle, Father Christmas, Santa Claus. Other names include Pere Noel, Julemanden, Weihnachtsmann, Baba Noel, Papa Noel. You can find an extensive list of different names for Santa, and where they are used by clicking here. There are also a variety of representations of gift-givers from around the world. In Norway, Julenissen is a Christmas Dwarf as is Sweden's Jultomoten. In several countries Christmas gifts are traditionally delivered by the Three Wise Men or Magi, and some countries believe that the Christ-Child himself brings the gifts. Some countries also believe the Christmas gift-bringer is a woman including Italy (La Befana), Germany (Christkindl) and Russia (Babushka, Kolyada, and the Snow Maiden). Of course, the name and appearance of the gift-giver isn’t the only difference. Many of these ‘Santa’ figures deliver their gifts on days other than Christmas Day. Other popular dates are Christmas Eve and January 6th (Epiphany).
So whichever gift-bringer you choose to celebrate with, rest assured that as one child said 'with so many Santas to choose from, Santa must be real'.
