Santa and Those Reindeer

(Page 3: Modern Santa and Meaning)

It would be a mistake to describe today's Santa as a simple amalgam and evolutionary endpoint of his rich mixture of ancestors. For one thing, many versions still exist. In different regions of Germany St. Nick is known by various names including Klaasbuur, Burklaas, Rauklas, Bullerklaas, and Sunnercla. In eastern Germany, where the Santa figure remains more connected with his pagan past, he is called Ash Man, Shaggy Goat, or Rider. There is also the Weihnachtsmann, a Father Christmas-like figure who is depicted as tired and stooped from toiling through the dark winter night with his heavy burden of toys.

Another blow against the Santa-as-amalgam model has been struck by anthropologists. They have set to work on the most ubiquitous form of the modern Santa and declared him to be more than the sum of his European influences—indeed they see him as distinctly American. They highlight five key differences between the Santa of today and his ancestors: (1) Santa lacks the religious baggage of his predecessors; (2) he is, by the standards of Knecht Ruprecht, a bit boring; (3) he has turned into a softhearted liberal with no stomach for the punishment meted out by the likes of Sinterklaas and Knecht Ruprecht; (4) this mythical figure is more tangible than his predecessors, thanks to appearances in films, TV shows, and department stores (even in Japan); and (5) he spends much more than his central European forebears, preferring to give Nintendo video games rather than nuts, for example.

The distinguished anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has provided a wonderful pen portrait of this Christmas icon: "Father Christmas is dressed in scarlet: he is a king. His white beard, his furs and his boots, the sleigh in which he travels evoke winter. He is called 'Father' and he is an old man, thus he incarnates the benevolent form of the authority of the ancients."

Importantly, says Lévi-Strauss, children believe in him, paying homage to him with letters and prayers, while adults do not: "Father Christmas thus first of all expresses the difference in status between little children on the one hand, and adolescents and adults on the other. In this sense he is linked to a vast array of beliefs and practices which anthropologists have studied in many societies to try to understand rites of passage and initiation."

Sociologists have also been toiling away to reveal what we mean by Santa. Warren Hagstrom of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, couches his analysis in terms of either positivism or Clauseology. For the positivist (nineteenth century version), "belief in Santa Claus is defined as erroneous; and the problem of the positivist is to discover how such erroneous beliefs arise. The positivist, arguing that all beliefs arise by inference from experiences, finds the meaning of Santa in false inferences from actual experiences."

The naturism of the German-born British philologist Max Müller is a variety of positivism that finds the origins of figures like Santa in natural phenomena, says Hagstrom. Children, like primitive people, often personalize the forces of nature. "While small children may find it difficult to conceptualize the winter solstice, they find it easy to conceptualize Santa Claus. (Ask any child questions about the two phenomena.)"

The Clauseologist position, Hagstrom explains, is that Santa Claus exists but that his essential nature ("meaning") cannot be empirically ascertained. "The empirical phenomena associated with Santa are likely to be illusory and deceptive. It is instead necessary to rely on nonempirical methods of investigation, of which there are two types: inner experience and revealed sources. I cannot report here my inner experiences of Santa Claus, since it has been so long since I've had any genuine experiences of this type." This piece of whimsy, published in American Sociologist, goes on to say that one of the major problems facing Clauseologists is collecting authentic revealed sources.

Fortunately, Hagstrom accepts works like "A Visit from St. Nicholas" as part of the canon. This Christmas poem marks perhaps the most important single blueprint for modern Santa. It was written by Clement Clarke Moore, a professor at the General Theological Seminary in New York. A classical scholar and poet, Moore had translated Juvenal and other Roman poets into English verse and turned his hand to poetry in the romantic style. He was familiar with the folklore of the Dutch, German, and Scandinavian immigrants who had settled in the northern United States, including the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas (which by then was widely observed on December 24 and 25) and the Teutonic and Norse notions of a jovial but somewhat impish figure who presided over the pagan midwinter festivities. In 1822 he synthesized the lot into a figure who stars in his poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas."

That December Moore read the verses aloud to his children. A visitor to his home was so impressed that he had the poem published the following year in the Troy Sentnel in upstate New York. The poem gave us these oft-quoted lines: "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring—not even a mouse." In dozens of rhyming couplets, often derided today as doggerel, he described a plump, pipe-smoking Santa who traveled from the north in a sleigh drawn by tiny flying reindeer with "dainty hooves." This St. Nicholas also had a belly "that shook. . . like a bowl full of jelly" and a beard that was "white as the snow." That much sounds very familiar. However, he was "dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot," which is more reminiscent of Pelznickel than of a latter-day Santa.

Alas, St. Nicholas probably did not celebrate Christmas and probably never saw, or even knew about, reindeer. In Dutch legends Sinterklaas travels on a gray horse and wears bishop's robes. It is not clear when, if ever, Moore saw a sleigh drawn by reindeer, let alone the beasts in the wild, though he may have been acquainted with a Finnish legend concerning "Old Man Winter," who drives his reindeer down from the mountains, bringing snow with him.

Further evolution in the image of Santa occurred when he was depicted as a pear-shaped, jolly character with a flowing white beard in drawings by Thomas Nast in Harpers Weekly between 1863 and 1886. The break with his religious past was by then clear: Nast's Santa was reminiscent of his drawings of a drunken Bacchus and the corpulent plutocrat William "Boss" Tweed. Nast himself admitted that he was also inspired by the furs of the Astors when he designed Santa's fur-trimmed garb.

When it comes to the kind of Santa that we see stalking shopping malls and TV today—the jolly, fat figure clad in red and white—a leading manufacturer of carbonated beverages claims the credit for that archetype. A year or two ago, Coca-Cola even had the cheek to celebrate Santa's sixty-fifth birthday.

Before 1931, the company says, Santa Claus appeared in many different guises, from a green elf to a somber St. Nicholas and even a gaunt figure dressed in animal skins. That year, so the publicity goes, Coca-Cola commissioned a young Swedish artist, Haddon Sundblom, to give the icon a makeover.

From 1931 on, Sundblom created at least one Santa picture annually. His St. Nicholas wore an ample red coat trimmed in white and held in place with a thick leather belt, and he was depicted in various seasonal scenes. A hat, also trimmed in white, appeared in 1934. Sundblom removed Santa's pipe, which can be seen in Nast's creation, and gave him a bottle of Coke.

Through a succession of poses—with children, reindeer, sacks of toys, or letters—he was never without his fizzy drink. With the billowing beard, expansive girth, and rosy cheeks, he would gaze intently at his bottle or grasp it heartily, ready for that "pause that refreshes."

Jump to: Page 1 (Santa and Those Reindeer)
2 (Who Was Santa?) | 3 (Modern Santa and Meaning)
4 (The Hallucinogenic Connection) | 5 (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

Copyright © 1998 by Roger Highfield. All rights reserved. Posted with permission of http://www.twbookmark.com. Click here for ordering information for "The Physics of Christmas" at Amazon.com.