ResearchThe Origins of Santa Claus
Cultural mythology has a way of raising a blush when we try to explain it to history and try to sound sane. America, yet a young country in the world history scheme of things, is lucky to get by with just three of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
It's Santa Claus that brings the gifts. But how did we come to make up Santa Claus? We shrug; our parents told us. And wasn't there that Coca-Cola commercial? And there were those shows on TV. And the parade. Of all things in our consumer culture, our most widely recognized mythical figure is a person who, incognito, takes the credit from Santa Mastercard, Santa Visa, and Santa American Express for bringing the gifts.
We start with Turkey - the country, not the poultry - and a bishop named Nicholas who helped provide some dowries for three sisters so they could get married. He was bishop of Myra, imprisoned during the reign of Diocletian and released upon the ascension of Constantine as Roman emperor. Saint Nicholas was a widely celebrated favorite of European folklore throughout the Middle ages, but he had the greatest staying power in the Netherlands.
We hear about Saint Nicholas as the roots of our Santa Claus all the time. We know that this eventually led to the legend of Sinterklaas, which spread from the Netherlands to Belgium, Germany, and Austria. But it hardly explains how we get from a sack of money from a bishop to reindeer and red suit. And why is he hanging out at the North Pole?
Meet the Norse god Thor. Thor, god of thunder, son of Odin, was the star of many passion plays featuring his battle against the race of giants. He was freely shared by Scandinavians who passed him around kind of as their version of the Greek Hercules, and he eventually spread to Germany as well. The part that makes you sit up and pay attention is that Thor traveled by a magic chariot drawn through the sky by a pair of flying goats. Moreover, historic pictures of Thor painted him wearing a red suit! He had red hair and beard, as would fit a Scandinavian, and was muscle-bound rather than rotund, but outside of that he's pretty close - certainly a lot closer than a bishop godfather.
Europeans tend to mix things together if it makes a better story. So Nicholas became revered as a Saint, then the patron Saint of children. It's easy to see where Germanic parents, telling stories of Saint Nick to their children, might have glanced at a painting of Thor on the wall brought over from Denmark or perhaps Sweden and decided on the spot to weave in elements from Nordic legend to liven up the bishop a little.
So before Santa Claus was even brought to American shores by waves of European immigrants, he was already a patchwork character who had borrowed elements from half of European mythology. Americans confused the issue further by adapting Santa to a more Caucasian motif over the decades. First Washington Irving, who also gave us Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle, set the stage for Christmas to be adopted as an American holiday in his stories of Bracebridge Hall.
Next, Clement Clarke Moore writes the famous poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas", better known by it's opening line "Twas the Night Before Christmas", which pretty much shaped Santa Claus for the Americans ever since. In Moore's work, Santa went from red hair to white hair, became chubby, and replaced his goats with reindeer. Perhaps Moore was feeling repentant for his cultural butchery, because he left us a clue in the naming of these reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.
Some of those names definitely have Scandinavian rings to them, but the corker is "Donner". Donner is the German name for Thor, as given, amongst other references, in Wagner's opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen", and blitzen itself is the German word for lightning. But you knew all this already, didn't you?