bicentennial

Illustration accompanying c1830 broadside of “A Visit from St. Nicholas”

“A Visit from from St. Nicholas” was first published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823. The poem was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and has become more widely known as “The Night Before Christmas.” According to Rebecca Sicree, writing in the November/December 2023 issue of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, “It is impossible to overestimate how much Moore’s poem has influenced the celebration of Christmas in the United States. Before Moore, the newly independent country had no common American Christmas traditions. After the advent of Moore’s poem, pictures of Santa Claus showed him short and fat, like one of the Seven Dwarfs, though he eventually regained his adult height.” Rebecca Sicree points out that Clement Moore’s poem encouraged the transition from saint to modern Santa Claus because of these lines:

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself. . . .

Fifty years after the poem, Harper’s Weekly clearly identified a plump, shortish night visitor as Santa Claus:

“He knows when you’re awake”

Based on the poem accompanying Thomas Nast’s illustration, it seems that Santa really likes his privacy and history … but if you’re 1500 years old, the arctic explorers might be more like current events:

Ho! Ho! – reindeer too fast

In her article Rebecca Sicree explains that everyone assumed Santa was pretty much a lone elf until a poem in the December 26, 1857 issue of Harper’s Weekly. “The Wonders of Santa Claus” includes this stanza:

In his house upon the top of a hill,
­And almost out of sight,
He keeps a great many elves at work,
All working with all their might,
To make a million of pretty things,
Cakes, sugar-plums, and toys,
To fill the stockings, hung up you know
By the little girls and boys.

The same poem revealed Santa Claus’ true identity:

But it were an endless task to tell,
The length that the list extends,
Of the curious gifts the queer old man
Prepares for his Christmas friends.
Belike you are guessing who he is,
And the country whence he came.
Why, he was born in Germany,
And St. Nicholas is his name.

big employer of elves

According to Wikipedia, Clement Moore’s famous poem had a precursor:

“Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” is an anonymous illustrated children’s poem published in New York in 1821, predating by two years the first publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (Twas the Night before Christmas). It is the first publication to mention (and illustrate) Santa Claus’s reindeer and his sleigh, as well as being the first to describe his arrival on Christmas Eve. The accompanying illustrations are the earliest published artistic depictions of a Santa Claus figure.

“steady friend of virtuous youth”

“O’r chimney tops, and tracts of snow”

“various beds and stockings seen”

____________

Old Santeclaus did leave the stockings and presents in the children’s bedroom. Bad children didn’t receive a lump of coal – they received a stocking with “a long, black, birchen rod” for parental application.

Harper’s Weekly and its cartoonist Thomas Nast had a lot to do with Santa’s development, even during the American Civil War. Read about it at American Battlefield Trust.

patriotic (Union) Santa

“Up on the house top, Click, click, click”

So Santa Claus has evolved over the centuries.

saint

elf

modern

Rebecca Sicree’s article, “The Evolution of Elves,” is published on pages 19-21 in the print magazine. You can also read her article online.

You can find the January 3, 1874 issue of Harper’s Weekly at Internet Archive. I believe the poem refers to arctic explorers Sir Sir John Franklin and Charles Francis Hall.

The December 26, 1857 issue of Harpers Weekly is at Internet Archive, the Santa poem is on pages 820-21 ;

From the Library of Congress: the c.1830 illustration for Clement Moore’s poem – “Photostat copy of a reproduction of the broadside illustrated by Myron King and published at Troy, N. Y., about 1830. The poem was first published in the Troy Sentinal on Dec. 23, 1823.”;

Both Civil War illustrations were published in the January 3, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly – I probably got them from Son of the South. The second image shows Santa and reindeer on the roof. In 1864 Benjamin Hanby wrote “Up on the House Top”, which is considered the second-oldest secular Christmas song. You can see sheet music at Otterbein University – the lyrics have apparently been very malleable over the years.

You can find the image of the elfish St. Nick working at the fireplace in Twas the Night before Christmas at Project Gutenberg.

From Wikimedia Commons: the three images from “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” – in green, chimney, and stockings; Saint Nicholas of Myra icon from Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, created first half of the 13th century; Santa and reindeer at Hershey Park December 23, 2021 – Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s photo “is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license” -I didn’t make any changes – here’s the description: “Santa and his reindeer. Governor Tom Wolf was joined by Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding and Pennsylvania State Veterinarian Dr. Kevin Brightbill to meet Santa and his nine reindeer at Hersheypark Christmas Candylane to announce that the reindeer have received a clean bill of health and are cleared for take-off on December 24. Hershey, PA – December 23, 2021″” Gerardus Mercator’s map of the North Pole and surroundings – the map was published posthumously in a 1595 atlas.

He’s on the top of the world