One more time
They reminded us that Santa Claus is based on St. Nicholas, a Greek who lived in what is now Turkey and would probably have had olive-colored skin, no freckles, and thus not be a white man at all.
It’s true that linguistic corruption eventually transformed “Saint Nikolaos” into “Santa Claus.” It’s also true that the real-life St. Nick was known for his gift-giving ways. But that’s where most of the similarities seem to end. Otherwise, the St. Nicholas legend veers off into other weird pathways such as how he liked to help sailors and how he saved three poor daughters from becoming hookers and the time where he resurrected three boys who’d been chopped to death by a butcher.
Other major elements of the Santa Claus legend seem to have been supplied by Northern European mythology that got subsumed into Christianity as it conquered the continent. Northern Germans and Scandinavians celebrated a holiday called Yule around the winter solstice. During Yule season, the white-bearded pagan god Odin would traverse the skies by night on his eight-legged horse. Children would place boots near the chimney filled with straw for Odin’s horse to eat. In the morning they’d awake to find the straw replaced with gifts and candy. It is thought that Odin’s eight-legged horse would later morph into eight tiny reindeer and the boots would become Christmas stockings.
The British, Dutch, and others would add several layers to the Santa myth, but what’s important is that beyond St. Nicholas’s Greek origins, everything else about the legend appears to have germinated and developed in Northern Europe. (Further modifications were made to the Santa Claus myth in America, but Thomas Nast and Clement Clarke Moore also had skin as pink as bubble gum.) Santa Claus is a
primarily Northern European cultural icon and therefore about as white as it gets.
His generosity made the legendary Nicholas a popular saint in medieval Europe, though a brief encounter with Google turned up no date for his actual sainthood. Hollanders, in particular, took a liking to St. Nicholas. In fact it may be safe to claim that the Santa Claus we know today had his roots in Holland.
He made his first known appearance in America in December, 1773 when a New York newspaper reported that Dutch families had gathered to honor his death, traditionally on December 6.
Sinter Klaas, as the Dutch knew him, was anglicized to Santa Claus and after enduring a series of makeovers, ended up with the iconic visage we recognize today.
That visage was canonized by a poem written in 1822 by Episcopal minister Clement Clarke Moore. Though intended for his three daughters, A Visit from St. Nicholas was reluctantly published. The brilliant professor of Oriental and Greek Literature is known as the author of T'was the Night Before Christmas.
In 1841 a retailer had the bright idea of creating a life-size Santa Claus to attract children to his shop with parents and their pocketbooks in tow. When thousands of kids showed up, the idea was copied by other stores with real-life Santas becoming the mainstay. By the end of the 19th century the Salvation Army got into the fray by dressing their bell ringers is Santa Claus costumes. By then Sinter Klaas had become truly Americanized and commercialized.
In 1881 a political cartoonist named Thomas Nast added a few pounds to Santa Claus when he literally drew on Moore's poem to create the the modern image of Santa Claus.
In 1939 a copywriter for Montgomery Ward department store, Robert L. May, added a reindeer named Rudolph. Ten years later May's friend, Johnny Marks, put a shortened version of his poem to music. That was recorded by Gene Autry and sold over two million copies.
Very little other than the basic story of gift giving has anything to do with Nicholas.
