Nast developed nearly all
of our Santa myths, including his tricky relationship with the
chimney.
Santa
Claus:
The spirit of Christmas is universal, but the embodiment of that
perennially popular Yuletide figure, Santa Claus, has a history
that began, of all places, in New York.
For centuries, European artists had depicted St. Nicholas, the
patron saint of Christmas, as a dour, Medieval bishop with a
long, gray beard. It was not until 1863 that Thomas Nast, the
German-born father of American political cartooning, introduced a
far more endearing version of the character, one whose robust
good cheer and imaginative North Pole-based mythology was both
approachable and believable to children. Over the course of time,
Nast would dramatically change all traditional conceptions of the
Christmas benefactor, whose other "aliases" included Kris
Kringle, Father Christmas and, later, Santa Claus.
Nast drew Santa Claus, whose name originated in Holland, as a
plump, jovial man who smoked a longstemmed pipe and wore buckled
clogs. He kept a detailed book of "good boys and girls" and spent
many hours answering stacks of pre-Christmas "wish" mail.
Using his own family as unsuspecting models, the artist was
inspired to create enchanting scenes of children sleeping in
armchairs as Santa made his stealthy entry via the chimney to
deliver gifts. Sometimes the red-suited spirit's dramatic
middle-of-the-night appearance would be witnessed by a throng of
family pets, only too pleased to keep Santa's methods a secret.
Other illustrations depicted children gleefully arranging gifts
and treats for Santa at the fireplace hearth.
Nast acknowledged the influence of two great Nineteenth Century
American writers in the development of his Santa: Washington
Irving and Clement C. Moore.
Irving, famous for his tales The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
and Rip Van Winkle, had written an article in 1809 called
History of New York, which dealt with Dutch-American
traditions. It included a description of St. Nicholas as a tubby
Dutch burgomaster who made his benevolent rounds on a fine white
horse.
This planted the seed in Nast's mind to adapt the legendary
Christmas character described by Irving, along more humorous,
secular lines. With his formidable credentials as a first-rate
artist and political satirist, Nast was eminently capable of
undertaking the task. Few of his contemporaries would have dared
tamper with anything quite so fragile as the faith of young
children, but Nast was accustomed to tackling sacred
institutions. He was already held in high public esteem for
having invented both the Republican Party's elephant and
Democratic Party's donkey, not to mention Uncle Sam and Great
Britain's John Bull.
So admired was Nast for his uncompromising integrity that the
cartoonist's influence could decide an election or bring a
criminal to justice. His artistic cut and thrust on the infamous
William "Boss" Tweed landed the bribe-taking politician behind
bars, and Tweed, himself, was first to declare it was "them damn
pictures" that had put him there.
Nast's specialty stars and stripes depiction of "Santa in
uniform" drew respect and praise from President Lincoln for the
positive influence the advertising character had had on Army
enlistments, and even General Grant attributed his subsequent
presidential victory to "the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of
Thomas Nast."
It was in 1823 that Clement C. Moore's The Night Before
Christmas was first published. Richly descriptive, it
provided the final bits of fantasy necessary for Nast to complete
his most famous cartoon subject of all: Santa Claus.
In Moore's tale, the white horse originally attributed to
Washington Irving as St. Nicholas's preferred method of transport
was replaced by "a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer."
And St. Nicholas himself was described as an amiable,
fur-swaddled figure toting a cornucopia-like booty of toys on his
back. His "little round belly...shook when he laughed, like a
bowlful of jelly."
Moore's details of the Christmas Eve ritual were marvelously
whimsical and left the reader with the distinct impression that
St. Nick was someone who might wear a lampshade on his head after
one cup too many of electric holiday punch. But paradoxically,
the illustrations that accompanied Moore's poem still depicted
the traditional Sixth Century European bishop figure, a
benevolent but rather humorless fellow.
Nast set his sights on reinventing not just the central
character, whom he renamed "Santa Claus," but also Santa's
environment and supporting cast. Santa, Nast decided, should live
at the North Pole, a geographically neutral location that showed
no favoritism amongst the children of the northern hemisphere.
The sole industry at the North Pole would be, of course,
toymaking, and the workers would be a tireless and devoted crew
of elves who didn't know the meaning of the word "strike."
Nast painstakingly hand-engraved Moore's poem onto woodblock,
using his own revolutionary illustrations as accompaniment. The
drawings were an instant sensation, going on to appear in many
issues of Harper's Weekly between 1863 and 1886. No one
seemed to mind the artistic license Nast had taken, and in 1890,
with chromolithography approaching its peak, Harper &
Brothers published a now-classic collection called Thomas
Nast's Christmas Drawings for the Human Race.
Seeing the potential in a Christmas theme that was overtly
child-oriented, American toy and game manufacturers wasted no
time incorporating the "new look" Santa into their production
lines, resulting in a colorful spectrum of turn of the century
Christmas juvenilia whose beauty stands in stark contrast to the
mass-produced playthings of today.
As for Thomas Nast, his career and life ended in unexpected
tragedy. In 1902, heavily in debt and desperate for funds, he
reluctantly accepted an admiring President Theodore Roosevelt's
offer of a diplomatic post in Ecuador. There, amidst the squalor
of open sewers and nonexistent sanitation, Nast contracted yellow
fever. Shortly after sending money home to America to settle his
debts, the brilliant artist died at the age of sixty.
Of all that he left behind - and the legacy is immense - it is
said that Thomas Nast loved his Christmas Drawings best.
Certainly, they have achieved immortality, as even today there
has been little change from his much-loved original
interpretation of "the right jolly old elf."
The author gratefully acknowledges historical information
taken from an introductory narrative by Thomas Nast St. Hill
(grandson of Thomas Nast) in the book Thomas Nast's Christmas
Drawings, Dover Publications, New York, copyright 1978, which
also provided the images shown here.
