Design Crafters

While it’s true that Santa Claus started as a real person, Saint Nicholas, a minor saint from the fourth century, the popular view of  Santa thing that we celebrate today, along with all the crazy things surrounding Santa like the sleigh, the flying reindeer and the chimney, all cam largely from two publishing events that occurred in the 1800’s and one advertising campaign in this century.

Clement Moore wrote "The Night Before Christmas" in 1822 for his family. It was picked up by a newspaper, then reprinted in magazines and it spread like wildfire. He finally admitted authorship in 1838. If you read the poem, you will fine that he names the reindeer, invents the sleigh, comes up with the chimney and the bay of toys, etc. Nearly everyone in America has been able to recognize or recite this poem since the 1830s.

Between 1863 and 1886, Harper’s Weekly (a popular magazine of the time)
ran a series of engravings by Thomas Nast. From these images come the
concepts of Santa’s workshop, Santa reading letters, Santa checking his
list and so on. Coca-Cola also played a role in the Santa image by
running a set of paintings by Haddon Sundblom in its ads between 1931
to 1964.

The red and white suit came, actually, from the original Saint
Nicholas. Those colors were the colors of the traditional bishop’s
robes. Of course you can see Santa dressed in what became the traditional red and white furry Santa Claus suite in many Christmas cards offered today.