Santa Claus

by Gerry Bowler

  By the time of the birth of Santa Claus, few thought there was any shame in waging war during the holy season. George Washington’s most famous victory took place in 1776 when his troops crossed the Delaware River to catch his Hessian enemies woozy from their Christmas revelry, and in 1846 the Missouri Mounted Volunteers won the battle of Brazito on Christmas Day during the Mexican-American War. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, it was the world’s first modern war, with each side employing industrial might, mass armies, unthinkable firepower – and Santa Claus, for the emotional authority of Christmas was by now such that it should not be ignored and could be factored into plans for victory. We will see in this conflict between the Union and the Confederacy foreshadowings of the way that Christmas and its magical gift-bringers would be employed in future wars.

  When brother fought against brother, whose side was Santa on? If public appearances mattered, he seemed to be fighting for Abraham Lincoln and the soldiers clad in blue. In January 1863, Thomas Nast’s first cartoon for Harper’s Weekly in which he portrayed Santa Claus shows him dressed in the Stars and Stripes bringing Christmas presents to the Union troops. They cheer his arrival, open their gifts, and fire off artillery salutes. Inside that same issue another Nast drawing associates Santa with family yearnings for peace and reunion. A year later, Nast produced “Christmas Furlough,” which showed a soldier on temporary leave returning home for the holidays to find that Santa Claus has made his annual visit and stuffed his children’s stockings with toys. In the 1864 drawing “The Union Christmas Dinner,” Santa Claus appeared atop a portrait of President Lincoln making room at the table for Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other prodigal sons of the Confederacy. In these and other drawings commissioned by Harper’s during the Civil War, Nast used Santa Claus as the link between civilian families and the battlelines. He had identified Santa with both patriotism and the comforts of home and given war-weary Americans a potent Christmas symbol that would endure after the Union victory in 1865.

  On the first Christmas Eve of the war, Lt. Robert Gould Shaw of the 2nd Massachusetts regiment stayed up long into the night and mused:

  It began to snow about midnight, and I suppose no one ever had a better chance of seeing “Santa Claus”; but, as I had my stockings on, he probably thought it not worth his while to come down to the guard tent. I didn’t see any of the guard’s stockings pinned up outside the tent, and indeed it is contrary to army regulations for them to divest themselves of any part of their clothing during the twenty-four hours.

  Nevertheless, by the 1860s Santa Claus had not completely penetrated all of the nooks and crannies of the American continent, and he was a novelty to many of the troops on both sides. In a Union military hospital, the approach of Christmas produced a wave of interest and excitement. A volunteer nurse noted:

  Some of the boys had never heard of Santa Claus and his visits down the chimney at this merry season; and when his descent through the pipes, and passage through the stove-doors, and appearance in the tents became possibilities, there was as much amusement and anticipation among them as ever gladdened a nursery full of children. On the morning of this happy festival every man found a sock hanging by his side stuffed with mittens, scarfs, knives, suspenders, handkerchiefs, and many little things. Out of the top of each peeped a little flag; and as the men awoke, one by one, and examined the gifts of Santa Claus, shouts of merriment rang through the wards, and they were satisfied that he was a friend worth having.

  The casualty figures in this internecine struggle were enormously high, casting a pall for many over the holiday celebration. A New Hampshire newspaper reported:

  Christmas, it is to be sure, but not that merry one, remembered for its bright hours of sport, and the beautiful gifts that came from the willing hands of the father, brother and son. Old Santa Claus will be surely dressed in mourning this year, as he goes round to leave his bundles, and many a place at which he has formerly been a caller will miss his presence now.

  In the South, the effective Union blockade of coastal ports and the Mississippi River meant severe shortages and widespread deprivation. A San Antonio mother in 1862 wrote to her son at the front that his younger siblings had been “up very early enquiring what Santa Claus had done for them and found it ‘not much.’ ” Even the leaders of the Confederacy had to scrimp and improvise to produce a merry Christmas. In 1864, Varina Davis, the wife of secessionist president Jefferson Davis, delighted in the gift of “six cakes of delicious soap, made from the grease of ham boiled for a family at Farmville, a skein of exquisitely fine gray linen thread spun at home, a pincushion of some plain brown cotton material made by some poor woman and stuffed with wool from her pet sheep, and a little baby hat plaited by the orphans.” Parents in the South were hard-pressed to explain to their children why their Christmas stockings should be so empty and why Santa Claus appeared neglectful of his duties. Some resorted to the “innocent fiction of his having been robbed by the armies on his way from the country of sleds and reindeers,” while others blamed the Yankees for their blockade, which included even Santa. This latter ruse was in some sense true and also had the virtue of fixing the children’s fears and anxieties on the enemy. Said one contemporary poet to the wee ones of the Confederacy:

  I’m sorry to write,

  Our ports are blockaded and Santa, tonight,

  Will hardly get down here; for if he should start,

  The Yankees would get him unless he was “smart,”

  They beat all the men in creation to run,

  And if they could get him, they’d think it fine fun

  To put him in prison, and steal the nice toys

  He started to bring to our girls and boys.

  But try not to mind it – tell over your jokes –

  Be gay and be cheerful, like other good folks;

  For if you remember to be good and kind,

  Old Santa next Christmas will bear it in mind.

  In a postwar story about these lean times, a black servant told her master’s children not to expect Santa Claus: “What you-all talkin’ ‘bout? How you think Santy Claus gwine git t’rough dem Yankee lines? Spec’s dey gwine catch him an’ kill him, suah.” Grief-stricken, the plucky infants hasten to the Union lines and beg the blue coats to spare Santa. With a tear in his manly eye, the Northern captain reassures them: “You have saved Santa Claus, and all the little children in the world will be grateful to you; but we were not going to kill him. Oh no, we are not so hard-hearted; we were just going to take him prisoner for a while. Trot along home now. Your soldier friend is going with you to take you safely back.” On the day before Christmas, a Union soldier delivered a box, explaining that Santa Claus had been in a hurry this year and had asked the Yankees to see that the children received it. This sentimental tale may not have been entirely imaginary; in 1864, men and officers of a Michigan regiment drove through their section of Union-occupied Georgia delivering Christmas food to the families of their enemies, having tied tree branches to the heads of their mules in imitation of Santa’s reindeer.

  Shortly after the war, General Lee and Santa Claus, a children’s book by Louise Clack, offered another explanation for Santa’s absence from Confederate hearths. Three little girls – Lutie, Birdie, and Minnie (the latter still a hardened rebel because of the memory of her father, who died fighting for the South) – wonder at the absence of Santa Claus during the war years. They write to Gen. Robert E. Lee as “the goodest man who ever lived” to ask him “whether Santa Claus loves the little rebel children, for we think that he don’t; because he has not come to see us for four Christmas Eves.” General Lee replies that he himself was responsible for Santa’s actions. One December 24, 1861, he says, he spied “the queerest, funniest-looking little old fellow riding along in a sleigh through the air” and asked him to stop. He forbade Santa from heading south and told him: “Santa Claus, take every one of the toys you have back as far as Baltimore, sell them, and with the money you get buy medicines,
bandages, ointments and delicacies for our sick and wounded men; do it and do it quickly – it will be all right with the children.” Santa replied, “I obey orders, General” and for four years he took the toy money and used it to clothe and feed Confederate soldiers.

  General Lee and Santa Claus is remarkable as a Southern counterpoint to the Civil War cartoons of Thomas Nast that had made Santa Claus into a firm supporter of the Union side. Clack’s depiction of little rebel girls desolate at their desertion by Santa Claus shows how important a figure he had become in the imaginations of all American children.

  The American Civil War did much to accelerate the reception of Christmas in the United States as a holiday representing homecoming, family, and reconciliation, and indeed by 1914 Santa Claus was known not only across North America but also in Europe and its colonial dependencies around the globe. As industrialization and new child-centred ideas about Christmas developed, the nonjudgmental and jolly Santa had eclipsed older, often cruder, gift-bringers. In Scandinavia, mischievous (even dangerous) Christmas creatures left over from pagan days became milder and many lost their animal shapes and took on the form of a red-suited, white-bearded old visitor. In England, which had not had a national gift-bringer since the demise of Saint Nicholas in the sixteenth century, the name “Father Christmas” was attached to a Santa figure; the same phenomenon was observed in France with the appearance of “Père Noël” – both of these gentlemen incidentally preferred a longer robe than the American Santa and shunned his cloth cap for a monkish hood, but there is no question that these are Santa avatars. In Germany, der Weihnachtsmann – the “Christmas Man” who faithfully plods through the snow with his pack of toys – emerged as a Santa twin. They may have had different modes of transportation and slightly different costumes, but their attributes of generosity, love of children, and an ability to deal with the most challenging chimneys mark them as blood brothers. The outbreak of the First World War, therefore, meant that once again Santa Claus would be called upon to serve conflicting masters.

  Christmas is deeply entrenched in many Western cultures, and in few places is it more important than Germany, which has contributed many customs and artifacts to the way it is marked: the Advent wreath, the Advent calendar, marzipan, gingerbread houses, the lighted and decorated tree, “Silent Night,” and the bourgeois, family-centred celebration. Until the First World War, Germany was the world’s largest producer of Christmas cards. But in 1914, both the Allies and the Central Powers would produce a flood of cards that dealt with the conflict, providing a lens through which later generations could view the war with new perspectives.

  The Christmas-card manufacturers of most belligerent nations, including Imperial Germany, were quick to link Christmas with the national cause, chiefly by adorning a typical holiday image with patriotic colours or figures – in First World War Germany, the colours were black, white, and red, while in the Second World War, American and Canadian cards would overwhelmingly feature red, white, and blue. This sort of presentation allows the sender to assert that the nation and the festival are one, that patriotic values are embodied in Christmas and are worth defending. (The Islamic crescent that appears on many such German and Austrian Christmas cards is a reminder that the Turkish Empire was one of the Central Powers and that the First World War was also an official jihad – Mehmed v, as Caliph, having declared a holy war, called on all Muslims in British, French, and Russian lands to rise up and smite the Infidel.)

  A second common motif links men and the front with their families, wives, children, and sweethearts. In some cases the cards depicted a yearning soldier dreaming of the folks at home; in other cases it is the reverse. Few German First World War cards showed a soldier’s parents or grandparents, unlike American cards of the Second World War, where images of parental pride and concern were common and even Second World War German cards often featured pictures of a multigenerational family thinking of their man at the front.

  A very important message of those wartime Christmas cards sent home from the troops is: “I’m all right, mother; I have cigars.” Card after card manifested the well-supplied nature of Christmas at the front. There was no need to worry at home – in the trenches the fighting men had food, warmth, and comradeliness in great abundance. How could this not be? Santa Claus has not forgotten them; he is as much the provider to the soldier away from his family as he is to the children at home. Der Weihnachtsmann, disguised either as a fellow soldier or in his own magical form, can be counted on to visit the boys in the trenches. Sometimes Santa Claus also donned the field-grey uniform and pikelhaube helmet of the German soldier in order to discomfort the enemy – he dwarfs the villainous Frenchman, Englishman, and Russian whom he dangles as puppets or whisks away in his sack – and brought supplies of artillery and battleships to good little soldiers and sailors.

  Interestingly, German troops of the First World War also had recourse to other magical gift-bringers for supplies and moral support if Santa Claus could not make it to the front lines. Both the Christkindl and angels are widely depicted bringing comfort to the Feldgrau. In solitary form or in heavenly host, they comfort the troops in the trenches and snow – singing, healing, supplying, and reassuring – an overtly religious component that is largely missing in Allied cards and (as we will see) German cards of the Second World War.

  The magical gift-bringers of the French nation were also regarded as providers to the poilus in the trenches of the Western Front – trenches that always seem much more open to the elements and less snug than in German portrayals. We see Père Noël either filling the shoes that the soldiers have left out for him or crowning them with palm leaves and laurel wreaths symbolizing victory. No gift-bringer, though, of any war, was as thoughtful as that Père Noël depicted in a French magazine of 1916, who is shown bringing the troops a sleigh full of beautiful women, patriotic demoiselles who appear to have selflessly sacrificed their undergarments to the war effort. (The accompanying poem, “Prière Pour Pauvres Poilus,” speaks of his bringing “le voluptueux remède aux tristesses” – the voluptuous remedy for sadness.) Nor can a gift-bringer ever have been addressed in such bitter terms as in Claude Debussy’s “A Christmas Carol for Homeless Children.” “Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maison” is a denunciation of the German invasion, and almost certainly the harshest Christmas song ever written. The children of France whose towns have been burnt down and who have been orphaned call on the Christ child (“le petit Noël”) not to visit the homes of their enemies to deliver Christmas presents, but to punish them. They ask for no gifts except victory and vengeance.

  We are homeless!

  Our enemies have taken everything,

  Even our little bed!

  They burned the school and our school-master.

  They burned the church and the Lord Jesus!

  And the poor old man who couldn’t get away.

  We are homeless!

  Our enemies have taken everything,

  Even our little bed!

  Papa is away at the war,

  Poor Mama died

  Before she saw all this.

  What is to be done?

  Little Christmas, don’t go to their homes!

  Never go to their homes!

  Punish them!

  With hindsight, the culture of the Austrian and German empires are at the centre of the history of civilization: it gave the world Johannes Brahms, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Planck, Wilhelm Röntgen, Arnold Schönberg, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Hugo Wolf, and other giants of the sciences, arts, and letters. To its enemies in France and Britain, however, this “Kultur” was a “pseudo-civilization,” an “iron-toothed menace,” and hatred of it had been growing for years. Even before the First World War began, Germany had a reputation for militarism and brutishness. When Kaiser Wilhelm II dispatched a German force to quell the Boxer Rebellion in China, he told his soldiers: “When you come upon the ene
my, smite him. Pardon will not be given. Prisoners will not be taken. Whoever falls into your hands is forfeit. Once, a thousand years ago, the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one still potent in legend and tradition. May you in this way make the name German remembered in China for a thousand years.…” The nickname “Huns” stuck and when war finally broke out in Europe there was ample scope for hostile propaganda emphasizing this theme – and what better time to do this than at Christmas, a time of peace, charity, and decent behaviour? In 1915, the English cartoonist Heath Robinson illustrated a Christmas card for the British Third Division. Entitled “The Kind of Santa Claus We May Expect on Christmas Eve,” it shows a spike-helmeted German disguised as Santa placing gifts in the stockings left out in the Allied trenches. Instead of goodies, the gloating Hun is distributing tacks, nails, and bombs. An American satirical poem fixed on Kaiser Wilhelm as the prime mover in plunging the world into war and suggested that Santa Claus might have a solution:

  And so, that Europe may be spared

  … I have prepared

  A special gift for him who fared

  As Civilizer …

  A ticket Santa showed to me

  Marked: “To Perdition – one-way – free.

  Good for the Whole Durned Familee

  Of Bill the Kaiser.”

  This animosity toward the Hun may explain why it is only among the Allies that we get a glimpse of Santa as an actual fighting man, an image that will be more important in later wars. In December 1916, The Christmas Expositor, from Brantford, Ontario, published a picture of Santa Claus as a Canadian Army officer, complete with sword and Union Jack – only a bag of toys at his feet and his bushy white beard giving the imposture away, and the YMCA went a step further in 1917 when it produced a card for American troops in France with Santa Claus dressed in a white uniform of military cut, a sack full of eager American soldiers on his back. He strides across the Atlantic and, club in hand, drives off the German and his blood-stained knife. The caption reads: “Old Nick’s here with greetings to you / While we’re raising Nick with the Huns.”