Santa Claus

by Gerry Bowler

  * Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, a.k.a. “Butcher Haig,” commanded the troops of the British Empire; the French Maréchal Ferdinand Foch was in overall command of the Allies; and “Black Jack” Pershing was in charge of the American Expeditionary Force.

  * Interestingly, “Jul” does not seem to have appeared on Adolf Hitler’s Christmas cards – he used the traditional word Weihnachten – but it was the favoured term on seasonal greetings emanating from ss leader Heinrich Himmler.

  * Mussolini was called “the fascist Befana” after the kindly Christmas witch who brings gifts to Italian children at Epiphany, while Stalin posed as Grandfather Frost, the Bolshevik version of Santa Claus who appeared at New Year’s. Lepagnol, Biographies du Père Noël, p. 95; Jeffrey Brooks, “Stalin’s Politics of Obligation,” in Harold Shukman, ed., Redefining Stalinism (London: 2003) p. 55.

  * A famous Coca-Cola advertisement of 1943, subtitled “… or how Americans spread the holiday spirit overseas,” features American soldiers in a tropical setting, with a long-suffering gi being strapped by his sergeant into padding and a beard to play Santa Claus.

  * Hideki Tojo, a Japanese general, became prime minister in 1941 and was ruler of the country when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The caricature on this card may be of him or it may simply be the racist stereotype of the Japanese military common during the war.

  STRANGERS.

  FATHER CHRISTMAS. “WHAT! NOT KNOW ME!—OH, THIS MUST BE ALTERED!”

  The English artist John Tenniel demonstrates the link between charity, Christmas, and Santa Claus in this 1883 illustration for Punch magazine.

  (Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd)

  By the late nineteenth century, Santa had embarked on a career as an adman, as shown in this ad published in Harper’s Weekly. (Corbis)

  Santa lent his stamp of approval to many household products, including this household dye by the makers of Lux detergent.

  (Courtesy, Illustrated London News Picture Library)

  In 1919, he was the Christmas spokesman for Murad brand cigarettes.

  (Author’s collection)

  In the 1930s, a debauched-looking Santa found employment with the makers of the French aperitif Byrrh.

  (Author’s collection)

  There were few items Santa Claus could not be induced to advertise. In this ad, Santa announces he has abandoned his reindeer and sleigh for the speed and convenience of a Stevens-Duryea automobile. Note too that he is “loaded down with Stevens Rifles, Pistols, and Shotguns for the youth of the land.”

  (Author’s collection)

  Santa Claus in Camp: This 1862 illustration for Harper’s is Thomas Nast’s first depiction of Santa Claus and shows him bringing supplies to Union troops. The American Civil War helped to spread awareness of Santa and linked him to thoughts of family and home.

  (Author’s collection)

  By 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Santa Claus was known around the world. During the war, he played a vital role in keeping up morale at home and on the front lines.

  (Author’s collection)

  A sneaky German soldier has dressed up as Santa Claus to leave Allied troops a gift of bombs in this grim Heath Robinson cartoon of 1915.

  (Author’s collection)

  In this World War II advertisement for Interwoven socks, Santa Claus is seen thrashing the leaders of America’s enemies: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo.

  (Author’s collection)

  Le Père Noël, by Pablo Picasso, 1953. The twentieth century’s favourite artist gives his own interpretation of the gift-bringer.

  Santa holds an evergreen bough.

  (© Picasso Estate, Paris/SODRAC, 2005; Courtesy, Scala/Art Resource NY)

  VI

  Santa at the Movies (and in the Jukebox Too)

  The 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, about a department-store Santa Claus who claimed to be the real thing, was not a big hit with moviegoers when first released but has become a Christmas favourite over the years. (photo credit 6.1)

  In the nineteenth century, Santa Claus’s identity was shaped by poets, storytellers, and artists. In the twentieth century, the influence of the print media in creating Christmas lore has declined, partly because there have been few first-class literary contributions to the Santa Claus project during that time, but mainly because of the rise of the cultural importance of film and sound recordings. (This does not mean that talented writers have not tried to add to our body of knowledge of the beloved gift-bringer: L. Frank Baum of Wizard of Oz fame, e.e. cummings, Jean de Brunhoff of the Babar stories, and J.R.R. Tolkein all tackled the Santa Claus legend, but their efforts failed to add to the pre-existing tale.)

  If we are to look more closely at who has added to the store of Santa Claus knowledge, we must examine those great engines of culture over the past hundred years – the cinema and popular song. The earliest filmed representations of Santa Claus go back to the late nineteenth century and show that the various competitors for the official public image of Santa were being distilled down to two basic options: the thin European model with a floor-length robe and the fatter version (which was to triumph) with the shorter fur-trimmed jacket, broad black belt, and stocking cap. These early Santa Claus films were short on plot but big on spectacle. Here for children, who hitherto could only imagine what was happening in their fireplace, was the arrival of the jolly gift-bringer, the unloading of the sleigh, and his magical departure. The catalogue description of the 1899 short Santa Claus tells the viewer what to expect: “In this picture you see Santa Claus enter the room from the fireplace and proceed to trim the tree. He then fills the stockings that were previously hung on the mantel by the children. After walking backward and surveying his work, he suddenly darts at the fireplace and disappears up the chimney. This film surprises everyone, and leaves them to wonder how old Kris disappears.” Riveting stuff indeed, and just the sort of thing that audiences were treated to in such early Christmas fare as Santa Claus Filling Stockings (part of an 1897 tetralogy charting Santa’s activities on December 24) and Santa Claus’ Visit of 1900. The Edison Film Manufacturing Company’s The Night Before Christmas (1905) went a bit farther technically and used miniatures to recreate Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem. Even more ambitious was the 1925 pseudo-documentary Santa Claus, by Arctic explorer F.E. Kleinschmidt and his wife. Using footage shot during his Alaskan and Siberian wanderings, Kleinschmidt tells the story of Santa’s northern hideaway and his preparations for Christmas.

  As the novelty of seeing Santa on screen faded, it would take Hollywood writers decades to come up with a storyline worthy of the gift-bringer. One finally emerged in 1947 with the classic Miracle on 34th Street. This is the fable of a department-store Santa Claus who believes he is the genuine article and whose claims put the virtues of faith to the test in the legal system and the heart of a little girl.

  A white-bearded, elderly gent of kindly demeanour (played by veteran Welsh character actor Edmund Gwenn), Kris Kringle by name, is hired by Macy’s Department Store (on New York’s 34th Street) to replace the existing Santa Claus, who has fallen prey to the demon rum and disgraced his office. Once ensconced in his grotto, Kringle astonishes customers and outrages his supervisor by recommending that parents check out better bargains at other stores. Mr. Macy soon realizes that this could win his business a warm Christmassy reputation and rewards Kris’s selflessness by giving him a bonus,* but when the personnel department is unable to shake Kringle’s assertion that he is the real Santa Claus, they subject him to a sanity hearing. More troubling to the gift-bringer is the adamantine skepticism of little Susie (eight-year-old Natalie Wood), who has been brought up by a bitter mother (Maureen O’Hara) to place no trust in fairy tales or the supernatural. Handsome lawyer Fred Gailey (John Payne) tries to put in a good word for Santa Claus by telling the mother: “Look, Doris, someday you’re going to find that your way of facing this realistic world just doesn’t work. And when you do, don’t overlook those
lovely intangibles. You’ll discover those are the only things that are worthwhile.” He asserts to Susie that “faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” The battle to prove Kris Kringle’s sanity is more than an investigation of one old man’s mental health; “kindness and joy and love and all the other intangibles” were also on trial. With the help of the U.S. Post Office, Gailey demonstrates to the satisfaction of the court that Kris is, in fact, the real thing, and Kris helps to bring Fred, Doris, and Susie together as a family who we are sure will live happily ever after. The 1947 Miracle on 34th Street achieved classic status and is replayed on television every Christmas season. It spawned a number of remakes (three times for TV, and once in 1994 on the big screen with Richard Attenborough standing in for Edmund Gwenn), all of which are creditable in their own way but none of which are as lovable as the original.

  Though she was a hard sell, little Susie eventually invested her faith in Santa Claus without first having to see proof. A far more difficult character to convince, and probably the least credulous child in Santa movie history, is Hero Boy, the central character of the animated film The Polar Express (2004). At an age when his friends insist that magical Christmas Eve visitors aren’t real, the Boy wakes on the night of December 24 to find a steam engine and train in his front yard. He boards it, rides with other pyjama-clad youngsters through heart-stopping and gravity-defying adventures to the North Pole, and arrives in a city full of elves manufacturing toys and loading a reindeer-pulled sleigh. A child with a less literal mind might have been swayed by all this enchantment, but astonishingly Hero Boy’s lack of faith prevails until he actually sets eyes on Santa Claus – only then he is converted back to a more childlike trust. Though the movie’s advertising campaign stressed “a journey of self-discovery,” which shows “that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe,” the actual message is, as the train’s conductor lamely says, “Seeing is believing.” The splendid animation in this movie is not matched by the philosophical profundity of its writers.

  “Credo ut intellegam,” said Saint Anselm, “I believe in order that I may understand”; “Seeing isn’t believing,” says Little Elf Judy in The Santa Clause (1994), “Believing is seeing.” Faith is the key to a trio of films with a similar theme: The Santa Clause, Ernest Saves Christmas (1988), and a Canadian television film entitled Must Be Santa (1999). Here, however, the faith required is not that of a little child but of a newly appointed Santa Claus who must come to grips with an unexpected call to the status of gift-bringer. Presented with the daunting proposition that one is to abandon one’s previous life and assume the mantle of toy deliverer to the children of the world, what would our reactions be? Almost certainly more resistant to the notion than the heroes of these movies are, all of whom, in the end, gallantly shoulder the burden and continue life with a hearty “Ho, Ho, Ho.” In Elf (2003), we are told that Santa’s sleigh is powered by Christmas spirit that depends on “believing not seeing” and this, around the world, is such a rapidly diminishing resource that Santa crashes in New York’s Central Park. Luckily, a chorus of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” sung by curious onlookers is enough to get him and his reindeer off the ground again.

  Enquiring minds among the screenwriting crowd turned at length to the question of Santa’s origins, and the prolific partnership of Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. provided a number of answers. For a time Bass and Rankin had the market in Christmas animation cornered, producing such perennials as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), ’Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974), Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977), Jack Frost (1979), and more. In the 1970 Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, they told the tale of the Kringles, a family of toymakers who adopt a foundling, Kris, who grows up wanting to make children happy. This is frowned upon in Sombertown, but the young gift-bringer (voiced by Mickey Rooney,* who could sound suitably juvenile even in his mid-fifties) overcomes killjoys such as Burgermeister Meisterburger to bring Christmas delights and win the heart of the fair Jessica. Fifteen years later, Bass and Rankin put L. Frank Baum’s novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985), with its cast of fairies, demons, gnomes, and woodland sprites, on film. A longer remake of Baum’s story with a Celtic-flavoured musical score appeared in 2000.

  Providing an ever-so-slightly-more earthbound answer to the question of origins, Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) explained that about a thousand years ago a childless couple – Claus, a kindly medieval woodcarver, and his wife, Anya – nearly froze to death while on a midwinter trip to deliver toys. They awake in a land populated by elves who explain that Claus is the Chosen One – the fulfillment of an old prophesy about who would become the planet’s next gift-bringer. On the other hand, according to In the Nick of Time (1991), an ancient manuscript revealed that the Order of Santa Claus was established by none other than Saint Nicholas as a way to spread joy to families at Christmastime.

  The notion that Santa Claus might be immortal and unchanging over the centuries seems to have troubled Hollywood deeply. In a number of movies, filmmakers have tried to replace this idea with the dramatically charged proposition that Santa has a limited term in office and will eventually need to find a successor. In the Nick of Time, for example, posits an exactly three-hundred-year stint for Santa Claus. When careless bookkeeping reveals this fact only a week before his term is to expire, Santa (Lloyd Bridges) must seek out a replacement. He wanders the chilly New York streets to find the new gift-bringer, lest Christmas disappear forever. In Call Me Claus (2001), the retiring Santa, at the end of his two-hundred-year contract, nominates an African-American female, played by Whoopi Goldberg.

  Must Be Santa, a 1999 CBC-TV movie, reputedly the most expensive ever mounted by the CBC, revealed that everyone at the North Pole is immortal except Santa, who must be replaced when it comes time to “join the Santa Senate” by crossing over to the “angel side of the Pole.” (There is a sly Canuck joke here. In the Canadian system of government, the national Senate is legendarily filled with the senile and the second rate.) And, since Santas are always chosen from among mortals, their careers seem to be no more than thirty or forty years. Here the current Santa is on his last legs, neglecting his duties, yearning for the golf course, yet unable to get around save in a wheelchair. His plan is to pass on his job to a Salvation Army accountant, but he mistakenly nominates as his heir an arsonist and shoplifter on the run from the police. In Ernest Saves Christmas, the incumbent Santa Claus, a mere baby at 151 years of age, is retiring and wishes to bequeath his magic sack to a successor, kids’ show host Joe Carruthers. The magic that powers his bottomless bag of toys is fading away and only passing on the job will recharge it.

  The most popular movie about the succession crisis is The Santa Clause, a 1994 film whose title has done much to confuse careless spellers around the world at Christmastime. Here we learn that when “by accident or design” the previous Santa is unable to fulfill his duties, the job passes to the next person to don the red suit – whereupon the “Santa Clause” kicks in. Written on a card, in miniature print, it states: “In putting on the suit and entering the sleigh the wearer waives all right to a previous identity, real or implied, and fully accepts the duties and responsibilities of Santa Claus in perpetuity.” Scott Calvin (note the initials), who has witnessed Santa fall off his roof, steps into his sleigh and unwittingly becomes the successor to the gift-bringer, rapidly putting on weight, growing a beard, and acquiring a ruddy complexion.

  In the 2002 sequel, The Santa Clause 2, we learn of an even-more microscopic codicil that has to be fulfilled by Scott: the so-called “Mrs. Clause,” whereby he must find a bride before Christmas Eve. Failure to do so, of course, puts Christmas at risk forever. The woman he chooses is lovely to look at but has a chilly exterior that must be carefully warmed. As a frosty school principal, she asks a tardy student to look into her eyes and tell her what he sees. Shaken, he replies: “It’s dark … and it’s cold.” Most Mr
s. Santas are not that daunting. Some, like Anya of Santa Claus: The Movie or Mrs. Claus of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964), are built along the lines laid down by story-tellers of the late nineteenth century, tending to be round, domestic women with white hair. This does not mean they are mere cookie pushers. It was Anya, for example, who, in the eighteenth century, was outraged by bad little boys tormenting their sisters and pets and who suggested the Naughty or Nice lists, dooming centuries of badly behaved kids to lumps of coal in their stockings. In Mrs. Santa Claus (1996), we see Santa’s consort (played by the ageless Angela Lansbury) demonstrating an independent streak. When her husband won’t listen to her plans for improving the efficiency of the Christmas Eve circumnavigation, she determines to use the magic sleigh to test her theory. Things go badly awry and she is stranded in 1910 New York while the reindeer heal. Here, her feminist proclivities are put to work for women’s suffrage and improved labour conditions in toy workshops. She sets things to rights and returns to the North Pole to a relieved and more attentive husband.