Santa Claus

by Gerry Bowler

  8 Other never-to-be-repeated: Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton: 1995), p. 132;

  9 (The Arctic hideaway: George C. McWhorter, “Christmas Guests,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1866, p. 354;

  10 In a Christmas cantata: Rowland H. Radcliffe, Santa’s Santalady (Millville: 1924), p. 24;

  11 A satirical magazine: “The Little Known Wife of the Well Known Santa Claus! Being an Exclusive Interview with Mary Louise Claus, a Woman of Charm and Personality by Helena Smith-Dayton,” Puck, December 2, 1916, p. 15;

  12 “Gentlemen, I haven’t”: Bell Eliott Palmer, Mrs. Santa Claus, Militant: A Christmas Comedy (Franklin, OH: 1914), scene II;

  13 “She was glad that”: Joan McNeely Jurgensohn, Santa’s Christmas in France (n.p.: 1918);

  14 Parents would go to: Marion Harland, “Nettie’s Prayer,” Godey’s Ladies’ Magazine, December 1865, 491;

  15 His cries of alarm frightened: Restad, Christmas in America, p. 150. Emergency-room physicians would come to recognize the symptoms of this foolhardiness. Lauren R. Boglioli and Mark L. Taff, “ ‘The Santa Claus Syndrome’ Entrapment in Chimneys,” Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol. 40 (3), 1995 p. 499;

  16 “Plum cherished a firm”: Constance F. Woolson, “A Merry Christmas,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1872, p. 234;

  17 “I will call at your”: This 1875 letter is reprinted in Irena Chambers, ed., The Great American Christmas Almanac (New York: 1988), p. 306;

  18 However, despite the threat: John B. Smith, “Perchta the Belly-Slitter and Her Kin: A View of Some Traditional Threatening Figures, Threats and Punishments,” Folklore, 115 (2004): 167–186;

  19 who continued his whip-cracking: Belsnickle seems to have faded away from Philadelphia after the 1830s but persisted in the rural areas. Susan G. Davis, “ ‘Making Night Hideous’: Christmas Revelry and Public Order in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia,” American Quarterly, 34 (2), 1982, p. 187. Alfred L. Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania: A Folk-Cultural Study (Kutztown: 1959), pp. 73 ff;

  20 “a whip or an old rusty jewsharp”: December 4, 1848; in Penne Restad, Christmas in America (New York: 1995), p. 56;

  21 “However deficient in”: Grace King, “The Christmas Story of a Little Church,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1888, p. 106;

  22 “Love is the moral”: “The Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1856, p. 265;

  23 Moreover, by channelling: See David Hamlin, “The Structures of Toy Consumption: Bourgeois Domesticity and Demand for Toys in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of Social History (36.4), 2004, pp. 857–69 and Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century (New York: 2002), pp. 43–44, for the advantages to parents of attributing gifts to a magical gift-bringer;

  24 “Christmas shall be”: Harland, “Nettie’s Prayer,” p. 493.

  III: Santa as Advocate

  1 “A Puzzled Santa Claus”: Lilian Heath, ed., Platform Pearls for Temperance Workers and Other Reformers (Toronto: 1896). Santa has a wife in this poem too, Dame Goody;

  2 “His Majesty, the Santa Claws”: Christopher Morris, “Shopping for America, Or How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Pemberton Mall,” Reviews in American History, 29.1, 2001, p. 103;

  3 (The Klan would be up: In John Shlien, “Santa Claus: The Myth in America,” ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Summer 1959, p. 393;

  4 In protest, Santa Claus: Kenneth Teitelbaum and William J. Reese, “American Socialist Pedagogy and Experimentation in the Progressive Era: The Socialist Sunday School,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4, 1983, p. 453;

  5 or when the Newspaper Guild: Andrew L. Yarrow, “News and Unions See Hope in Talks,” New York Times, December 9, 1990, p. 42;

  6 The drawing “On Santa Claus’s: William Balfour Ker, “On Santa Claus’s Picket Line,” Century Illustrated Monthly, vol. 69, 1904, p. 318;

  7 Left-wing appropriation of Santa: “Xmas Spirit,” Peace News for Nonviolent Revolution, January 1999, p. 6; Mary Fan, “Protestors Bring Tales of Nike Wrongs,” Arizona Daily Wildcat, April 17, 1998;

  8 A rather shrivelled Santa: “Ho, Ho, Ho … Oh, No!” http://www.goveg.com/feat/Santa/santa.html;

  9 During the runup to: Common Dreams Progressive Newswire: http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/news2003/1209-07.htm;

  10 They choose these characters: John Walsh, “The Caped Crusade,” The Independent, 5 February 2004;

  11 “We reject in a mass”: Katherine Lambert Richards, How Christmas Came to the Sunday-Schools (New York: 1934), p. 60;

  12 “That particular period of time”: “The Seasons,” The Friends Intelligencer, January 3, 1843, in Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, p. 9;

  13 No more Twelve Days of Christmas: Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America: A History (New York: 1995), p. 18;

  14 “There are several luxuries”: “Holidays,” New York Times, December 25, 1856, p. 4;

  15 With the holiday once more: Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton: 1995) p. 121;

  16 In Sioux Falls, South Dakota: Tommy R. Thompson, “Angels and Dollars: One Hundred Years of Christmas in Sioux Falls,” South Dakota History, vol. 26 (4), 1996, p. 198;

  17 So regular a feature: Schmidt, p. 136;

  18 These Christmas productions were: Washington Gladden, Santa Claus on a Lark and Other Christmas Stories (New York: 1890), p. 175;

  19 It is little wonder that: Richards, p. 146;

  20 It is, they say: Marie-Christine Mottet, Le père Noël est une figure (Paris: 1996), p. 127;

  21 “I am happier tonight”: In Schmidt, p. 143;

  22 “All love and honor”: Marion Harland, “A Christmas Talk with Mothers,” Godey’s Ladies’ Magazine, November 1865, p. 402;

  23 There was little aid from: Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: 1986) p. 13;

  24 “You shall not be left”: Helen M. Cleveland, Santa Claus’ Home and Other Stories and Rhymes for Mamma to Read Aloud (Boston: 1896), n.p.;

  25 Emphasis was placed on: Elof Axel Carlson, The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor: 2001), p. 85;

  26 In imitating Santa Claus: Kate V. Thompson, “Kitty’s Christmas Stocking,” St. Nicholas Magazine, March 1893, p. 387;

  27 The hard-hearted woman is: Marjorie Richards, “Mrs. Santa Claus,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, January 1895, pp. 87–94;

  28 “Then she put down her box”: Captain Charles King, “Captain Santa Claus,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, December 1887, p. 120;

  29 Writers reflected on how: Susan J. Matt, “Children’s Envy and the Emergence of a Modern Consumer Ethic, 1890–1930,” Journal of Social History, Winter 2002, pp. 283–302. Some contemporaries were more sanguine. In 1877, B.B. Snow remarked about the increasing extravagance of children’s gifts that it was “worth living in this last quarter of the 19th century, if nothing more than to see how Santa Claus has picked up in the world.” Collection of the Cayuga County Historical Association, no. 8 (Auburn: 1890), p. 116;

  30 An 1897 cartoon: “Two Letters to Santa Claus,” Life, December 16, 1897;

  31 The author said that: Ellis P. Butler, “Something for the Kid,” Cosmopolitan, January 1911, in William B. Waits, The Modern Christmas in America (New York: 1993), p. 126;

  32 “Dandy, aren’t they?”: Stephen Leacock, “The Errors of Christmas,” Puck, 2 December 1916, p. 17;

  33 “bloated and brutal faces”: Washington Gladden, Santa Claus on a Lark and Other Christmas Stories (New York: 1890), p. 170;

  34 “Wulfy looked sober too”: Vida D. Scudder, “Wulfy: A Waif. A Christmas Sketch From Life,” Century Magazine, December, 1891, p. 280;

  35 “Now let us go to the far”: “Our Christmas Entertainment,” The American Missionary, November 1884, p. 342;

  36 Naturally, the father’s future: Izola Forrester,
“A Snow-Bound Santa Claus,” St. Nicholas Magazine, December 1905, p. 115;

  37 This is Berryman Livingstone: Thomas Nelson Page, Santa Claus’s Partner (New York: 1899);

  38 “You’re all coming”: Holworthy Hall, “The Same Old Christmas Story,” Puck, December 2, 1916, p. 24;

  39 Its success spawned imitators: Mary Ann Jeffreys, Christian History, 1990, vol. 9 (2), p. 37;

  40 The five original soliciting: “Volunteers of America Sidewalk Santas,” http:www//voa.org;

  41 “Did you really kiss”: Dear Santa: Children’s Letters to the North Pole (Toronto: 1993);

  42 “If you want anything from”: “5,689 Santa Notes at Post Office; One Asks Only for ‘Dinner for Mommy,’ ” New York Times, December 13, 1950, p. 37;

  43 “Dear Santa”: Carl Anderson and Jim Walker Jr., eds. All I Want for Christmas Is … Letters from Santa’s Mailbag (Deerfield Beach: 1998), p. 44;

  44 “Dear beloving Santa”: Anderson and Walker, pp. 49, 48, and 51;

  45 All of us who work: Barbara Sjoholm, “Dear Santa,” Smithsonian, 34 (9), December 2003;

  46 Sad to report, only: “Police called to Santa rumble,” The Daily Mail, 10 December 2004. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/15228144?version=1.

  IV: Santa the Adman

  1 In the advertising industry,: James B. Twitchell, 20 Ads That Shook the World (New York: 2000), p. 211;

  2 What appeared in the children’s: William B. Waits, The Modern Christmas in America (New York: 1993), p. 25;

  3 temple of “Santaclaus”: Schmidt, p. 135;

  4 “Pease’s Great Varety”: Bowler, The World Encyclopedia of Christmas, p. 174;

  5 Children were instructed: Robert C. Hoffman, Postcards from Santa Claus: Sights and Sentiments from the Last Century (Garden City Park: 2002), p. 13;

  6 “My Dear Friend”: Hoffman, p. 22;

  7 His stores were decorated: Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: 1974), p. 159;

  8 These advertisements worked: Ellen Gruder Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: 1996), p. 4;

  9 A frequent, stereotypical image: Thomas Hine, I Want That: How We All Became Shoppers, (New York: 2002), p. 177;

  10 “People will not buy a thing”: Waits, p. 25;

  11 A U.S. senator had claimed: Mark Pendergast, For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It (New York: 1993), p. 162;

  12 Two full-page ads: Cecil Munsey, “Santa Claus: White Rock’s Pre-dates Coca-Cola’s,” Bottles and Extras, 14 (4), Fall 2003, p. 34;

  13 in 1943, he relaxes in an: These and most of the Sundblom Coca-Cola paintings are included in Barbara Fahs Charles and J.R. Taylor, Dreams of Santa: Haddon Sundblom’s Advertising Paintings for Christmas, 1931–1964 (New York: 1992);

  14 He was commissioned to: Frederick Allen, Secret Formula (New York: 1995), p. 237;

  15 This manliness craze declined: Waits, Modern American Christmas, p. 137–39. Bruce Watson, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made (New York: 2002), p. 99;

  16 In 1987, when the Anheuser-: “Ohio: Pull Spuds or Suds,” USA Today, December 3, 1987, p. A3;

  17 In a heart-warming display: “Cover that bottom, Brazilian judge orders,” http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/12/19/life.brazil.playboy.reut;

  18 If truth be told, the: http://www.erco.cz;

  19 He wished to pass a bill: Lyle C. Erb, “The Marketing of Christmas: A History,” Public Relations Quarterly, 30 (3) Fall 1985, p. 26;

  20 In the first years of the: Waits, The Modern American Christmas, p. 25;

  21 “Santa Claus advertising”: Thomas R. King, “Norelco Fires Santa From Ads; Sales Gain,” Wall Street Journal, December 29, 1989, p. 1;

  22 This story has a happier: “Turn of the Scrooge,” Saturday Night, December 23, 2000, p. 15;

  23 Fearful that viewers might: Rob Walker, “Ad Report Card: Sony’s Santa Sadists,” Slate, Dec. 11, 2000, http://slate.msn.com/id/1006665/;

  24 “Which religion is the”: http://www.chrismahanukwanzakah.com;

  25 For a time parents: Philip Snyder, December 25: The Joys of Christmas Past (New York: 1985) p. 236;

  26 “ ’Twas the day before”: Robert L. May, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Chicago: 1939);

  27 Again Rudolph saves: Robert L. May, Rudolph’s Second Christmas (Bedford: 1992);

  28 When he ignores his own: Robert L. May, Rudolph Shines Again (New York: 1954);

  29 “In the old days”: Don Marquis, “An Interview with Santa Claus,” Life, 2 December, 1930, p. 1034;

  30 Merchants’ airy claims: Philadelphia North American, December 25, 1841, in Shoemaker, p. 46;

  31 “Santa Claus and Sampson’s”: David Goss, “New Brunswick’s First Santa Claus: The Story of Fredericton Confectioner Charles A. Sampson,” New Brunswick Reader, December 15, 2001;

  32 Approximately 7,500 Santas: International Council of Shopping Centers, based on a 1996 survey of two hundred regional malls;

  33 They vowed that if: Library of Congress, I’ll Be Home for Christmas: The Library of Congress Revisits the Spirit of Christmas During World War II (New York: 1999), p. 43;

  34 The commission ruled: Stephen Goode, “Santa Claus Transvestite Has No Right to Scare Kids,” Insight on the News, November 20, 2000;

  35 In the meantime,: David Gonzalez, “His Daughter Has Santa’s Job on Her List,” New York Times, December 6, 1997, p. B1;

  36 Many of those who: Wendy Murray Zoba, “Reclaiming Santa,” Christianity Today, December 4, 2000, is a particularly engaging true story of a heartwarming Santa Claus;

  37 Children bring Santas: Joyce Jones, “The Importance of Being Santa Claus,” New York Times, December 5, 1993, p. NJ 12; Greta Pennell and Ellen Seidman, “What I Learned from Spying on Santa,” Good Housekeeping, December 1996;

  38 None of the children: Bruce Ward, “Santa Blahs: the twinkle is gone,” CanWest News Service, December 14, 2003;

  39 Starting in 1916: William R. Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: 1994), p. 89;

  40 In 1946, the singing cowboy: Bowler, The World Encyclopedia of Christmas, p. 172;

  41 A social historian has: Schmidt, Consumer Rites, p. 147.

  V: Santa the Warrior

  1 “It began to snow about”: Kenneth Rawlings, We Were Marching at Midnight: a history and chronicle of Christmas during the Civil War (Baltimore: 1995), p. 39. Shaw would go on to lead the 54th Massachusetts regiment, composed of African-American volunteers, and would die with hundreds of his men in the 1863 attack on Fort Wagner. Their story was told in the 1989 movie Glory;

  2 “Some of the boys”: Anonymous, “Hospital Memories,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1867, p. 335;

  3 “Christmas, it is to”: The Father’s Cabinet, 26 December 1861, in Ruth C. Page, “Celebrating Christmas in New Hampshire,” Historical New Hampshire, p. 144;

  4 A San Antonio mother: Elizabeth Silverstone, Christmas in Texas (College Station: 1990), p. 12;

  5 In 1864, Varina Davis: Varina Davis, “Christmas in the Confederate White House,” The New York World, December 13, 1896, p. 26. http://www.civilwar.org/historyclassroom/hc_csachristmas.htm;

  6 Some resorted to the: A.C. Gordon, “Hard Times in the Confederacy,” Century Magazine, September 1888, p. 770;

  7 “I’m sorry to write”: Harnett T. Kane, The Southern Christmas Book (New York: 1958), p. 207;

  8 On the day before Christmas: Mary T. Van Denburgh, “How Santa Claus Was Saved,” Harper’s Monthly, December 1898, pp. 27–29;

  9 in 1864, men and officers: Rawlings, p. 124;

  10 Santa replied: Louise Clack, General Lee and Santa Claus (Germantown: 1996) was originally published in 1867;

  11 No gift-bringer, though: Catherine Lepagnol, Les Biographies du Père Noël (Paris: 1979), illustration between pp. 95–96;
<
br />   12 To its enemies in: See Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Toronto: 1989), pp. 77–80, for the notion of a struggle between “Kultur” and “Zivilisation.”;

  13 “And so, that Europe”: Wallace Irvin, “A Practical Santa Claus,” Puck, 2 December 1916, p. 16;

  14 The caption reads: Robert C. Hoffman, Postcards from Santa Claus (New York: 2002), p. 70;

  15 Much of the party’s: Corey Ross, “Celebrating Christmas in the Third Reich and GDR” in Karin Friedrich, ed., Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Lewiston: 2000), p. 324;

  16 A Nazi Christmas film: Joseph B. Perry, “The Private Life of the Nation: Christmas and the Invention of the Modern Germany,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001, p. 244;

  17 the emphasis would be on: Esther Gajek, “Christmas Under the Third Reich,” Anthropology Today, August 1990, Vol. 6 (4), p. 5;

  18 Children in state: Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945 (London: 1971), pp. 446–447; Patrick Glynn, God the Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World (Rocklin: 1999), p. 159;

  19 Party propaganda experts: Hauptkulturamt in der Reichspropagandaleitung, Vorweihnachten (Munich: 1942);

  20 Other Nazi publications: Hauptkulturamt in der Reichspropagandaleitung, Deutsche Kriegsweihnacht (Munich: 1941–44) and Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Abteilung Inland, Soldatenblätter für Feier und Freizeit (Leipzig: 1940–44);

  21 This secularization: Helmut Krausnick, “Soldatenblatter und Weihnachtfest – Ein BriefWechsel,” Viertelsjahrhefte der Zeitgesichte, 1957, vol. 5 (3), pp. 297–99;

  22 As they leave: Vorweihnachten, p. 23; a translation of this poem by Theo Schiller is in Perry, The Private Life of the Nation, p. 315. An excellent overview of Christmas images in the Third Reich is Judith Breuer and Rita Breuer, Von Wegen Heilige Nacht! Das Weihnachtsfest in der Politischen Propaganda (Mühlheim an der Ruhr: 2000);

  23 Artists and Christmas-card: Kathleen Stokker, “Anti-Nazi Card Tricks: Underground Christmas Greetings in Occupied Norway,” Journal of Popular Culture, Summer 1997, vol. 31 (1);