From St. Nicholas to Santa Claus: the surprising origins of Kris Kringle

Any kid can tell you where Santa Claus is
from—the North Pole. But his historical journey is even longer and
more fantastic than his annual, one-night circumnavigation of the
globe.

The progenitor of the modern American
Santa was born in the Mediterranean during the Roman Empire, his
legend evolved across northern Europe, and he finally assumed his
now-familiar form on the shores of the New World. Who is this
ancestor of Santa, and how did he change over time? (See “Christmas in July—Inside a Santa Summer
Camp.^[1]“)

Every December 6, the faithful celebrate
St. Nicholas Day in cities all over the world, with the largest
ones taking place in Europe. Images of St. Nicholas vary
considerably, but none of them look much like the red-cheeked,
white-bearded old man seen everywhere today. One of the most
compelling views of the real St. Nick, who lived in the third and
fourth centuries, was created not by ancient artists but by using
modern forensic facial reconstruction.

Scholarly debate over where the remains
of the Greek bishop rest continues to this day, but traditionally,
it was believed that the bones of St. Nicholas were stolen by
Italian sailors during the 11th century and taken to the crypt of
the Basilica di San
Nicola^[2] on the southeast coast
of Italy. When the crypt was repaired in the 1950s, the saint’s
skull and bones were documented with x-ray photos and thousands of
detailed measurements. (For theories on other possible resting
places of St. Nicholas, read: “Could
the Remains of Santa Claus Be in This Turkish Church?^[3]“)

Caroline Wilkinson, a facial
anthropologist at the University of Manchester (England), used
these data and modern software simulations to create a modern
reconstruction of the long-dead man. Wilkinson put a human face on
Santa’s original namesake—one with a badly broken nose, possibly
suffered during the persecution of Christians under the Roman
Emperor Diocletian.

Much of her work is necessarily subject to interpretation. The
size and shape of the facial muscles that once covered Nicholas’s
skull had to be inferred, and the shape of that skull itself was
recreated from two-dimensional data. Digital artists added details
that were based on best guesses, including the olive-toned skin
most common among Greek Mediterraneans like Nicholas, brown eyes,
and the gray hair of a 60-year-old man.

"We are bound to have lost some of the level of detail
you would get by working from photographs, but we believe this is
the closest we are ever going to get to him," Wilkinson
said in the BBC Two feature film of the project entitled The
Real Face of Santa^[4].

How did this St. Nicholas turn into the North Pole-dwelling
bringer of Christmas gifts? The original saint was a Greek born in
the late third century, around 280 A.D. He became bishop of Myra, a
small Roman town in modern Turkey. Nicholas was neither fat nor
jolly but developed a reputation as a fiery, wiry, and defiant
defender of church doctrine during the Great Persecution in 303,
when Bibles were burned and priests made to renounce Christianity
or face execution.

Nicholas defied these edicts and spent years in prison before
the Roman emperor Constantine ended Christian persecution in 313
with the Edict of Milan. Nicholas’s fame lived long after his death
(on December 6 in the mid-fourth century, around 343) because he
was associated with many miracles, and reverence for him continues
to this day independent of his Christmas connection. He is the
protector of many types of
people,^[5] from orphans to sailors
to prisoners.

Nicholas rose to prominence among the saints because he was the
patron of so many groups. By about 1200, explained University of
Manitoba historian Gerry
Bowler^[6], author of Santa
Claus: A Biography^[7], he became known as a
patron of children and magical gift bringer because of two great
stories from his life.

In the better-known tale, three young girls are saved from a
life of prostitution when young Bishop Nicholas secretly delivers
three bags of gold to their indebted father, which can be used for
their dowries.

"The other story is not so well known now but was
enormously well known in the Middle Ages," Bowler said.
Nicholas entered an inn whose keeper had just murdered three boys
and pickled their dismembered bodies in basement barrels. The
bishop not only sensed the crime, but resurrected the victims as
well. "That’s one of the things that made him the patron
saint of children."

For several hundred years, circa 1200 to 1500, St. Nicholas was
the unchallenged bringer of gifts and the toast of celebrations
centered around his feast day, December 6. The strict saint took on
some aspects of earlier European deities, like the Roman Saturn or
the Norse Odin, who appeared as white-bearded men and had magical
powers like flight. He also ensured that kids toed the line by
saying their prayers and practicing good behavior.

But after the Protestant Reformation began in the
1500s,^[8] saints like Nicholas
fell out of favor across much of northern Europe. "That
was problematic," Bowler said. "You still love
your kids, but now who is going to bring them the
gifts?"

Bowler said that, in many cases, that job fell to baby Jesus,
and the date was moved to Christmas rather than December 6.
"But the infant’s carrying capacity is very limited, and
he’s not very scary either," Bowler said. "So the
Christ child was often given a scary helper to do the lugging of
presents and the threatening of kids that doesn’t seem appropriate
coming from the baby Jesus."

Some of these scary Germanic figures again were based on
Nicholas, no longer as a saint but as a threatening sidekick like
Ru-klaus (Rough Nicholas), Aschenklas (Ashy Nicholas), and
Pelznickel (Furry Nicholas). These figures expected good behavior
or forced children to suffer consequences like whippings or
kidnappings. Dissimilar as they seem to the jolly man in red, these
colorful characters would later figure in the development of Santa
himself. (Related: "Who Is Krampus? Explaining the
Horrific Christmas Devil^[9].")

In the Netherlands, kids and families simply refused to give up
St. Nicholas as a gift bringer. They brought Sinterklaas
with them to New World colonies, where the legends of the shaggy
and scary Germanic gift bringers also endured.

But in early America Christmas wasn’t much like the modern
holiday. The holiday was shunned in New England, and elsewhere it
had become a bit like the pagan Saturnalia that once occupied its
place on the calendar. "’It was celebrated as a kind of
outdoor, alcohol-fueled, rowdy community blowout," Bowler
said. "That’s what it had become in England as well. And
there was no particular, magical gift bringer."

Then, during the early decades of the 19th century, all that
changed thanks to a series of poets and writers who strove to make
Christmas a family celebration—by reviving and remaking St.
Nicholas.

Washington Irving’s 1809 book Knickerbocker’s History
of New York^[10] first portrayed a
pipe-smoking Nicholas soaring over the rooftops in a flying wagon,
delivering presents to good girls and boys and switches to bad
ones.

In 1821 an anonymous illustrated poem entitled "The
Children’s Friend" went much further in shaping the modern
Santa and associating him with Christmas. "Here we finally
have the appearance of a Santa Claus," Bowler said.
"They’ve taken the magical gift-bringing of St. Nicholas,
stripped him of any religious characteristics, and dressed this
Santa in the furs of those shaggy Germanic gift
bringers."

That figure brought gifts to good girls and boys, but he also
sported a birch rod, the poem noted, that "directs a
Parent’s hand to use when virtue’s path his sons refuse."
Santa’s thin wagon was pulled by a single reindeer—but both driver
and team would get a major makeover the next year.

In 1822 Clement Clarke Moore wrote "A Visit From St.
Nicholas^[11]," better known
today as "The Night Before Christmas," for his
six children, with no intention of adding to the fledgling Santa
Claus phenomenon. It was published anonymously the next year, and
to this day the plump, jolly Santa described therein rides a sleigh
driven by eight familiar reindeer.

"It went viral," Bowler said. But familiar as
the poem is, it still leaves much to the imagination, and the 19th
century saw Santa appear in different-colored clothing, in sizes
from miniature to massive, and in a variety of different guises.
"I have a wonderful picture of him that looks exactly like
George Washington riding a broomstick," Bowler said.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century, he added, that the image
of Santa became standardized as a full-size adult, dressed in red
with white fur trim, venturing out from the North Pole in a
reindeer-driven sleigh and keeping an eye on children’s
behavior.

The jolly, chubby, grandfatherly face of this Santa was largely
created by Thomas
Nast^[12], the great political
cartoonist in an era that featured many. "However, Nast
did leave him half-sized," Bowler added, "and in
what I think are rather indecent long johns."

Once firmly established, North America’s Santa then underwent a
kind of reverse migration to Europe, replacing the scary gift
bringers and adopting local names like Père
Noël (France) or Father Christmas (Great Britain).
"What he’s done is pretty much tame these Grimm’s Fairy
Tales-type characters from the late medieval days," Bowler
said.

Though he undoubtedly means well, Santa has certainly stirred
up, and continues to create, more than his fair share of
controversy.

In Russia, Santa Claus fell afoul of Josef Stalin. Before the
Russian Revolution, Grandfather Frost (Ded Moroz^[13]) was a favored figure
of Christmas who had adopted characteristics of proto-Santas like
the Dutch Sinterklaas. "When the Soviet Union was formed,
the communists abolished the celebration of Christmas and gift
bringers," Bowler said.

"Then in the 1930s, when Stalin needed to build
support, he allowed the reemergence of Grandfather Frost not as a
Christmas gift bringer but as a New Year’s gift bringer,"
Bowler added. Attempts to displace Christmas in Russia were
ultimately unsuccessful, as were Soviet attempts to spread a
secular version of Grandfather Frost, complete with blue coat to
avoid Santa confusion, across Europe.

"Everywhere they went after World War II, the Soviets
tried to replace the native gift bringers in places like Poland or
Bulgaria," Bowler explained. "But local people
just sort of held their noses until the Soviet Union collapsed in
1989 and returned to their own traditions."

Santa remains a politicized figure around the world. American
troops spread their version of the jolly man around the world in
the years immediately following World War II, and he was generally
welcomed, Bowler said, as a symbol of American generosity in
rebuilding war-ravaged lands.

Nowadays, however, people in many nations have Santa on their
own naughty list, either because he represents the secular side of
Christmas at the expense of the religious. Sometimes Santa is
rejected because he’s not a local. "In places like the
Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Austria, and Latin America, they
all have very strong anti-Santa movements because they are trying
to preserve their native Christmas gift bringers and customs, and
protect them from the North American Santa," he said.

Such efforts seem unlikely to stop a growing interest in Santa
Claus, but their organizers may save him a few stops on his busy
Christmas Eve schedule.