Hawk and I were talking last night about Santa Claus, inspired by an episode of Studio 60 where the writing staff tell Matthew Perry’s character (who is hell bent on doing a Christmas-themed show) that the modern image of Santa Claus was created by the Coca Cola company in the 1930s. We were wondering what the actual origins of the Santa Claus myth are.
So I looked it up on trusty old Wikipedia and got this and this.
My favorite Santa Claus-related tidbits?
“L. Frank Baum placed (Santa Claus’) home in The Laughing Valley of Hohaho. In the original Dutch tradition, Sinterklaas lives in Spain and is accompanied by a great number of black servants, called ‘Zwarte Pieten’, which means Black Petes.”
and
“Rev. Paul Nedergaard, a clergyman in Copenhagen, Denmark, drew the ire of Danish citizens in 1958 when he declared Santa to be a “pagan goblin”"
and
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was born for the American department store chain Montgomery Ward in 1939, and has since entered the public consciousness as Santa’s ninth and lead reindeer.”
and now i have ’santa baby’ running through my head … lol …
I once worked with a dutch postdoc who told us about how even in this modern day and age, the christmas decorations there all have jolly santa claus surrounded by little black boys. And that the santa claus in the department store is surrounded by elves in blackface. How bizarre!