Faces of Santa Claus
Article by Sharlee Plett
I’ve always loved Santa Claus and I’ve always loved illustration art. A few years ago, I was introduced to an amazing woman who is a vintage collector. She showed me her vintage postcards and scrap collection, which included Santa Claus postcards from the 19th century and the early 20th century. I caught the vintage postcard bug!
Now I have my own collection of Santa Claus postcards, most of which are 100 plus years old. You can see from the the postcards that Santa Claus wasn’t always dressed in a red jacket, trousers and black boots. He was dressed in red, blue, green, brown, long robes, short robes, and fancy robes. Nor was he always jolly and fat! Some of the Santa Clauses are downright forbidding looking.
I decided to do some research on Santa Claus and learn about his history. As it turns out, the jolly ho-ho-ho Santa Claus we are so familiar with didn’t become “THE” Santa Claus until 1931, when Coca Cola published an advertisement portraying him dressed in a red jacket and trousers, fat, jolly and ruddy cheeked. It seems that Coca Cola spent a great deal of money on advertisements featuring their version of Santa Claus and everybody grabbed their coattails and went along for the ride. Next thing you know, Santa Claus is in department stores and everybody dresses him that way. Wow - really makes you think about the power of advertising!
Looking back through history, it seems that Santa Claus has had a very long and illustrious career, and at times was held in disrepute and banned. At heart, he is very much a European icon, starting out with the winter celebrations of Northern Europe and merging over time with Roman celebrations and Celtic celebrations, then with Saint Nicholas, a Roman Catholic Saint, shaped further by the new mass media of the 19th century. The crowning touches in America were made by the Coca Cola company, the culmination of well over 2,000 years of continued folklore and tradition.
I’ve put up a gallery of vintage Santa Claus postcards you can go and look at - you’ll be amazed at the tremendous variety in what Santa Claus looked like around the end of the 19th century.
Here’s the link to the gallery:
http://www.24kvintageart.com/vintage-santa-claus/thumbs.html
Enjoy!