Like other cultural icons, Santa Claus wasn’t always the personification of Christmas familiar to most Americans. His genesis as a gift-giving philanthropist evolved out of the political wars that involved his British cultural predecessor, Father Christmas, and documented in their literature.
Medieval Times
During the English High Middle Ages, people combined the celebration of Christ’s birth with their pre-Christian midwinter traditions. What these traditions might have been “we have no details at all” accoring to historian Ronald Hutton. The symbol of the traditions came later and reflected the changing social and political turmoil of the times.
First Embodiment
In the 15th and 16th centuries the concept of Christmas became associated with merry-making and drinking. In a carol written by Richard Smart, Rector of Plymtree, a line refers to “Sir Christmas” who announces Christ’s birth and encourages parishioners to :”Make good cheer and be right merry, / And sing with us now joyfully: Nowell, nowell.”
Around the same time a gentleman named John Goodman helped the populace of Norwich celebrate the holiday by riding a horse wrapped in tin faoil in a pageant as Father Christmas.
Development
From the humble beginnings cited above, certain aspects of this Christmas personification began to take shape, particularly his chaotic association with the Lord of Misrule. Much like the Merry Pranksters of the 1960s, this association fostered his confrontations with the social and polifical establishment. Some highlights from the literature of the period reflect this, such as:
- In Thomas Nashe‘s play, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, a miserly Christmas character refuses to maintain his traditional role of keeping the feast.
- Playwright Ben Jonson in his Christmas, A Masque depicts a sartorially outdated “Old Christmas” who protests the attempts to exclude him from the holiday celebrations in the Protestant church
- The Puritans abolishment of the celebration of Christmas and other festivals for eight years prompted supporters of the royalists cause to celebrate Father Christmas as a symbol of “the good old days’ of feasting and good cheer.,”
- The reestablishment of the monarchy prompted diearist Samuel Pepys to celebrate the return of Father Christmas in his ballad “Old Christmas Returnd.”
Deemphasis and Revival
Interest in the character dwindled after the restoration of the monarch for over a century until Scots poets, Sir Walter Scott, revived it in his poem “Marmarion” by tying the figure to his phrase “merry England” as part of Englans’s golden age from years past. Thomas Hervey embellished this association and Charles Dickens cemented Father Christmas’ stature in his book A Christmas Carol.
As Gift-Giver
As peoples’ roles within the family and society solidified during the Victorian era, Father Christmas’ role changed, too. Cross-fertilization from American magazines helped transform Father Christmas from boozy celebrant to children’s gift-giver. With his role change his costume changed as well. A red stocking cap and trimmed, snow-white beard replaced the dingy green and unkempt party animal of yesteryear.
Total Transformation
The Coco-Cola Company’s Christmas advertising campaign completed Father Christamas’ morphing into Santa Claus. He became a jolly entrepreneur whose marketing strategy involved an isolated and secret monopolization of gift-giving magically accomplished during one frigid night in December. Although Father Christmas remains a name more associated with British than American celebrations of the event, the British name is considered to have a socially superior cachet and therefore is preferred by certain advertisers.
What name do you prefer: Father Christmas or Santa Claus? Let us know in the Leave a Reply section below.
