Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Studying Santa
And yet that is just what University of Manitoba historian Gerry Bowler recently did.
Bowler is a bit of a Christmas fanatic. After spending 10 years researching and writing The World Encyclopedia of Christmas (2000), he set to work writing the life story of old Saint Nick.
In Santa Claus: A Biography, Bowler takes an in-depth look at Santa, tracing his second-century origins -- when French nuns gave gifts to poor kids and told them the presents were from Saint Nicholas -- through to his popularity today as a secular cultural icon.
We asked Winnipeg's very own Santa Claus authority to tell us a bit more about the chubby guy in the red suit.
CB: Where did the modern North American version of Santa Claus as a jolly bearded fellow in a fur-trimmed red jacket originate?
GB: In the late 1700s, Christmas is becoming a bit of a problem. It is an outdoor festival with drinking, riots in the streets, the disturbing of church services and the beating up of decent folk, loud music all through the night, kind of like all the worst aspects of New Year's Eve today.
So some upper-class New Yorkers got the idea they could change Christmas by bringing it indoors and centering it around children and the family. To do so, they start telling stories of a magical gift-bringer named Santa Claus, which comes form the Dutch word for Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas. He starts off being Dutch and wearing a red and white outfit because he's a bishop. By the 1820s he is out of the bishop's costume and has the shaggy outfit of Belsnickel (the German name for a scary Christmas gift-giver that wore fur and accompanied the Christ child to bring gifts to children). So Santa Claus is a descendent of the Dutch Saint Nicholas and German Belsnickel.
CB: What was the most surprising thing you learned about Santa in researching your book?
GB: His association with war. Starting with the American Civil war, there has hardly been a conflict in the western world which hasn't dragged Santa in as a propaganda tool. World War I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Gulf War, Santa shows up. If Santa is on your side then you must be right. For example, he was used to undermine enemy morale in the Korean War. Communist troops left out propaganda for Canadian and American soldiers in which Santa urges them to leave Asia, to go home.
CB: Does Santa have a dark side?
GB: He's a real sucker for advertising. He will pretty much advertise anything. In the past he has peddled guns to kids. Between 1910 and 1920 in the United Sates there were a series of ads where Santa takes shot guns, pistols and rifles to the youth of the land to teach them to be independent and self-reliant.
CB: Who came up with the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?
GB: In the late 1930s a Chicago store put out a flyer and hired an ad writer to write a little story for a giveaway. And that was the story of Rudolph.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 17, 2005 $sourceSection$sourcePage
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