Our Santa Page

Updated 3/8/2009

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This page is our tribute to Santa Claus. You will find stories, poems - and even pictures of some of my Santa plates and figurines. I'm an avid Santa collector, yes, that guy in the red suit (well, sometimes)! I have figurines, plates, pictures and music boxes with Santa on them. With the additions this past Christmas my total is now around 180 now. My brother Rob refers to them as "those damn Santas", yet he and his wife Terri have gotten me more than one over the years.
Now, our house isn't covered in them (well, except for Christmas and then they are tastefully strewn around the house). The curio cabinet in the entertainment center in the family room has my Lennox china ones out year round. They are fine specimens of depictions of Santa Claus from around the world done in porcelain and hand painted. My folks got those for me over a series of years. There are eight of them total, and each is about 12 inches high.
I guess the reason I have always liked Santa Claus is the feeling which arrives at the mere mention of the name. Santa is someone who gives unendingly with much joy. The fact that children behave even better when the thoughts of Santa abound is an added bonus. Nancy gave me a number of unique and special Santas which will always remind me of her - the Irish Santa was always one of her favorites (hum, since her grandmother was born in Ireland, makes sense, huh?!

Some of the Santa and Christmas tidbits that I have found over the years are:
    * The Origin of hanging Christmas stockings is obscure, but legend attributes the custom to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children and maidens. It is said that St. Nicholas tossed gold coins down the chimney of three sisters who because of a lack of dowery were doomed to become spinsters. The coins were caught in the sisters' stockings by the fire.
    * It is said that in Europe, St. Nicholas filled children's shoes and not their stockings with gifts. If the child was good he or she received candy. If the child was bad then he or she received switches. Thus, the idea of rewarding the good children and punishing the bad children was born.
    * The original St. Nick was the young bishop Nicholas, who lived in Myra which is now in present day Turkey. He delivered alms to the poor and gifts to small children.
    * In the 1100s nuns in France resurrected the custom of giving gifts for children on St. Nicholas Day.
    * Santa is known as Gwiazdor - or Star Man -- for the North Star in Poland. There the Christmas Eve meal begins once the first star is seen.
    * Swiety Mikolaj - a.k.a. Saint Nicholas was a cardinal in the Catholic Church in Poland. He visits the children on December 5th.
    * Sinterklaas is another saint, who is celebrated on the 5th of December. Sinterklaas is assisted by zwarte pieten while he goes down chimneys to deliver gifts.
    * Santa Claus is known as Father Christmas in England. He looks like Santa Claus, except he wears a longer coat (either red or green) and a long beard.
    * Papa Noel, as Santa is known in Spain, delivers gifts on December 25. Here children may also receive gifts from the Three Kings (the Three Wise Men) on January 6th.
    * Santa is also known as Kriss Kringle, thought to derive from medieval Bavaria where St. Nicholas was the messenger who took children's requests to the Christ Child (Christkindl).

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!
Letter to the editor of The New York Sun, 1897
Dear Editor---
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O'Hanlon
Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except that which they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the countless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to have men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus!? Thank God! He lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The Night Before Christmas
a.k.a. A Visit from St. Nicholas
by Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prance and Vixen!
On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to All, and to All a Good-Night!"

St Nicholas
by Horatio Alger
In the far-off Polar seas,
Where the icebergs, towering high,
Seem to pierce the wintry sky,
And the fur-clad Esquimaux,
Glides in sledges o'er the snow,
Dwells St. Nick, the merry wight,
Patron saint of Christmas night.
Solid walls of massive ice,
Bearing many a quaint device,
Flanked by graceful turrets twain,
Clear as clearest porcelain,
Bearing at a lofty height
Christ's pure cross in simple white,
Carven with surpassing art
From an iceberg's crystal heart.
Here St. Nick, in royal state,
Dwells, until December late
Clips the days at either end,
And the nights at each extend;
Then, with his attendant sprites,
Scours the earth on wintry nights,
Bringing home, in well-filled hands,
Children's gifts from many lands.
Here are whistles, tops and toys,
Meant to gladden little boys;
Skates and sleds that soon will glide
O'er the ice or steep hill-side.
Here are dolls with flaxen curls,
Sure to charm the little girls;
Christmas books, with pictures gay,
For this welcome holiday.
In the court the reindeer wait;
Filled the sledge with costly freight.
As the first faint shadow falls,
Promptly from his icy halls
Steps St. Nick, and grasps the rein:
Straight his coursers scour the plain,
And afar, in measured time,
Sounds the sleigh-bells' silver chime.
Like an arrow from the bow
Speed the reindeer o'er the snow.
Onward! Now the loaded sleigh
Skirts the shores of Hudson's Bay.
Onward, till the stunted tree
Gains a loftier majesty,
And the curling smoke-wreaths rise
Under less inclement sides.
Built upon a hill-side steep
Lies a city wrapt in sleep.
Up and down the lonely street
Sleepy watchmen pace their beat.
Little heeds them Santa Claus;
Not for him are human laws.
With a leap he leaves the ground,
Scales the chimney at a bound.
Five small stockings hang below;
Five small stockings in a row.
From his pocket blithe St. Nick
Fills the waiting stockings quick;
Some with sweetmeats, some with toys,
Gifts for girls, and gifts for boys,
Mounts the chimney like a bird,
And the bells are once more heard.
Santa Claus! Good Christmas saint,
In whose heart no selfish taint
Findeth place, some homes there be
Where no stockings wait for thee,
Homes where sad young faces wear
Painful marks of Want and Care,
And the Christmas morning brings
No fair hope of better things.
Can you not some crumbs bestow
On these children steeped in woe;
Steal a single look of care
Which their sad young faces wear;
From your overflowing store
Give to them whose hearts are sore?
No sad eyes should greet the morn
When the infant Christ was born.

Excerpts from Joy to the World - Victorian Christmas
by Cynthia Hart, John Grossman and Priscilla Dunhill.
The English gave us wassail and holly and Father Christmas; the Germans, kugels and Christmas trees; the Norsemen, mistletoe and the Yule log. But American Victorians gave us Santa Claus, chubby-cheeked, jolly and red-suited, a uniquely American folk creature of goodwill and prosperity.
While Santas in the guise of Father Christmas, Pere Noel, Kriss Kringle and St. Nicholas have been trudging over the globe for many centuries, there is not a scrap of historical evidence that any of them ever really existed. These mythical Santas have survived because theirs is a legend so magical, and so bewitching, that time has given them the power of truth.
Our Santa's legendary antecedent came from the frozen wastelands of the Vikings and Visigoths, where he took the form of the Norse god Odin, a tall, truculent-looking fellow with a long, flowing beard. His elfin helpers were clad in tattered browns and greens - a perfect camouflage in the impenetrable Nordic forests, thick with trees and evil spirits. Odin's direct descendant was the English Father Christmas, gaunt, wearing a brown hooded cape, which in later years was colored green or black or blue. Crowned with sprigs of holly, Father Christmas upon occasion got roaring drunk as he traveled about the countryside on foot or astride a white goat, stopping off at lodges and cottages to deliver gifts or share his wassail bowl filled with Christmas spirits.
In Germany the hooded cape of Father Christmas turned into a necessity for Pelz Nichol (which, in German, literally means "Santa in Fur") on his rounds in the harsher winters of northern Europe. (Kriss Kringle, the German name for Santa, is an eighteenth-century Americanization of Chritkindl, or Christ Child.)
In the Lowlands, that seabound part of Eupose which is now the Netherlands and Belgium, St. Nicholas, as patron saint of seafarers, was garbed in the sumptuous bishop's robes of his privileged, religious station. It took Victorian America to remove his mitred hat, to give him a red suit and provide him with Donder, Dasher, Prancer and Vixen to scale the rooftops. By the turn of the century, our Santa was riding around in a Pierce Arrow on a wave of Victorian prosperity, commandeering dirigibles or crashing onto the mooon in a flying machine. Some Santas still pulled a sleigh with an angel or a shimmering, shivering Christ Child as passenger. But Santa mixed with religious figures generally made Victorians uneasy.
By the 1890's, Santa was operating a workshop of elves out of the North Pole, joined in 1899 by Mrs. Claus, a sturdy, submissive creature invented by Katharine Lee Bates, who also wrote the poem America the Beautiful. S Santa and his helpers adorned Christmas cards, posters, calendars, gun holsters and cereal boxes. They befriended the downtrodden and poor in spirit and were hung in joyous effigy from door-jambs, chandeliers and tree branches. Sometimes Santa curled up with a snifter of brandy, sometimes with kittens, sometimes with cherubic children or Mother Goose characters.
Three Victorians molded Santa into his present image of jolly gift-giver. Washington Irving, in his History of New York, described a jovial St. Nicholas who was carved into the prow of a boat coming to the New World. In Nieuw Amsterdam, the good St. Nick commandeers a wagon and flies over the snowy Hudson Valley on St. Nicholas Day, dropping gifts down chimneys to his favorites. (St. Nicholas did indeed arrive in the New World in the 1620s, but after 1700 no mention is made of him in New Amsterdam, now New York. Like Rip VanWinkle, he slumbered for 100 years until Irving awakened him.)
The second creator of the Victorian Santa was the prosperous gentleman farmer and poet Clement C. Moore, who wrote "The Night Before Christmas." Moore lived with his beloved wife, Elizabeth, and their nine children in a big, comfortable Georgian manor house he had inherited on 96 acres in Manhattan, in an area called Chelsea. Early one Christmas Eve, in his carriage en route to Washington Market to purchase a turkey, he began composing a Christmas poem for his six-year-old daughter, Charity. Back home in his study, he consulted Irving's History and finished the poem in three hours. That night, at supper, he read it aloud to his family. "The Night Before Christmas" was an instant hit, first with Charity's Sunday School class, then with the readers of the Troy (New York) Sentinel, which published the poem the following Christmas in 1823.
Forty years later, the political cartoonist Thomas Nast immortalized Moore's Santa with his classic drawing of a Santa so "chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf" that "I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself." As cartoonist for the influential illustrated Harper's Weekly, for each Christmas issue he drew a Santa, which he claimed was a welcome relief from the relentless pressure of political cartooning. Printed in magazines, on calendars, posters and greeting cards, Nast's Santa has changed little over the years. Always with a sprig of holly tucked into his furred red cap, a black belt strapped around his four-foot girth, he beams perpetual jolliness to the world - sometimes from a Civil War battlefield, sometimes from a chimney top, or sometimes bending over cherubic children with visions of you-know-what dancing in their heads.

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