Christmas Myths

Where to start?

Many people get a Christmas tree every year without giving any thought to the custom or its origins--although it's fairly widely known that the custom originally was a pagan Germanic custom.

Second, there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus was born on December 25, and again, of course, the conventional wisdom or custom is given little thought. The best idea on the subject is that at some point, the celebration of Christmas was moved to coincide with the celebration of the Roman festival called Saturnalia.

Then of course there's Santa Claus. A lot of the custom of Santa Claus in America--much the same figure is known in England where he is called Father Christmas--derives from the German festival of St. Nicholas, who was a fourth century saint. However, the feast day of St. Nicholas is December 6. (More directly, the lore of St. Nicholas comes to us via the Dutch and descendents of Dutch settlers in New York--notably Washington Irving (who depicted St. Nicholas in one of his books) and a painter named Weir.)

The image of Santa Claus as it now exists in America is a relatively recent development. It was influenced by the poem usually known as The Night before Christmas, which is actually called “A Visit from St. Nicholas," written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1822 or 1823 (my sources differ).

The association of Santa Claus with the North Pole also originated in the 1820s. A boost to the image and popularity of Santa Claus among children was given by the 1902 book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum, who wrote the Wizard of Oz books. The idea that Santa keeps a list of children and whether they have been naughty or nice throughout the preceding year comes from the 1934 song, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

And then our picture of a fat and jolly Santa Claus, with a long beard and a red costume, basically originated with Coca-Cola advertisements in the 1930s.

Bottom line: The idea and image of Santa Claus, as widely prevalent in the US, is relatively modern and, you might say, manufactured, rather than being any ancient tradition that was an intrinsic part of the Christmas festival.

Updated December 16, 2011.
Update December 21, 2011: Only one of the four gospels (Matthew) mentions the "wise men" of the nativity story, and there they are simply called "kings of the East"--and not numbered as three. There is no mention of the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, nor that one of them was Black. All of those notions are "medieval accretions."
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein