Santa Is Always The News

We all know Santa's story by now. He was originally aauthor of "Sleepy Hollow," Washington Irving, got wind
bishop back in the day, and after he died he becameof Santa Claus and promoted him the American press.
known as Saint Nicholas, or Saint Nick for short. AndThis happened in the early 1800s, when Washington
even way back then, before Christmas became aIrving wrote a story called the "A History of New
major holiday, the anniversary of his death was a dayYork," in which he went into great detail about a man
to celebrate by giving out gifts. But most of us don'tcalled "Sinterklass." This Saint Nick was fat and short,
know that Saint Nick actually had a bad rap for awore a funny costume, and would travel around on
while, and that is actually how he got all of the otherthe Eve of Saint Nicolas on a horse.
names we know him by today.The idea of jolly gift-giving man caught on in the
During the time of great change in the Christian ChurchAmerican press. Another writer, the poet Clement
known as the Protestant Reformation, which occurredClark Moore, wrote a poem called "A Visit from St.
in the 1500s, the famous Martin Luther declared that allNicolas," which is better known as, "The Night Before
good Christians should stop celebrating saints. For theChristmas." It was Moore who made Saint Nick a jolly
devout followers of Luther, that meant also stoppingold elf who flies around the night in a magical sleigh
the celebration of Saint Nick, no matter how fun thepowered by eight flying reindeer. We all know the
gift giving had become.names of those reindeer, right? Well, Moore also
But of course, not all Christians stopped celebratingincluded them in his poem.
Saint Nick, not even all of the Protestants. Instead ofAmericans would get their best images of Santa
stopping the celebration, they crafted a plan to enjoyClaus in the magazines of the late 1800s, when the
the Saint Nick holiday in secret. This is when Saint Nickcartoonist Thomas Nast put out his own visions of
became known in England as "Father Christmas". InSaint Nick in Harper's Weekly. For Nast, Santa was a
Germany, people referred to Santa as "Christmasbigger man with a big fat belly, who wore a red suit
Man", and the Dutch created the name "Sinterklass."lined with fur and a big leather belt. Nast also started
About this time, a large majority of Dutch settlersdrawing images of Santa's workshop in the North Pole,
moved to New Amsterdam in America-what wouldand Santa using a list to keep track of his kids who
later become New York-and brought their celebrationwere naughty and nice.
of Sinterklass with him. Americans caught on to theOf course, these are all the images of Santa that we
idea, and tried to pronounce his name right. But instead,use today in the newspapers, in cartoons, and on TV.
what came out was "Santa Claus."Or should we say, perhaps, images of Sinterklass?
However, Santa Claus did not hit the big time until the