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“Santa Claus and His Works”

No caption.

This
multi-framed illustration of “Santa Claus and His Works” was artist
Thomas Nast’s first major depiction of Santa Claus in Harper’s
Weekly (appearing in the postdated December
29, 1866 issue). Although other artists of the period sketched
Santa Claus, Nast stands apart from the rest for his role in creating
and popularizing the modern image of the Christmas figure.
He contributed 33 Christmas drawings to Harper’s Weekly
from 1863 through 1886, and Santa is seen or referenced in all but one.
Nast’s full-page illustration of Santa Claus in 1881 quickly
attained status akin to an official portrait, and is still widely
reproduced today. Before Nast, different regions, ethnic groups,
and artists in the United States presented Santa Claus in various ways.
A sketch in Harper’s Weekly from 1858 shows a beardless
Santa whose sleigh is pulled by a turkey.
Nast was instrumental in standardizing and nationalizing the
image of a jolly, kind, and portly Santa in a red, fur-trimmed suit
delivering toys from his North Pole workshop. This was accomplished
through his work in the pages of Harper’s Weekly, his
contributions to other publications, and by Christmas-card merchants in
the 1870s and 1880s who relied heavily upon his portraiture.
In the featured “Santa and
His Works,” Nast adapts characteristics from his German heritage (he
was born in Bavaria) and from Clement Clark Moore’s famous 1822 poem
“A Visit From St. Nicholas” (commonly known as “Twas the Night
Before Christmas”), but the artist adds other aspects developed from
his own creative mind and talented pen.
The effect is to unveil much of the mystery behind Santa Claus by
presenting a more complete account of his life, mission, and home.
Instead of depicting him merely delivering gifts, the entire
process of his work is detailed from the preparation to the execution to
the recovery. The
centerpiece is what children hope for: Santa stuffing stockings hung on the fireplace, as toys lie
on the floor. He is plump,
white-bearded, red-nosed, dressed all in fur, carries the sack of a
peddler (evoking earlier lore of Santa as a peddler), and is still the
short elf of Moore’s poetic version (here, Santa needs a chair to
reach the mantle).
Along the sides, Nast adds
parallel circular insets. To
fulfill Santa’s traditional task of rewarding nice children and
punishing naughty children, Santa uses a telescope to locate good
children (upper-left), and records the behavior of children in an
enormous account book (upper-right).
On the center-left, he is seen in his workshop carefully crafting
toys by hand (as opposed to the increasing reliance on factory
production in America). On
the center-right, he is taking a well-deserved post-Christmas rest in a
rocking chair placed before a fireplace, as he holds a meerschaum pipe
popular among Germans, Dutch, and their American descendents.
On the lower-left, the diminutive Santa uses a ladder to decorate
the Christmas tree (another German tradition), and on the lower-right,
sews doll clothing by hand (rather than using a sewing machine).
Three years later, in 1869, “Santa and His Works” was
included in a new publication of Moore’s poem illustrated by Nast.
At that time, Santa’s suit was changed to the red color for
which it has thereafter been associated.
The origin of Santa’s home at
the North Pole is uncertain, but in “Santa and His Works” Nast may
have been the first illustrator to so identify the locale.
(An 1857 illustration in Harper’s Weekly shows Santa
preparing to leave a snowy but unnamed homeland.)
In the late 1840s and the 1850s a series of expeditions to the
Arctic captured public attention, and the area began to be discussed as
the home of the elusive Santa Claus.
Year-round the North Pole had the snow that was becoming
associated in the popular image with Christmas (the American publishers
of magazines, books, and cards carrying Christmas illustrations were
headquartered in the snowy Northeast).
Furthermore, the North Pole's geographic isolation permitted the
jolly old elf to work without interruption, and the region’s
independence from all nations allowed Santa to be a symbol of universal
good will. The reference to the North Pole in the featured cartoon is on
the curving border in the upper-right and reads “Santa Claussville, N.
P.” The linkage of symbol
and place was obviously common enough by 1866 that Nast realized he
could simply abbreviate “North Pole.”
While setting the national
standard, Nast’s own depiction of Santa Claus changed over the years.
He began his almost-annual contribution of Christmas
illustrations when he joined the staff of Harper’s Weekly in
1862 during the Civil War. His
first Santa (in the postdated January 3, 1863 issue) is a small elf
distributing Christmas presents to Union soldiers in camp.
Santa dangles by the neck a comical jumping jack identified in
accompanying text as Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president.
There was no doubt in Nast’s illustration whose side Santa
favors in the war. Besides
the military context, the cartoon is set off from later ones in that the
gift giving is for adults, not children (except for the drummer boys).
The other two Christmas illustrations of Nast’s published
during the Civil War emphasize family scenes, with Santa relegated to
the background.
From 1866-1871, Nast continued
to elaborate upon the image of Santa Claus portrayed in “Santa and His
Works.” As in the featured cartoon, he also emphasized during this
period Santa’s disciplinary role in judging whether the behavior of
children during the past year warranted Christmas rewards or punishment.
In an 1870 cartoon, Santa surprises two naughty children by
jumping out as a jack-in-the-box clutching a switch for spanking.
In 1871, Santa sits at his desk reading letter from parents
chronicling their children’s good and bad acts, with the “letters
from naughty children’s parents” far outnumbering the “letters
from good children’s parents.”
It is probably not coincidental that Nast was at that time the
father of several young children (the eldest, Julia, was 9 years old in
1871). Whatever the reason,
the cartoons helped revive the idea of Santa as reinforcing parental
discipline, a notion that had waned since the publication of Moore’s
poem in which Santa brought a “happy Christmas to all.”
Through the rest of the 1870s,
Nast’s Santa Claus was no longer the disciplinarian, but, instead,
played a cat-and-mouse game with children in which he tried not to be
seen and they tried to catch him in the act of delivering presents.
Again, the illustrations likely reflected the situation in
Nast’s home, where he loved to wrap presents and celebrate the season,
but at a time when his children had become old enough to try to find the
gifts and nab the gift-giver. In
“Santa Waiting for Children to Get to Sleep” (1874), Santa is forced
to delay on a rooftop because children in the house below are still
awake. A related poem
blames the late-night hours of the family on the use of gas lighting
in homes.
As Nast’s own children
entered and left their teen years, knowing that Santa was really their
father, the artist’s illustrations finally showed direct communication
and interaction between Santa Claus and the pictured children.
In a postdated January 1879 issue, a girl drops a letter to Santa
in a mailbox (the first time the artist depicted a letter from a child
to Santa), and in December 1884, Santa and a girl are able to speak with
each other by using a relatively new invention, the telephone.
In the January 1879 issue, another Nast cartoon portrays Santa
Claus in the midst of a group of gleeful children who he embraces
affectionately. Santa is
now recognized as part of the family, whose shared love is the greatest
gift. Nast’s Santa makes
his last featured appearance in Harper’s Weekly in 1885 when the
jolly old (man-size) elf offers himself as a present.
Nast’s last two Christmas illustrations in Harper’s Weekly
appeared in December 1886, when he resigned from the newspaper, but his
impact on the popular image of Santa Claus continued and remains potent
to this day.
Robert C. Kennedy
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