The History of Santa Claus Revealed
The History of Santa Claus Revealed
Norman A. Rubin
(At Christmas time we imagine a jovial figure dressed in red driving a sleigh filled with toys and gifts pulled by a herd of reindeer streaking over rooftops. Or could that he is a really figure from the past and not as we envisage him to be.)
Since the earliest history of man almost every European culture has marked the winter solstice with a major festival for the rebirth of the earth. As the moment in time when, provided the appropriate rituals are performed and celebrated the earth will be reborn anew from the quietus of winter, its significance is manifest. Many are aware that this which lies behind our Christmas and New Years celebrations.
The lack of significance is indicated by the fact that no attempt was made to Christianize the festival until the middle of the fourth century. In the seventh century when the Puritans of England actually banned it with
other festivals of this kind there was no outcry.
The truth is our present festivities of the holidays are almost entirely a nineteenth century innovation in which three elements came together. One, the English writer, Charles Dickens with his Christmas stories, most famously ‘A Christmas Carol’, was the native element. The second was Germanic, in the form of the Prince Consort of the throne of England who, in 1840, set up a Christmas tree for his children at Windsor Palace. The other element was American, though it was to combine with a relic from pagan Britain.
The American contribution to the element of Santa Claus came by a circuitous route, which in the early of colonization