Santa Claus
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Santa Claus as he is pictured today — a stout, white-bearded, red-suited gift-giver who arrives by sleigh — was largely created by American cartoonist Thomas Nast, who drew the figure for Harper's Weekly over more than two decades.[1]
Origin
Nast introduced his Santa Claus imagery on January 3, 1863, in Harper's Weekly, where he had worked as a staff illustrator since 1862.[1] The debut drawing showed Santa distributing presents in a Union Army camp, dressed in a star-spangled jacket and striped trousers and holding a puppet resembling Confederate president Jefferson Davis, making the figure an explicit symbol of Union loyalty during the American Civil War.[1]
In building the image, Nast drew on Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," adopting its reindeer and sleigh, and modeled Santa partly on himself and his own family; rooftops and church spires from Morristown, New Jersey, recur in the backgrounds of his compositions.[1]
Development over time
Nast produced 33 Santa Claus illustrations for Harper's Weekly between 1863 and 1886.[1] His early wartime drawings doubled as propaganda supporting the Union and the abolition of slavery, while later images, such as the 1881 illustration Merry Old Santa Claus, carried different messages, including support for increased military pay.[1] Over this run the character settled into the rotund, white-bearded, red-suited figure recognized today.[1]
Legacy
Nast's Santa Claus drawings are credited with fixing the character's modern visual form in American popular culture, a depiction that has remained largely unchanged in Western Christmas imagery since.[1]