The Christmas tree farm has a
special relationship with Santa Claus, just like
all good boys and girls can. We wanted to
offer some background and tools for people to
learn more about him. Apparently some
people do not believe in Santa, but he is
most certainly real.
Santa Claus is the old man who
brings gifts to children at Christmas. He
is a stout, bearded man in a red, fur-trimmed
suit. Santa evolved from a person named
Saint Nicholas. Historians know little
for certain about him. He was probably
born in Patara, which is now Turkey. When
he was 19 years old, Nicholas became a priest.
He later served as bishop of Myra, near Patara.
According to legend, Saint
Nicholas once aided a poor nobleman who had
three daughters. No men would marry the
daughters because the nobleman did not provide
any of them with a dowry. A dowry is money
or property that the bride's family gives the
bride or the groom or his family when the couple
marry. Saint Nicholas threw three bags of
money through an open window of the nobleman's
house to show that the daughters had dowries.
As a result, they were able to marry. The
legend of Saint Nicholas as a man who brings
gifts developed from this.
The custom of giving gifts on
a special day in winter was practiced before
Christianity was founded. After
Christianity was well established, Saint
Nicholas became a symbol of the custom among
Christians. During the Reformation of the
1500s, Protestants substituted nonreligious
characters for Saint Nicholas. In England,
for example, the saint was replaced by a
gentleman called Father Christmas.
This character was called Père
Noël in France and Weinachtsmann in
Germany.
The people of the Netherlands
were especially fond of Saint Nicholas.
The first Dutch settlers who came to America had
a figure of Saint Nicholas on the front of their
ship. The Dutch settlers maintained their
custom of celebrating the saint's feast day on
December 6th. They explained that the saint visited their homes and left
gifts on Saint Nicholas Eve. In time,
English settlers adopted the festivities associated with Saint Nicholas.
English-speaking children spoke the Dutch name
for the saint, Sinterklaas quickly and
so excitedly that it sounded like Santy Claus
or Santa Claus.
Until the 1800s, people
pictured Saint Nicholas a tall, thin, stately
man who wore a bishop's robe and rode a white
horse. In 1809, the American author
Washington Irving published Knickerbocker's
History of New York, in which he presented
the saint. Irving described Saint Nicholas
as a stout, jolly man who wore a broad-rimmed
hat and huge breeches and smoked a long pipe.
Irving's Saint Nicholas rode over treetops in a
wagon filled with children's stockings and
presents.
On December 23, 1823, a poem
entitled "An Account of a Visit from St.
Nicholas" appeared in the Troy, New York
Sentinel. The poem begins with the
familiar line, "'Twas the night before
Christmas." Clement Clarke Moore, an
American scholar, is generally credited with
writing the poem, but Henry Livingston, an
American land surveyor, may have written it.
In the poem, Saint Nicholas appears as a stout,
jolly man with twinkling eyes and a red nose.
He wears a suit trimmed with white fur and
rides a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer.
The saint's visit takes place on Christmas Eve.
Thomas Nast, an American
cartoonist, completed the present-day image of
Santa Claus. Nast created a series of
drawings for Harper's Weekly magazine
between 1863 and 1886. These drawings
represent Santa Claus with a white beard.
In various cartoons, Santa is shown working in
his shop, driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer or
placing toys in stockings hung over a
fireplace.
Obviously we would not take so
much time to explain Santa if he was not real.
In fact, Moore's has special access to what
Santa is doing right now. We get
updates directly from the North Pole.
According to our special data link, which is updated live every two hours,
Santa Claus is
presently:
