Santa ClausThough we seldom think about it, it's altogether gratifying to realise that every single Christmas icon, with the possible exception of the Star of Bethlehem, originated first in the mind of an artist. Even our visualisation of the Nativity, though from the Bible, is largely based upon the work of early painters, though our Christmas card scenes today are merely derivative of their work. Near the bottom of this iconographic hierarchy we find the lumpy little snowmen, elves, cute little polar bear cubs, candy canes, silver bells, poinsettia, pine wreaths, ornaments, even the angels atop our Christmas trees. All of these were either first created by artists, or illustrated by them as a result of having been adopted and adapted to the season by man in his eternal search for symbolic references to the unfathomable grace of God's gift of his son to the human race.
Somewhere in the middle of this iconographic melange is the image perhaps most universally associated with Christmas. Though this image keeps getting updated almost yearly as the season rolls around, its roots in painting go back to around 1300 when Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted his Scenes from the Legend of St. Nicholas. Even then the figure was bearded and wore red. The Dutch embellished the image and persona of the man, as did nearly every other country in Europe at one time or another. But it was left to the American cartoonist, Thomas Nast, to bring the character to life in something approaching the image we have of him today. If you say Saint Nicholas fast enough it very easily becomes Santa Claus. In the modern era, from the late forties through the nineteen-sixties this image was polished and modernised even more by an unlikely group of artist and illustrators working for Coca-Cola.
He is idolised by children, propitiated by adults, commercialised by retailers, and in the last few decades, even come under a certain amount of scorn by organised religion, which, while acknowledging his religious roots, has become somewhat apprehensive about the power this symbol of giving has assumed. The other day I received via e-mail from my minister no less, a clever, humorous dissertation on the scientific impossibility of the Santa Claus myth which concluded that the man, if indeed he ever existed, was in fact, dead. As an artist, I like to think that this pronouncement is to be taken with the same grain of salt as a similar allegation a few years ago on the part of Nietzsche regarding God.
Contributed by Lane, Jim
24 December 1997