In 1931, The Coca-Cola Company hired Haddon Sundblom, a renowned illustrator, to draw a Santa Claus for their Christmas campaign. They loved him with that affability that makes him so characteristic, but without ceasing to be realistic. As the firm itself explained in a volume about his history, he “really looked like Santa, not a man dressed as Santa.”
The result was an old man with a plump face, red cheeks and a mischievous smile who ended up becoming iconic, so much so that the myth has taken hold that Coca-Cola invented the modern look of the character. The urban legend focuses mainly on the colors of his suit, red and white, which are believed to be borrowed from the brand's.
If it were true, we would be facing the most successful case of subliminal advertising in history, but it is not. To explain it, we must go to the roots of the myth of Santa Claus, which are in Saint Nicholas of Bari, a 4th century bishop who lived and died in Mira, in present-day Turkey, but who remained linked to the Italian city after the robbery. of his relics in 1087. He is one of the most ubiquitous saints in Christianity, with worship in the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches and more than two thousand temples dedicated throughout the world.
His connection with Christmas is explained by the typology of his miracles, which place him as a protector of childhood. Tradition has it that he resurrected three children who had been murdered to be sold for meat during a famine, and three others who had fallen from a tree, although the most famous legend is that of the three young women whom, as Bishop of Mira, , saved from being prostituted by her father, who had no way to pay them the dowry.
For three nights, Nicolás sneaked into the house – some versions explain that through the chimney, and others through the window –, depositing gold coins in each of their shoes that saved them the bad news.
The shoes under the fireplace, the intrusion in the middle of the night..., in the story we can already see the first elements of a budding Christmas folklore. Thus we arrive at the Middle Ages, a time when this story is complicated by the mix between the feast of Saint Nicholas, set on December 6, and different pre-Christian traditions throughout Europe. We can't mention them all, but some folklorists, for example, believe that Santa Claus owes his bearded and rugged appearance to Odin, who in Norse mythology was also a gift provider.
What is obligatory is to mention Martin Luther (1483-1546), who, due to his opposition to the veneration of saints, caused the delivery of gifts to be moved to December 24 in the countries of the Protestant orbit, placing Christ as the provider. In Germany the figure of Kris Kringle (the Christ-child) appeared and in England that of Father Christmas (Father Christmas), the latter partially based on mythological elements prior to Christianization.
Despite the attempt to blur Saint Nicholas, in Holland and Belgium his identity remained intact through the Sinterklaas (a term derived from the Dutch Sint-Nicolaas), who still wore a miter and crosier.
Well, there was a moment when this character, typical of December 6, and Father Christmas, of the 24th, crystallized into one. It happened in New York at the beginning of the 19th century, due to the coincidence there of English and Dutch immigrants.
It was not a natural process, but an initiative of the elites. Specifically, the Puritans, who were very concerned about the carnivalesque and shameless appearance that Christmas was taking in a society that, due to mass immigration, had suffered a certain cultural alienation. The establishment of a “new” mythology, of a picturesque and familiar nature, seemed necessary.
This is how the first Santa Claus appeared, similar to the current one, which is the one created by the writer Washington Irving in A History of New York (1809). He was a kind of bearded, pot-bellied Dutch sailor who distributed gifts in a flying car, and who took elements from Dutch and Anglo-Saxon traditions. The term “Santa Claus” itself, although not Irving's invention, arose from the Anglicization of Sinterklaas.
About ten years later the anonymous poem Old Santeclaus with Much Delight (1821) appeared, in which the sleigh, the reindeer and, in some versions, the color red appear for the first time. For his part, Thomas Nast (1840-1902), a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly magazine, was probably the first to place it at the North Pole.
If in the 19th century there was any ambiguity about how to dress the character, at the beginning of the 20th it was already resolved. Proof of this are the covers of the humor weekly Puck, with a Santa Claus already identical to the current one. That is to say, although very appropriate, his look is not an invention of Coca-Cola. If we have believed it this way, it is probably because it is a less complicated story than the true one.
