To learn about the evolution of Santa Claus and other Christmas
traditions, get a copy of Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas.
The book is written by a historian and focuses on the social impetus for
creating the contemporary traditions of Christmas. I read this book
about four years ago as background for the children's Christmas program
I run at our museum. As I recall Nissenbaum does discuss the evolution
of Santa's dress and the Nast version is not the original conception. In
the Moore poem Santa reflects the pre-19th century image of Christmas--a
celebration of disorder and misrule favored by the poor, i.e. "the
peddler opening his pack" was not originally a representative of the
upper classes or the establishment. According to Nissenbaum the
child-centered celebration of Christmas was promoted by Moore and others
of his upper class NYC set as a reaction to the increasing social
disorder evident in the city in the 1840s. Moore was horrified at the
behavior of the city's working classes at Christmas--originally a
celebration more akin to todays Halloween and New Years celebrations.
Anyway, it is a great book on this holiday.
For early images of Santa Claus, there is an illustrated edition of
A Visit From Saint Nicholas that was published in 1848. The drawings
show Santa wearing breeches, stockings, buckled shoes, a waistcoat, and
a fur trimmed coat and a fur hat. We don't have a copy of the original,
but it is reproduced in a Dover publication of historic Christmas
information. I don't know if that is still in print and I don't have the
citation handy, but if you want it I can get it for you. Good luck.
By the way, people have been complaining about the commercialization of
Christmas since at least the 1850s, so I guess everything old is new again!
Anne
--
Anne Dealy
Director of Education and Public Information
Geneva Historical Society
Geneva, NY
adelaideatgenevahistoricalsociety.com
(be sure to change "at" to "@")
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