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The Man Who Made Santa Claus

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Originally aired on December 16, 1994 - In part 16 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson tells us about the man who made Santa Claus.

#16 – Santa Claus

Thomas Nast was devastating with his artist’s pen. For 30 years his editorial page cartoons converted well-known politicians into cartoon characters. So vicious could Nast be that many Americans considered him the basis for the adjective “nasty”.

He was born in 1840 in Germany. .At the age of six he came with his family to America. Nast was only fifteen when he went to work as an artist for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. In 1862, at the age of twenty-two, Nast joined the staff of the prestigious Harper’s Weekly.

His Civil War battlefield sketches became instantly recognizable for their clarity and deductions. Possessing a strong moral conviction about the war, Nast showed a tense partisan atmosphere in all of his wartime drawings. President Lincoln called Nast his “best recruiting sergeant”. General U. S. Grant would later state that Nast has done “as much as any one man to preserve the Union and bring the war to an end.”

Nast was also a man with a child’s heart when it came to Christmas. The American yuletide season fascinated this German immigrant. In November, 1862, he was painfully aware that for tens of thousands of Union soldiers far from home, Christmas was going to be a sad time of homesickness. Nast wanted to make some kind of gift to the nation that had become his home. So he turned to his drawing board.

Two illustrations came forth in Harper’s Weekly and started Nast on the road to becoming an American tradition. The first picture depicted a fatherless family seated before the fireplace alone and fearful on Christmas Day. The other drawing was a combination of patriotism and Christmas. Nast had drawn the first Santa Claus. He was shown as a new recruit to the Northern cause, dressed out in a suit of stars and stripes, and he was distributing gifts in the field to joyful Federal soldiers.

Public reaction to Nast’s Christmas art was so intense that he drew a different Santa Claus scene for almost three decades thereafter. Nast got much of his inspiration from Clement Moore’s little-known poem, Twas the Night before Christmas. Santa Claus in Nast’s imagination was round-bellied, white-bearded, fur-clad, jolly and bright-eyed, with a sprig of holly in his cap. Quite in contrast to St. Nicholas and other European depictions of the Christmas spirit, the Santa Claus of Thomas Nast was the embodiment of good cheer - a veritable patron saint of Christmas who worked only to bring happiness to children of all ages.

The Santa scenes that Nast gave the nation are timeless in appeal. They include Santa Claus familiar to generations. My favorite is the one showing Santa Claus smiling at house pets who had been awaiting his arrival down the chimney. Succeeding generations of artists have made few if any changes in the figure that Nast developed. Indeed, if Santa Claus turned into real life, he would be declared an imposter if he did not resemble Nast’s conception in every detail.

From the mind and hand and talent of Thomas Nast came a host of symbols now a part of everyday editorial pages. The Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant, the Tammany Hall tiger, John Bull (the personification of England), and his American counterpart, Uncle Sam – all came from the pen of Nast. Yet with all of those contributions, this adopted American is known most as “the man who made Santa Claus”. His drawings, with their timeless magic, are frequently used to enliven the pages of yuletide newspapers and to invoke the true spirit of Christmas.

Thomas Nast loved Christmas. The Civil War sparked him to enter the holiday spirit in a way that will live forever. Nast’s drawings are reminders of the lasting trust of a statement Charles Dickens made in his story, The Christmas Carol: “It is good to be children sometimes and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”

Dr. James I. "Bud" Robertson, Jr., is a noted scholar on the American Civil War and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech.