Dear Friends,
We are celebrating the winter season with a subject closely tied to the history of the New-York Historical Society—Santa.
I invite you to visit It Happened Here: The Invention of Santa Claus, an installation tracing the modern image of Santa Claus. You can also watch a video excerpt of the history of Santa on our Web site by viewing The Santa Files with John Sergant by Fine Stripe Productions.
Though legend has it that Santa Claus hails from the North Pole, he was actually a New Yorker who came into the world on West 23rd Street in what is now the trendy Chelsea neighborhood.
The modern image of Santa Claus was invented in the nineteenth century by New Yorkers, as a secular myth meant to unite the city’s diverse and growing population. No common observance of Christmas existed in New York at that time, other than a holiday from work. Many Protestant churches frowned on elaborate Christmas celebrations, which they associated with Anglo-Catholicism and the aristocracy. The city’s free laborers, who often suffered from unemployment in the dark days of winter when shipping and industry slowed down, were only too willing to gather in the streets at Christmas, turning the holiday into an excuse for drunken caroling.
There’s little wonder that some leading citizens would have welcomed a symbol that encouraged peaceful, domestic celebrations, of the sort that most New Yorkers might share. They found that symbol in Santa Claus, starting around 1810.
That year, on St. Nicholas Day (December 6), the members of the New-York Historical Society convened in Federal Hall for their annual meeting. Among those present were Washington Irving, author of the recently published Knickerbocker’s History of New York, with its delightful (and imaginary) tales of by-gone times in New Amsterdam—including stories of old Dutch beliefs and customs regarding a jolly, pipe-smoking, gift-giving St. Nicholas. Also present at Federal Hall for the meeting was Clement Clarke Moore, a young scholar who was later to become (according to most accounts) the author of the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
For this gathering at Federal Hall, the New-York Historical Society commissioned Dr. Alexander Anderson to print a St. Nicholas Day broadside, with an engraving that showed a traditional Dutch hearth with teakettle, stack of waffles and household cat. Stockings were filled with gifts for the good girl perched above the hearth, while—on the right—birch rods stood waiting to punish the naughty boy sitting next to her. From this time on, the date of New-York Historical’s annual meeting was to be the Feast of St. Nicholas—and St. Nicholas himself was to become Santa Claus, a comforting figure associated with hearth and home.
The modern image of Santa Claus was never meant to divide people according to religious—or cultural—beliefs. Just the opposite: Santa and the secular celebration associated with him were invented for all people, to encourage everyone to be good.
