Christmas pt. 3: Santa and the Knickerbockers
The nation is altered; we have almost lost our simple true-hearted peasantry. They have broken asunder for the higher classes, and seem to think their interests are separate. They have become too knowing, and begin to read newspapers, listen to ale house politicians, and talk of reform. I think one mode to keep them in good humor in these hard times would be for the nobility and gentry to pass more time on their estates, mingle more among the country people, and set the merry old English games going again.
-Washington Irving, The Sketch Book (1820); from the Squire Bracebridge stories
The Knickerbockers were a group of wealthy men in nineteenth century Manhattan. They tended to be descended from the old English gentry, sympathize with Tory politics (similar to the sort espoused in the passage quoted above), oppose democracy, feel that the poor were encroaching on what rightfully belonged to the rich, and strove to re-invent Christmas in order to bring it back to the wealthy. John Pintard, Washington Irving, and Clemence Clarke Moore were all part of this group (a fact acknowledged by Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York).
These three men, for all intents and purposes, invented the Santa Claus tradition. Contrary to popular belief, Santa Claus is not in Americanized version of an old Dutch tradition. The tradition never existed during the colonial period, and the Dutch Saint Nicholas’ Day ritual did not cross the Atlantic in 1609. To understand the development of the Santa Claus tradition and why it plays such a massive role in modern Christmas, we must look to the years between 1800 and 1820.
John Pintard may be credited for shifting the focus of the holiday season to children. He was a man who valued tradition (so much so that he founded the New York Historical Society in 1804). He resented the poor for turning a day which he once spent visiting friends into a holiday filled with drunken revelry. In order to bring Christmas back into the home, Pintard took it upon himself to develop a new tradition. This new tradition took form in the introduction of Saint Nicholas to Manhattan.
Pintard introduced Saint Nicholas to Manhattan by making him the icon of the New York Historical Society and the patron saint of Manhattan. On December 6, 1810—Saint Nicholas’ Day—he published a broadside depicting Saint Nicholas as a bishop distributing gifts to children; this reflected the manner in which the Dutch celebrated Saint Nicholas’ Day.
Through the introduction of this figure Pintard was able to shift the focus of the holiday season from the poor to the young. Before the nineteenth century, children were merely dependents occupying the lower rungs of the household hierarchy along with the servants. By turning the focus of the season over to children, the social inversion of old Christmas was twisted around and children occupied the position once held to the poor. To put it simply, the introduction of Saint Nicholas turned the figurative paternalism of the rich towards the poor into literal paternalism of parents towards their children.
However, Saint Nicholas was not yet associated with Christmas, and the new Saint Nicholas tradition left no role to be filled by the poor. It was Washington Irving, another member of the New York Historical Society, who took the next step in inserting Saint Nicholas in the Christmas tradition.
While Irving developed a good deal of the Christmas imagery within his Squire Bracebridge stories—tongue in cheek, self-aware tales of a member of the old nobility who tried and ultimately failed to use his status to bring back the Christmas traditions of old—his real contribution to the mythology of the season was the Knickerbocker’s History of New York, published in 1809. This volume mentioned Saint Nicholas no less than 25 times, and portrayed him not as a serious dignified Bishop, but as a caricature of the old Dutch gentry, similar to the sort inhabiting other of tales of Irving’s such as Rip Van Winkle.
Pintard introduced the figure and Irving popularized it, but there was still one element left. This element would relocate the Saint Nicholas ritual from December 6 to December 25, and finalize the re-focusing of the holiday through the identification of a proper role to be played by the poor. This last element was the famed poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas (also known as “The Night Before Christmas”) by Clemence Clarke Moore*.
Before Moore penned this poem, previous works—with the exception of Irving’s—had portrayed St. Nicholas as a serious, dignified figure; he had been portrayed not as a benevolent bringer of gifts, but as the bringer of a quasi-judgment day for children. He was shown in illustrations carrying a rod, and warnings rang out that he would bring presents for the good boys and girls, and punishments for the bad. Moore’s poem removed the judgment day imagery from the mythology of Saint Nicholas** and transformed him from a stern and austere figure into a kindly, benevolent one.
By taking away the figure’s authority, Moore was also removing his class. He was no longer John Pintard’s patrician bishop, but a plebeian. Moore wrote Saint Nicholas as the sort of person who might come to visit wealthy families in the middle of the night and enter their homes unannounced: a member of the lower classes.
With this poem, Moore accomplished what Irving and Pintard could not: he created a Christmas tradition which integrated the classes. He made the image of the cheerful poor into Santa Claus, and cemented children in their role as dependents in need of charity. This image of Christmas became so powerful that the lower classes began to embrace the Santa Claus ritual and the domestic holiday which went with it. And that domestic festival is what is still practiced today.
Although Santa Claus was created in the years between 1800 and 1820, it took until the 1830’s for the association of Santa Claus with Christmas to really catch on. This is evidenced in a series of letters written from John Pintard to assorted family and friends. In 1826 his letters showed no association between St. Nicholas and Christmas; in 1828, his letters included discussion of “St. Claas” leaving small gifts for children; by 1831 the tradition had gown so greatly that Pintard wrote “St. Claas is too firmly riveted in this city ever to be forgotten.”
Part 1 may be found here, and Part 2 may be found here.
*There is some controversy over whether or not Moore did, in fact, pen this poem. However, for the purposes of this post, we will assume that he was indeed the author.
**A Visit From Saint Nicholas does, however, parallel a poem titled The Day of Doom about Christ returning to judge all of mankind.
