The Strange Birth of Santa Claw

From Artemis the Goddess and Nicholas the Saint

Bruce Curtis

Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claw?

Virginia OHanlon, age 8, New York City, 1897

fertility, birth, and the many-breasted tree (aidman

361). But women who wished to remain virginal or
chaste, who did not wish to approach or be
approached by men, also turned for protection to this
goddess sometimes called Diana. The Cretan goddess
Britomartis, pursued by the god-king Minos, escaped
his clutches into the sacred precincts of an Artemisian
grove. Orion, as he attempted to violate Opis, was
killed by arrows of Artemis who, like Hecate, was
also a goddess of death. Her kindly darts brought
sudden but mercifully painless death to women, as did
her brother Apollos to men (Tripp).
The greatest of many temples dedicated to this
goddess of life and death, at Ephesus on the south
coast of what is now Turkey, was inevitably founded
by Amazons. Amazons, legendary women warriors,
refused to submit meekly to men. If they wished to
reproduce, they might take men, but on their own
terms and temporarily (Tyrrell). The immense marble
temple, a wonder of the ancient world, was gloriously
gilded; decorated in cobalt blues, brightest reds,
brilliant yellows; overflowing with statuary
appropriate to Artemis as Great Goddess, Earth
Mother, Lady of the Animais, of Wild Things, the
source and sustainer of all life. There were bulls,
lions, stags, rams, boars, and wolves; horses and
chariots; centaurs and hippocamps; bees, quail, and
rabbits; serpents that were emblematic of Arternis,
symbolic of wisdom, prophecy, and eternal life;
women as warriors and as sirens and sea nymphs;
men as warriors and devotees of the goddess
(Lethaby). And at the sacred center of this symbolic
universe teeming with life stood the golden idol of
many-breasted Artemis (although some say her
breasts were dates or pomegranates or eggs or bulls
testicles or other emblems of cornucopian fertility)
(Goodrich 68-70).
Her worshippers were not sedate, Virginia. Later
commentators, often admirers of the Christian
Nicholas, report orgiastic and lascivious dances,
bacchanalian revelry, animal-and intimations of

I do exist! I do! I do!

Guindon cartoon Santa to mirror, December I943

Yes, Virginia, once upon a time there lived a

kindly gift-bringer who sometimes came down the
hearth smoke to leave presents, a friend and patron of
children and women, especially maidens (Jones 300,
315). And, Virginia, her name was Artemis of
Ephesus. Oh, I know what you were thinking, but let
me explain and you will learn that the story of Santa
Claus reveals more wonderment than you have
imagined. This story is for you, Virginia, now that you
are considerably older. Piease pardon the delay.
Long ago and far away, so say the legends, there
lived a Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, a bearded
Father of the Catholic Church named Nicholas. This
Patriarch won his way into the hearts of the people,
recently converted from idolatry to Christianity, by
destroying the temple of Arternis, a many-breasted
goddess of the sea and of grain, a pagan Earth Mother
who had a long and distinguished career as a midwife
and protector of women.
Her story begins when Leto, wived by the great
god Zeus, clung to the sacred date pafm, the tree of
birth and nurturant life, as she bore Artemis without
pain. Immediately-and amazingly-the infant
goddess arose and assisted in birthing her own twin,
Apollo. In later years, Let0 and her daughter often
went hunting together (Tripp), no doubt a consequence of such early bonding. At any rate, Virginia,
you can now understand better the meaning of long
and distinguished career, and you will soon note
similarities between Artemis and the precocious
Nicholas.
Surely it is easy to understand why at the first
pangs of labor women might call upon Artemis for
relief, or why maidens wishing to marry might offer a
lock of hair to this Nurse of Youths, goddess of

17

18 Journal of American Culture

human-sacrifice, temple harlots, self-mutilated
eunuch priests in female dress, and ApoIlo as
subordinate to Artemis, perhaps even as a servile
lover (Farnell I1 445, I11 301, IV 173). To become
marriageable, prepubescent Greek girls performed a
ritual bear dance at an annual womens festival of
Artemis Brauronia (Papadimitriou), itself much like
the orgiastic rites of spring planting and fertility, the
April Artemisia.
Now it came to pass in the region and town of
Ephesus that foltowers of the Christ calted Jesus,
particularly Paul, began to appear and to preach
against the worship of graven images. And, so says
the Bible, a silversmith named Demetrius, who made
such for Artemis, complained to fellow smiths that
not only this our craft is in danger...but also that the
temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised,
and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all
Asia and the world worshippeth. And having heard
this, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying,
Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city
was filled with confusion... (Acts 19).
During those years and centuries of confusion
was born, legends say, in the town of Patara, not far
from Ephesus in southern Turkey, the babe who
would become a bishop and a saint. In the name of the
Father and of the Son, this Nicholas, Patriarch of the
Church, would fundamentally challenge the Great
Mothers reign. And, as scholars, preeminently
Charles Jones and Adriaan DeGroot, have revealed,
Nicholas would in large part assume the attributes of
Artemis (DeGroot 149-51; Jones 17, 24; McKnight
131-33).
This legend called Nicholas was born no one
knows when, but supposedly in the first half of the
fourth century, to parents thereafter celibate (Voragine
17). Like Artemis he was phenomenally precocious
but, as well, fanatically pious. Immediately following
his birth, he was strong enough to stand upright in his
bath and to cast his eyes prayerfully heavenward. As a
babe h e refused nurses milk on the fast days of
Wednesday and Friday, that is, until sundown. Not
many years later, he destroyed the temple of Artemis
in his town, destroyed it, angrily, down to its very
foundations, which he tore out of the ground (Ebon
361, and, says the 13th-century Golden Legend,
broke her image and delivered the people from
idolatry (McKnight 142). On the temple ruins
arose-and this a common occurrence in triumphant
Christendom-a church, the church of St. Nicholas.
We can hardly be surprised by legends that Church
authorities may have made him a boy Bishop at Myra,
or soon thereafter as a very young man.

Historically, we know that the last temples

dedicated to many and various goddesses, including
Artemis, were closed or destroyed or converted to
Christian churches by about A.D. 500 (Stone 130).
The very stones of Artemis Ephesian temple were
incorporated into Istanbuls Christian Hagia Sophia
(Goodrich 241). Thus were fulfilled Emperor
Theodocius orders of A.D. 380 in the century of
Nicholas. Thus, our St. Nicholas appears as a hero in
the at least temporary if not complete triumph of the
new patriarchal religion, Christianity. For a major
function of legendary heroes like Theseus, Achilles,
Hercules, and Nicholas is to subdue the strongest,
most deviant females, the Amazons and Goddesses
(Engle 531-32; Lederer 105; Tyrrell 1-2).
And great was the fall of Artemis. She or her
devilish agents now had to resort to terrorism, to
appearing in the guise of a humble Christian woman
or nun, conning pilgrims into taking fiendishly
flammable lamp oil to Nicholas new church
(DeGroot 146-47). Sixteenth-century artist Albrecht
Altdorfer shows Nicholas, nouveau patron of sailors,
saving a ship from a storm surely instigated by the
diabolical harpy lurking in the Crows nest. We see a
grotesque birds head on a pendulous-breasted female
body, representing, one must suppose, Artemis,
erstwhile patron of sailors.
Inevitably, with the triumph of Nicholas, to
Christian apologists the goddess became demonized
(Graves 232), a witch with whom some wicked
women, reverting to Satan, and seduced by the
illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and
profess that they ride at night... (Canon Episcopi
qtd. in Lederer 197). The Great Goddess, Earth
Mother, had become teuj%smutrer, the devils mother
(Jones 300; DeGroot 5.3, unrelenting and eternal foe
of her conqueror. A mid-20th century devotee of
Nicholas has him say of Artemis that Not since the
apostle Paul undermined the foundation of her weird
superstition at Ephesus has she relented in her war
upon all Christians...it is her custom to use the wiles
of woman upon our Christian men (Miller 39).
Except in certain feminist and classicist circles,
demonic the pagan goddess has remained.
Curiously, however, despite the suppression of
pagan goddesses, Christian Mary, Virgin mother of
Jesus, has often enjoyed spectacular success as an
object of veneration (Farnell I11 304-05; Campbell,
Joseph). Even today, religious groups sometimes
complain when Santa shoulders aside Madonna and
Child (DeSmet). Equally curious is that Mary was
first officially declared Theotokos, Mother of
God, at a great Church Council in A.D. 431, held in

The Strange Birth of Santa Claus... 19

the great church of St. Mary at Ephesus. In so
declaring, the Council of Ephesus ratified an informal
title that had become popular in earlier decades, even
in the century and years when Nicholas was seeking
to subdue Artemis. A tenuous but nevertheless
tenacious legend is that in her old age, having been
lodged there by St. John, Mary the Mother of God,
inheritor of the crescent moon from Artemis, died in
and entered heavenly glory from Ephesus, from
whence, ironically, Artemis had apparently been
driven (Campbell, Joseph; Goodrich 18; Murray
32). This, then, is Mary, The goddess mother of
many names: Inanna, Ninhursag, Ishtar, Astarte,
Artemis, Demeter, Aphrodite, Venus. ..the generative
energy that is the life and death of all things
{Campbell,Masks...Uriental40;Fame11 I1 473).
Mary and St. Nicholas often appear together in
Christian art and legend (Jones 25, 230), but various
scholars such as Joseph Campbell and Carol Christ
have shown that as patriarchal Christianity and, more
generally, patriarchal societies prevailed over
centuries, the Father inevitably absorbed many of the
desirable attributes and much of the patronage of the
Great Mother (Campbell, Masks...Occidental 157;
Christ, Laughter 39-40, 85-88, and throughout; Lerner
145). Thus, when the Patriarch Nicholas defeated
Artemis, he became the patron and protector of many
groups that had been under her aegis-sailors,
marriageable maidens, childless wives, and especially,
children; but of others besides-f
thieves, con men,
pawnbrokers, and merchants.
For centuries, St. Nicholas, Samiklaus,
Sinterklaes, der Niklas, and Father Christmas, perhaps
sometimes conflated with other male mythic figuresOdin and other Northerners, or Father Time by
various names-brought joy and plenty in countries
throughout Europe (Macey 113, 168, 175; DeGroot
24-30; but cf. Jones 300, 313, 315). As patron of the
people in whatever group, for a thousand years and
more this saint acted as a Father who poured out his
wealth and the blessings of good fortune upon his
children, young and old, but particularly upon the
female and the young.
Children he protected against illness, injury,
kidnapping, even death itself. Three young traveling
scholars stopped at an inn for the night, only to have
their innkeeper, a primitive version of Sweeney Todd,
Demon Barber of Fleet Street, kill them for their
money, and butcher them for the delectation of future
guests. Or would have but for omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent Nicholas, who located the
barrel of brine in which the sectioned scholars were
housed, reassembled and reinvigorated them, and took

the contrite innkeepers confession. In 14th-century

Paris, December 6, St. Nicholas Day, became a school
holiday for grateful students (Jones 128-36; Walsh 21,
26; Baring-Gould XV 65). His day also became the
occasion in Europe for the temporary investiture of
sometimes riotous boys as Bishop Nicholas
(Mackenzie).
In modern times, in the 19th and 20th centuries,
this bountiful gift-bringing patriarch naturally felt
most at home in the increasingly affluent United
States. Hardly known in Puritan colonial years, as
Santa Claus he rocketed into popularity when
publicists following the American Revolution
consciously shaped his idiosyncratic character. And
here, Virginia, you undoubtedly remember
Washington Irvings fanciful stories of the Dutch
Christmas in New Amsterdam, certainly Clement
Moores Twas the Night Before ..., and probably
even the cartoonist Thomas Nasts drawings that
created the modem image of Santa we all know and
love. Specifically for children, St. Nicholas magazine
began publishing in 1873 and survived until 1940
(Bock 543).
As Charles Jones and other scholars have shown,
Santas Big Three, Irving, Moore and Nast, and others
like them in the early 19th century, consciously
shaped and codified the American legend of Santa
Claus. Sensitive to popular responses, borrowing
ideas and images from each other, able to exploit the
burgeoning print media, seeking to create distinctive
customs and characteristics for their new nation, and
building tenuously upon the story of a saint, these
publicists continue almost two centuries later to
influence our mythic beliefs and our everyday lives
(Jones 5-6, 269, 333, 347-49, 353; Wolf 149; Ebon
96; Shoemaker 43; Oswalt 6-11).
Over centuries. St. Nicholas replaces Artemis,
Santa Clam replaces St. Nicholas (the latter was
dropped from the official Catholic calendar of saints
on February 14, 1969). And then? Here, Virginia, is a
most important lesson the Artemis/St. Nicholas/Santa
story teaches, and to which we will return: Stories,
myths, legends no doubt evolve somewhat as they are
passed down pleasantly around the fireplace from
generation to generation, but legends also have
creators or codifiers and moments of presentation
upon which others build. Santas story teaches that at
crucial cultural moments a legend may be changed
consciously and considerably to fit new facts, to meet
new needs, or to find new ways to meet old needs.
Certainly, as many commentators have noted,
19th- and 20th-century Americans have needed to
revel in the material plenty of this new-found land, in

20 Journal of American Culture

the bounty of Gods and Natures and Santas
cornucopia. But, especially during and following
World War 11, as worldwide yearning for material
plenty mushroomed in response to the ubiquitous and
affluent American presence, the legend and practices
of Santa Claus spread afar. In Europe he challenged
Nicholas, Pere Noel, and Father Christmas (Jones
358-61). Nowadays newspaper photographs show him
frequenting the French Riviera, or on a German motor
scooter, or looming over a Berlin store. He has
penetrated Mexico (Spitz), Peru, and the Philippines,
has taken Japan by storm (Barnett 143-45). He can be
found in the Australian Outback (Dear). In 1988,
through the agency of 280 Americans dressed as
Himself, he invaded Beijing, once a bastion of
abstemious living (Santa). In 1992, and even 1993,
Santa and his military helpers deluged Somalia
(Qson; Borgman; Lukovich; Leyva).
Despite the apparently worldwide triumph of
sybaritic Santa, some have resisted his cultural
imperialism. In 1993, certain Dutch merchants,
townsfolk, and a National St. Nicholas Committee
sought to protect St. Nicholas and his Day from the
inroads of upstart Santa (Dutch; Sinterklaas). In
1993, also, Chinese education authorities forbade
university students to celebrate foreign holidays,
including Christmas (China).
A minority of Americans-poets, scholars, and
the religious alike-have long decried the insidious
materialism and commercialism that have stained the
Saint-becorne-Santa (Belk). Howard Nemerovs
Santa Claus scorns This annual savior of the
economy who, pregnant with possessions, brings
fortWanity and the void, while Phyllis McGinleys
The Origin of Species derides this multiplied elf
who struts and poses,/Ringing up sales/In putty
noses. In 1992, 25 Protestant and Roman Catholic
leaders were surely not the last to complain that
Santas Christmas had become a carnival of mass
marketing, that Consumption has taken on an
almost religious quality; malls have become new
shrines of worship (Christmas; DeSmet; Bombeck). Meanwhile, American kids in 1992 could for
the first time fax lists to North Pole, Alaska (Now).
Meanwhile, in 1993, Mystery Santa Showers Money
on Passers-By in Boston (Mystery).
Thus we have the American Santa Claus, so
different and yet so like his predecessors-first, the
bountiful Artemis, whose fruitful breasts signified the
cornucopia appropriate to an Earth Mother (Lederer
289); next, St. Nicholas, patriarch, who, like the
Christ he followed, was able to multiply food and
drink (Voragine 19; Jones 27-28), and who showered

bounty appropriate to his era on all his children.

Finally, theres an early 20th-century smugly secular
Santa featured on a Christmas card with cigar and
holiday libation, twin cornucopias crossing his chest,
each pouring forth fruit and gold and dollar bills, for
all the world like the bounteous breasts of Artemis.
Isnt that a quaint corroboration of the magisterial
Joseph Campbells conclusion that In the patriarchal
cosmologies ...the normal imagery of divine
motherhood is taken over by the father (Campbell,
Masks...Occidental157)?
Change, indeed, but continuity as well. For,
despite modem commercialism, despite alterations in
style and emphasis, issues of sex, gender, and social
power have been constants in this story of Artemis,
Nicholas, and our own Santa. Thus, more exactly than
Santas generic commercialism is that it has been
gendered commercialism, more important than his
generic bountifulness is that it has been gendered
bounty.
From the moment of his creation in America,
Santa Claus has played the kindly, jolly patriarch, the
bringer of gender-identified gifts that teach and
reinforce social roles. If toys reflect aspects of adult
culture (Brewer), then clearly many toymakers,
advertisers, and parents have routinely cooperated in a
symbiotic system, have cooperated in Santas efforts
to train children for service in a rigidly gendered
society.
Nineteenth-century Christmas stories and
illustrations insistently teach that little men in training
want action toys; little women, quieter, nicer things.
In 1902, L. Frank Baums The Life and Adventures of
Suntu Ctuus summed up the tradition that dollies
were the most delightful of all playthings for babies
and little girls, while many of the little fellows had
musical natures, and longed for drums and cymbals
and whistles and horns (122).
Despite apparently significant socioeconomic
and ideological changes in gender roles during Santas
tenure, late in the 20th century those changes often
seem minuscule when the holiday season rolls around.
For then commercialized keepers of the culture insist
most adamantly in the media that children and adults
alike should want-and should bestow (or impose)
upon each other-gender-identified gifts that teach
and reinforce social roles fHo1idays; Gunther).
Examples are legion, as a quick survey of
magazines, TV, and toy stores reveals, and as
academic studies corroborate. One observer reports
that a toy store is really two different, gendered
worlds (Hughes). The first has in its orbit baby dolls,
mommy dolls, Barbie dolls, and endless Barbie

The Strange Birth of Santa Claus... 21

appurtenances; i t has cosmetic training kits,
miniaturized layettes, and miniaturized kitchen sets,
not to mention the Sweet Valley High dating game,
Heart Throb, and Date Line.
Leave the world of sedentary Sally, cross what
another commentator calls the demilitarized zone
(Sobel), presumably the region of neutral toys, and
one enters the world of Rambo, GI Joe, Skum
Shooter, Terminator 2, and, in 1992, Desert Shield
grease gun. In 1994, it was Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers. This world has disintegrating crash cars with
male dummies only, whose decapitated heads bearing
friendly expressions invite, notes Laurie Winer in
Harpers, December 1992, sadism, a detail that Tyco
[the toy company] knows will appeal to little boys
(Winer).
Like toy stores, toy ads and illustrations in this
enlightened age of gender-liberation are still heavily
gender-typed. Professors Pamela Rosenberg and
Lawrence Rosenberg announced in 1992 that
examination of 250 toy catalogs revealed that
approximately 50% of toys were gender-specific, and
that 70% of gender-specific toys were pictured with
children of the culturdly appropriate sex. Ads might
aim boy-toys at girls, but the researchers discovered
the reverse exactly twice in all those pages of 250
catalogs (Kissel). Similarly, a December 1991 Ebony
article employed gender-neutral language in its text,
but illustrations showed boys with an M.C.
Hammer doll, and with Action Workshop, while
girls appeared with only frilly female dolls
(Celebration; Santa Has; Downs).
Anyone even slightly acquainted with children
knows how early, how quickly, and often how deeply
they learn to desire according to gender, to absorb
from TV and elsewhere what one commentator calls
consumer correctness (Engelis; Spitz). Do you
know, Virginia, when our children were four and two,
my wife and E tried to sabotage gender role typing by
giving our daughter a truck and our son a doll in their
stockings. And, do you know, they pufled them out,
said Santa Claus had made a mistake, and switched.
They were only four and two, Virginia. Children learn
gender roles in America, or in Europe, or elsewhere,
by the carrot or by the stick. Santa Claus, Father
Christmas, Sinter Klaas, by whatever name, is the
carrot. The kindly patriarch makes children happy
while teaching them, as they empty those comucopian
stockings, how to become men and women.
And yet, as numerous old tales relate, St.
Nicholas/Santa Claus could also be a stem Patriarch, a
disciplinarian and a record keeper of good and bad
deeds who carried gifts in one hand but a scourge in

Artemis of Ephesus (Naples, National Museum).

the other. Children learned that they must fear as well

as love this sometimes devilish Patriarch perhaps
significantly called Old [Saint] Nick (Jones 310). If
Santa Claus has been the carrot, he has also been the
stick. As Levi-Strauss has written, one general
function of a myth like that of the English Father
Christmas is to keep children in order and obedient
(ti), while a specific related function is to overwhelm...children with kindness (8).
Overwhelmed they might sometimes be, but at
certain times and places perhaps as much by the stick
as by the carrot. Bad children, especially boys, could
find a switch or lumps of coal in their stockings on
Christmas mom. In December 1963, a Gahan Wilson
Playboy cartoon showed a fiendish Santa, an echo
from the past, saying, Well, Willie, I understand
youve been a bad boy this year. Girls, nicer and
more obedient, might more reasonably expect to be
rewarded (Ebon 86).
Often enough, especially in Europe, as scholars
such as Charles Jones and Adriaan DeGroot have
shown, Nicholas even became a doppelganger-a
Jekyll and Hyde-who with a Knecht Ruprecht or

22 Journal of American Culture

Krampus or Klaubauf or even Old Nick, traveled
through Swiss, Belgian, Austrian, and, especially it
seems, German villages to reward or chastise little
children (Coffm 82-83; McKnight 8-21; Miles 20607; 219-20; Sansom 81). The Dutch St. Nicholas rode
a white horse accompanied by Black Peter-Zwarte
Piet-a medieval name for the devil. Bad Dutch
children were threatened with being carried off to
Spain in a sack by Black Peter, a Moor (Walwin 222).
In Munich, St. Nicholas had offenders, especially
boys, carried off to be punished, until officials
ordered him to stop terrorizing the citys children
(Jones 312).
Worse yet, in Nuremberg and other German
towns jolly old St. Nicholas was sometimes associated
with a kindleinfresser, an eater of children, perhaps
not all of them bad! The persistent doppelgunger
tradition with which the saint has associated himself,
and this most egregious example, has led one
observer, Samuel Macey, to find a parallel with the
god of time, Saturn-Cronus, who devours his children
(Macey 140-42, 174f. One is also reminded of
Nicholas prototype, Artemis-Hecate, goddess of life
and death, an archetype that Jung identified as the
loving and the terrible mother (82).
Although Nicholas, the loving and the terrible
father, carried the tradition of the switch and even the
doppelganger to America, he gradually moderated
his methods to fit the milder 19th-century
childrearing climate. Nevertheless, especially in his
earlier years, Santa the disciplinarian, enforcer of
social and gender codes, continued to create an aura
of dread as well as delight. In 1821 Santa Claus
reported in rhyme that

I left a long, black, birchen rod,

Such as the dread command of God
Directs a Parents hand to use
When virtues path his sons refuse. (Shoemaker 50;
Emrich)

In Pennsylvania Dutch districts, Alfred Shoemaker

reports, Belsnickle, with record book and rod, might
travel with the Christ Child. Or, reminiscent of the
Dutch Black Peter, to frighten children he might dress
as a New World bogy, as a Negro or Indian
(Shoemaker 76-78; McKnight 17-18).
In the late 19th century, you may remember,
Virginia, cartoonist Thomas Nast showed that Santa
Claus used a spyglass to discover which children
should be punished or rewarded (Barnett 29). And
then there was that song, Oh, you better watch
out.... In the 1920s Coca Colas rosy Santa Claus

kept a ledger for Good Boys and Girls (Ebon 109).

In 1988, Mr. Rogers noted psychological dangers
to children from Santas vestigial omniscience
(Christmas with), but Santa was probably no longer
convincing to most children. Nowadays, if mall
Santas say anything beyond Whaddaya want? they
may suggest that kids behave themselves, eat right,
and brush their teeth as often as the dentist advises;
but this is merely wishful admonition (Rapaport;
DeGroot 177; Santas).
Once upon a time the stem Patriarch had acted in
concert with the popular work ethic when he insisted
that behavior and reward-or-punishment were related
as cause and effect. He had insisted that, like adults, to
receive material goods children must exchange
morally and socially approved behavior. This was so
perhaps especially for unruly boys, who had to
become men responsible not only for themselves, but
for children and women. But that was once upon a
time, Virginia, and now the stern Patriarch has
softened into a Sugar Daddy.
Nowadays, whether one is adult or child, male or
female, not being good, but merely being is
acceptable to Santa, whom Russell Belk discusses as
the American god of materialism (94-95; Wolf 15254). For to be is to consume, to consume is good and,
more importantly, is necessary to our conception of
social well being. Perhaps the great modern irony
will be that the dictatorship of compulsory consumerism may ultimately eliminate or severely limit
invidious distinctions of gender and age.
Given considerably altered cultural attitudes, we
can understand why few children today connect Santa
to the supernatural (or even the preternatural),
certainly not to the disciplinarian (Benjamin). A
Frank and Ernest cartoon in 1982 caught the spirit
of the age concerning Santa with the caption, I prefer
the Easter bunny. He doesnt make moral judgments.
Indeed, a 1992 story pitched to adults held that Santa
is OK because of his willingness to be there and
listen without judgment (Hollywood). Understandably, as Benjamin and others have shown, kids
now are more inclined than were children in your
youth,Virginia, to preserve the myth of unconditional
bounty (or the free lunch) for their own offspring
(Benjamin; Levy).
As in his relations with children, the earlier
Patriarch, St. Nicholas, behaved in contradictory or
ambivalent ways toward women. Appropriately for a
Christian saint (and like Artemis-as-Diana), he was
virginal and chaste. A practitioner of celibacy, he at
times avoided consorting with women and was
sometimes hostile toward them. As a precocious

St. Nicholas (Russian icon, early 16th century).

To All Best Christmas Wishes (Postcard, early 20th century).

24 Journal of American CuIture

Bishop, says the 13th-century Golden Legend, He
woke in prayer and made his body lean, he eschewed
company of women, he was humble in receiving all
things, profitable in speaking, joyous in admonishing,
and cruel in correcting (McKnight 67). Another
version reports that Refusing even so much as to turn
his eyes in their direction, he bade them goodbye
(Jones 52), still another that he lacerated the body, he
fled the company of women (Jones 320).
A medieval tale reports that a certain rich,
beautiful, and intelligent widow of Bari, Italy, a
devotee of Nicholas, whose bones had supposedly
been transported there from infidel Muslim lands in
1087, was about to be seduced. In response to her
promise of any reward he wished, a handsome
schoolmaster of noble birth had composed songs of
praise to Nicholas. Upon learning what reward he
really wanted, as the jingle goes, she sighed, she
cried, she almost died. She also prostrated herself at
the dtar of St. Nicholas, and in prayer composed her
own love song to Nicholas, that name...sweet to her
above all others; that name which she had repeated a
thousand times over she now repeats beseechingly;
that name is the beginning and end of each sob; that
name before all others is drawn from her fevered
brain by her sighs.
Naturally, or rather supernaturally, her patron
interceded, in full Bishops regalia appeared before
her intended and passionately sleepless seducer,
seized the youth by the hair and held him aloft, then
dropped him with a thud. Harshly he chastised him
with the whip which he carried... and so on. A bad
boy indeed, Virginia, but one now so cowed by this
celibate priest of the Church that he begged the ladys
forgiveness and himself took a vow of perpetual
celibacy. The widow, of course, gratefully followed
suit and even built an endowed nunnery in devotion to
her virginal Saint, like virginal Diana protecting
Britomartis from Minos, a protector of womens
chastity (Jones 241-44).
But, like his archenemy, Artemis of Ephesus,
Nicholas was also a fertility symbol, the patron and
protector of marriageable maidens, of the childless,
the deliverer and protector of newborn babes. In some
areas of Christendom, in addition to December 6,
Saint Nicholas was even honored at a spring planting
and fertility festival that superseded the orgiastic
Artemisia (Anichkof 114; McKnight 131). As an
orphaned but wealthy youth in Patara, Nicholas
secretly gave three bags of gold for the marriage
dowries of three sisters, thereby saving them from a
fate worse than death, because Satan had tempted
their poverty-stricken father to become a panderer

(Voragine 17; DeGroot 38). In 1915 in the north of

England, Nicholas still continued his custom of
secretly subsidizing dowerless maidens (McKnight
60-61).On December 6, in Nicholas adopted home,
Bari, token dowries were still being given to poor
virgins in 1979 (Burgess).
As patron and helper of all true maydens in
England, Nicholas received their prayers for husbands
(McKnight 59). Danish maidens seeking marriage
bedecked his icon with bouquets, while earthy French
girls in Normandy slid the door bolt of his chapel to
and fro as they chanted a call for him to many them,
Even in the early-20th century United States, a
Christmas greeting card featured Santa Claus acting
a
virtually like another Saint-Valentine-as
matchmaker who unites on a background of hearts a
Gibsonesque young man and woman. One is
reminded of the ancient Dutch practice of proposing
marriage by giving a pastry heart on Nicholas Day, a
practice that reappeared in early New York (DeGroot
109-10;Jones 318-19).
Throughout Europe, but perhaps especially in
France, spinsters and childless wives appealed to
Nicholas for succor, sat upon Saint Nicholas rocks,
rubbed his statuette over their bodies, and made
pilgrimages to St. Nicholas chapels. Whether with
kindly or cruel intent, on Nicholas Day people in
Holland and elsewhere gave spiced nuts, symbolic of
fertility, to spinsters and childless couples (Jones 5 8 ;
DeGroot 30,109).
As an obliging patron of fertility, Nicholas
responded. St. Nicholas of Tolentino was conceived
only because his hitherto sterile parents made a
pilgrimage to the relics of his namesake at Bari.
Among countless others, even the wife of that evil
innkeeper-cum-butcher of young students conceived a
child, a son of course, because she appealed to
Nicholas. In Germanic language alpine regions, the
phrase Nicholas has come meant that a woman was
pregnant. And, like Artemis, Nicholas helped women
in chiIdbirth, brought them babies in parts of
Europe-in alpine areas and in northern Germany
(DeGroot 107,109,131; Jones 58,319).
Whether as a celibate saint, or an obliging patron
of fertility, or a bountiful and kindly Santa Claus, St.
Nicholas by whatever name has acted as a Patriarch in
patriarchal societies. Some observers of his life,
notably Eisenbud and Barrett, have suggested that in
the last century, as womens private and public
influence has grown, the American Santa has softened
his stern visage, has become corpulent, and has taken
on androgynous and even maternal characteristics
(Barnett 45; Eisenbud).

The Strange Birth of Santa Claus..

. 25

A broader perspective suggests a

different argument-that Santa Claus is
still patriarchal, male-dominant, sexistthat something of the Patriarch lives on,
certainly in the perennial newspaper
holiday-time photos and mens magazine
cartoons of luscious Young Things on
Sugar Daddy Santas knee. At times, as a
desacralized figure who has reflected the
popular culture, this virginal saint, this
patron of fertility, has been transmuted
into an openly sexual, even misogynous
and dirty old man. And that is perhaps
most evident nowadays in circles that the
American Playboy travels, and in
cartoons he frequents, of the I understand youve been a bad little girl
variety (I; Hall).
But Playboys naughty Nicholas is
no new phenomenon. Members of an
early Christian libertinistic-gnostic
heretical sect were called Nikolaites, as
were later medieval opponents of priestly
celibacy, advocates of priestly marriage.
It was perhaps no great leap for the
European Nicholas to shift from patron of
pregnancy to participant. No great shift
for a respectable Dutch girl from
appealing to the saint for a husband and
children to becoming in the popular eye a
promiscuous girl of Sintemiklaas, In
riotous St. Nicholas rounds, young
Dutch males seized and blackened the
faces of girls who were abroad, or pushed
A Merry Christmas (Postcard, late 19th-early 20th century).
them into cesspools, for nice girls were
supposed to be off the streets at night
which he hath a pack on his back .... And from that
(DeGroot 26, 112, 151; on Austria, see Hole 15).
fount of fertility, many a broken poore whore could
Ptayboy and other cartoonists, American and
get up a new baudie house, and a new stock, by the
European, who depict Santa as a dirty old man
coming of this good fellow (Schmauch 41; Durston).
flashing or otherwise molesting women on (or off) the
No, nothing new in Playboys December 1991
public streets merely reflect such earlier juvenile
cartoon of a negligee-clad cutie saying to Santa,
hooligans.
Youre a compulsive giftgiver .... I like that in a
Rebelling anonymously in 1645 against the
man. Even its infamous parody of a coffee ad in
sexually repressive English Puritan Revolution, the
December 1982, showing a seductive nymphet
author of A Hue and Cry After Christmas
coming on to an (of course) innocent and startled old
summarized t h e Perennial Ptayboy Philosophy
Santa Claus, has precedents, as in the seductively
concerning women, materialism, and sexuality.
bare-breasted nymphet facing old Father Christmas
Women were, the author believed, what a later
(and the viewer) in a Punch of London cartoon
American generation would call gold-diggers, out for
almost a century earlier, on Christmas eve, 1881. The
what they could get from the old Sugar Daddy, Father
modern difference is merely of graphic degree, not of
Christmas, who, because the wanton women dote
kind.
after him, he helped them to so many new Gownes,
Now it may be, Virginia, that our modem Santas
Hatts, and Hankerches, and other fine knacks, of
sexism has intensified in the popular male-dominated

26 Journal of American Culture

culture because women are impinging upon his
hegemony, wrested long ago from the goddess.
Although as a gift-bringer he has never since been
challenged fundamentally, certain females, a kind of
ladies auxiliary of gift-bringers, have kept alive the
possibility of Artemis return. Whether Saint Lucia in
Sweden, Sicily, and elsewhere, or Italian Befana, who
brings gifts down the chimney on Twelfth Night,
Holda on New Years Eve in Saxony, Russian
Baboushka, or German Berchta, women have been
and continue to be persistent even if minor players in
the patriarchal Christmas pageant (Oswalt 7; Walsh
140-43; Miles 241-42; Sansorn 68, 106). Now they
are increasingly restive.
In 1976 there appeared A Visit from St. Nicholas
to a Liberated Huusehold, a lighthearted exploration
of gender role reversals and anti-sexism (Viorst). In
1980, a young woman wrote in a more serious vein
that If Santa Claus resembles the typical American,
she is a woman. Who else is required to shop for all
the presents in a family, while the credit falls on the
breadwinner for donating the funds...? Santa Claus
has always been a woman in my household. Even
more acerbically in the 1983 English novel, Benefits,
Zoe Fairbairns wrote that Christmas was when
families came together in greed and discord, and
women slaved in kitchens...* (78-79). In the same
tone and country, a woman with a four-yeat-old
daughter asked in 1988, ...where are the stories about
Mother Christmas...? As a feminist, do I really want
another hero, another God-like man for my daughter
to worship? (Moore 41).
Despite similar widespread criticisms, despite
Margaret Meads Redbook call in 1977 for a whole
clan of gift-giving figures to join gift-bringer Santa
(41), and despite similar urging by some
psychologists, including Joyce Brothers in 1980, a
casual review of mall Santas reveals that they remain
overwhelmingly male, notwithstanding a few
generally abortive attempts by temporary hiring
agencies to introduce women to the role. One reason
has been, as Rapaport found in 1972, that already
rigidly gendered children have been perturbed to
discover a Santa surrogate with breasts (1 8;
Calling). Thus the view that myths and legends can
be altered consciously and intelligently has not yet
met with widespread approval, regardless of age or
gender, even though it has gained somewhat.
Understandably, the tendency since the 1960s

(Hagstrom 250) of Mrs. Santa to impinge upon her

husbands traditional territory has elicited mixed
responses. Oh, yes, Virginia, as you know those
medievd Nikolaites finally had their way when our

contemporary Saint married belatedly, in the 19th

century, your Victorian era so hospitable ideologically
to marriage, monogamy, and the family. But his new
wife has not been universally welcomed in public, not
even in the late-20th century era of liberation. A
cartoon shows a line of children in a store looking
askance at this substitute as she says, Mr. Santa
wasnt feeling well today+Leading a Thanksgiving
Day parade in 1980 was, according to a columnist,
old Santa Claus, waving and ho-ho-ing, with his
sleigh being pulled by half-naked, nubile females
(Arnett). Obviously the old Playboy had no room for a
wife in the sleigh.
Nevertheless, she has persisted. An ad for
another parade that year gave her literal bottom
biIling: Mrs. Claw will be there too (Mrs. CIaus).
But the following year, presumably dispensing with
nubile nymphs, Santa and Mrs. Santa led the parade
at a Michigan mall (Santa Arrives!). By 1991 and
1992 and 1993, Mrs. S. occasionally accompanied her
husband at malls, schools, and private parties (Kahn;
Davila; Rohan; Cider).
In recent years, like the womens movement she
reflects, Mrs. Claus has experienced considerable ups
and downs, as has, apparently, the mood of her
traditionalist husband and his adherents. A seemingly
lighthearted December 1976 Playboy cartoon of an
ambiguously gendered Santa in frilly panties was
captioned, There goes another cherished childhood
illusion! But the December I983 issuewhich also
carried two cartoons showing gay Santas-presented
a significantly grimmer tone in Asa Babers short
short allegory, A Christmas Story.
At an Iowa truckstop on interstate 80, an 18wheel jockey, himself mildly depressed because The
road can be as lonely as the ocean, especially on
Christmas Eve, discovers Santa drunk. When he
urges, Pull yourself together, man.Youve got work
to do, Claus retorts, Let me tell you something,
trucker. I used to be up to my armpits in work on
Christmas Eve. I dont have to bother now. Shes got
it. Damn near all of it, including the reindeer, My
ex-wife.
So, from now on, realizes the trucker, itll be
Mrs. Claus who comes down the chimney?
Happens to the best ofus, amigo, Santa said. I got
problems just like any other man. He stopped and
looked embarrassed. Santa, you can talk to me, the
trucker urged. Im not so sure, Santa desponded.
Im not sure we men know how to talk to one another
about anything much ....
It was hard for me to say what I wanted to say
next, the trucker admitted. Santa, when I was a little

... 27

The Strange Birth of Santa Claus

boy, I was looking for only one thing in life: I wanted
to find men I could look up to....And, Santa,you were
one hell of a role model for me.... Every damn role
model I ever had gave out on me. My father died and
the baseball players got rich and the generals got
mean and my buddies got scared and the politicians
got greedy.... Come on, Santa,dont you give out OR
me, too. Thereupon, Santa squared his shoulders, the
two hooked the sleigh to the I&wheeler, and before
dawn the job was done.
A happy ending, but surely forced? Since Mrs.
Santa still has the house, workshop, and reindeer,
must we conclude that this is a late, even if triumphant, gasp of male bonding? In Penny Ives 1991
childrens story, Mrs. Claus makes further inroads on
the masculine domain when she substitutes for sick
Santa by delivering presents in a flying machine
concocted from a bike, a vacuum cleaner, and an
umbrella, proving of course that females can even be
inventive (Mrs. Santa).
What do we do at the end of cherished illusions?
It is a painful time for some. It i s a time of
opportunity for others, perhaps for everyone, but a
painful time, nevertheless. A priest who in 1986 told
children that Santa Claus was dead soon fled to a
leave of absence because of adverse publicity
(Priest). In 1990 a teacher in Fontana, California,
told her fourth grade students, I shouldnt say this
because I might get in trouble, but there is no Santa
Claus. She did. A traditionalist mother exclaimed,
It can get out of hand if she is not made an
example.... E mean, whats next? There is no God?
(Teacher). Elsewhere in 1990, a teacher ordered a
six-year old not to tell other kindergarteners that
Santa was a myth. When the precocious childs
mother objected to such a freedom of speech
violation, the schools principal sided with his
teacher: I even believe in Santa, for crying out loud
(Student).
In 1973, another traditionalist man, Tristram
Potter Coffin, wrote in The Book of Christmas
Folklore, Surely theres something amiss with the
womens libbers who have demanded female Santa
Clauses,.,. As GamalieI Bradford wrote, The fairies
are gone...the witches are gone...the ghosts are gone.
Santa Clam alone lingers with us. For Gods sake, for
heavens sake, let us keep him as long as we can. If
Gods in his heaven, he must agree that Santa Claus is
All right for the world (96).
This poignant plea to a patriarchal God in heaven
was answered indirectly in 1978 by feminist Mary
Daly. While some defend patriarchal mythical figures
because they open up depths of reality otherwise

Pelznickel (German).

28 Journal of American Culture

closed to US Daly wrote in Gydecobgy, defenders
crucially ignore a fact-that those mythical figures
also close off depths of reality which would
otherwise be open to us (44).
Another indirect answer appeared in a Time
article of December 30, 1991, reporting that A grassroots revival of faith in the Virgin is taking place
worldwide, and that The late twentieth century has
become the age of the Marian pilgrimage. John Paul
I1 cites Mary as a model of virginity and motherhood,
while a feminist says, The great terror is that she will
be worshipped above her son. Whatever aspect of
Mary they choose to emphasize and embrace, author
Richard Ostling concludes, those who seek her out
surely find something only a holy mother can
provide (62-66). An adherent of Artemis could
hardly have put it better.
We live in a strange, disturbing stage of
American culture, Virginia. Everywhere we see not
only intimations of transformed gender roles and
relationships, but also significant countercurrents that
are nowadays called backlash. That whole process,
as you have seen, has been evident in the ancient,
continuing contest to shape and control images of
ArternisfSt. NichoiadSanta Claus. Nowadays, in
addition to traditional photos and cartoons of
seductive innocents on the old Sugar Daddys lap, we
are almost as likely to see a Berrys World cartoon
with a proper bespectacled woman on Santas knee
saying, Imfrom N.O.W. and I want to ask you a few
QUESTIONS! (Berry). Or even a militant and
muscular radical feminist in a December 1972
Saturday Review cartoon karate-chopping the Old
Nick for calling her little girl and demanding, Call
me Ms!
In December 1989, San Franciscos Court of
Historical Review and Appeals, meeting in mock
session, ruled that although Santa Claus is in fact
male, his spirit is universal, and cannot be
limited by gender, race or color. In attempting to
reach a balanced conclusion, the presiding judge
was apparently influenced by a traditionalist witness
who declared, I shudder to think of the destruction
it would do to ourselves, our family and our culture
if Santa were declared to be a woman. The judge
seemed to concur in stating that The perceived
image of Santa Claus at the present time is ...a
cultural legend and tradition embedded so deep in
our society that it cannot be altered by court decree.
But the j u d g e concluded nevertheless that
henceforth Santas wife must be addressed as Ms.
Claus and elevated to equal status with her
husband (Leary).

In this instance, as in many others, we see change

and compromise, but also continuity and countercurrents. In 1972, Western Temporary Services, which
until June of that year had been called Western Girl,
advised its Santa trainees-overwhelmingly malethat they should praise boys for having grown tdler,
but girls for having become prettier since last year
(Rapaport 18; Calling). Having presumably drifted
with feminist currents in abandoning the Girl, 20
classes later in 1991 the agency was nevertheless still
advising its trainees-no doubt still overwhelmingly
male-to stress the size of boys and the prettiness of
girls (Cohen).
In 1992, the political year of the woman, at the
height of contemporary debate on the role of women
in combat, when military women had only recently
returned from the Persian Gulf and were preparing for
duty in Somalia, Matte1 the toy company called our
attention to Barbie. Barbie doll, it seemed, literally
looked like a billion dollars, the sum accountants
projected for her sales, much more than double the
430 million of 1987, just five years earlier. A major
reason for this upsurge had been the popularity of
Totally Hair Barbie. In 1992, also, if you pushed
Teen Talk Barbies button, she automatically
responded, I love to shop, dont you? (Billion;
Cowherd; Smith).
Can contemporary forces seeking gender equality
successfully revise the gift-bringer myth, as did the
early Christian Fathers in displacing the Mother
Goddess, and as, much more recently and superficially, did Irving and Moore and Nast to fit 19thcentury attitudes? Or will soft-sell patriarchal Santas
from a temporary employment agency continue to tell
boys how big and strong theyve grown, and girls how
much prettier theyve become? Is it possible to create
a gift-bringer myth that violates no ones sense of self,
regardless of sex or gender?
As we have seen, Virginia, the conflict between
Artemis and St. NicholadSanta Ciaus is an ancient
contest of opponents in league with supernatural or
preternatural forces. At stake has been their power as
gendered agents to bring life or death, whether
temporal or eternal; to define gender identity and
relationships; and to dispense or withhold the material
blessings and rewards of earthly life.
In the long sweep of time since its triumph we
find ourselves in a climactic moment when the
patriarchy that Nicholas and now Santa Claus
represent is increasingly being challenged and found
wanting. So that now it has become possible to see
that St. Nicholas/Santa Claus reflects the dominant
patriarch in his ambivalent doppelganger attitudes and

The Strange Birth of Santa Claw... 29

Best Christmas Wishes (Postcard, late 19th-early 20th century).

behavior toward women and children. From a position

of power in relation to the relatively weak and
submissive, he is loving and violent, protective and
predatory; h e is the paradoxically kindly disciplinarian brandishing gifts and the whip; he is the
celibate and chivalric seducer.
This is an age when egalitarian and democratic
forces have begun to limit the freedom of St.
Nicholas/Santa Claw as a gendered representative of
apparently outmoded patriarchy. He can no longer act
entirely at will and alone. On this cusp of cultural
change, we do not know if present tendencies will
gather force or, as they sometimes do, will falter and
recede. Numerous signs point toward the probability
of a revisioned gift-bringer myth; even more point
toward change as at least possible; other signs,
perhaps fewer but billboard-sized, assert and reassert
the sanctity of purported unchangeable tradition.
Myths, of course, are notoriously conservative,
are symbiotically related to larger cultural patterns
and beliefs. Even so, traditions are being consciously
changed. Mrs, and even Ms. Santa are making their
torturous way toward a more nearly equal share of

holiday gifting (and selling), which suggest that large

belief-patterns are being altered by egalitarian and
perhaps commercial interests.
Meanwhile, perennially resurgent gift-bringer
Mary, Mother of God,alter ego of the Great Mother
Artemis, reminds Christians that she has brought forth
life, even eternal life, the greatest gift of all.
Yes, Virginia, there were, are, and will be giftbringers. Can we make them equals? We think so, but
we shall see, Virginia.

For assistance and advice I wish especially to thank

Joy Curtis, Val Berryman, David Green, Philip Korth,
Colleen Ledy, James McClintock, Douglas Noverr. Milton
Powell and Sue Powell. This article is dedicated to the
memory of Reed Baird.

30 Journal of American Culture

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