The secret behind Santa being red

It was in 1823 that the poem 'The Night Before Christmas' led to emergence of modern day Santa

With winters comes Christmas and with Christmas comes the most asked question: Why is Santa Red?

Santa Claus is of Dutch decent and a New Yorker, who emerged in the early 19^th century. In the 1700s, Christmas in New York used to be a riotous event and the only present one could expect from another was a punch in the face!

The middle class of New York preferred celebrating it rather soberly. In the year 1804, John Pintard an antiquarian found a historic society and discovered 4^th century's St Nicholas - benefactor saint of kids and gift giving - as the city's new generous figure.

Pintard acquired these traditions and embedded them to the celebration of Christmas in New York, with Dutch Sinterklaas (himself a contraction of St Nicolas) emerging as Santa Claus.

Back then the imagery drawn by the artist Alexander Anderson were still in black and white and decisively pontifical.



Santa Claus fleshed out rapidly in the years after 1804. Initially by Washington Irving, who made jokes about Dutch traditions in his History of New York, and then, significantly, in the 1823 poem “A Visit from St Nicholas".

It was in 1823 that the poem, better known as 'The Night Before Christmas', through which the modern Santa came into being.

At this point, an interesting and chirpy Santa - opposite to the European counterpart who would most likely to punish disobedient children - was born.

However, the colour of his outfit wasn’t red yet. He was usually seen in unattractive shade of brown, although many other colours featured too.

In 1870s the practice of the Santa wearing a red outfit began. The American cartoonist Thomas Nast was the one who first came up with the red suit and cap, white fur lining and buckled black belt. For more than 20 years, Nast drew many drawings of Santa for Harper’s Weekly.

It’s hard to tell as to why Nast settled on the red outfit. Some say there was a connection with the iconography of the real St Nicholas, who's usually portrayed in red robes, but most likely because it just seemed appealingly right; red-nosed Santa of the poem, chiming with the rosy-cheeked, and the red outfit playing off the whiteness of the beard, snow and fur. Nast was also the first one to depict Santa as a native of the North Pole.

Then finally in 1931, an advertisement carved out of a painting by Haddon Sundblom invented an ideal Santa – huge stomach, with little round spectacles, red face; jolly and smiley.

The new Santa meant that, St Nick could never be dressed in anything but red again and certainly not, be seen angry at naughty children.

The story originally appeared on The Guardian