Find Out Why Santa Wears Red - By: Tauqeer Hassan

Children around the world always enjoy seeing the image of a big heavy jolly bearded man in red carrying a big sack of gifts during the Christmas season. This man is the famous Santa Claus; he is also called Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas and Pere Noel. Santa Claus is a symbol of the gift giving spirit in Christmas for people everywhere. His relation with gifts is so powerful that many gift wrappers are red in color which is homage to his bright red colored suit.

Myra’s Saint Nicholas
The reason why Santa Claus wears red is not certain. There are many stories related to this of none of them is more credible than the story of Saint Nicholas of Myra, he was a fourth century Christian Bishop famous for inheriting a fortune and helping the poor by giving away all his wealth. This was the reason he ultimately became the patron saint of children.

Popes in olden times used to wear red robes and a red miter. The fact that Saint Nicholas had been a pope influenced how the modern-day Santa Claus is depicted. In Dutch, he was traditionally called Sinter Klaas and was not portrayed as a jolly heavy bearded man during that time. He was a kind saint and taught the virtue of gift giving as his religious purpose. His Dutch name, Sinter Klaas, was eventually converted into Santa Claus.

The Santa Claus of the 19th Century
The way how Santa Claus is drawn by artists and presented in movies generally comes from the 19th Century poem of Clement Clark Moore which was The Night Before Christmas or A Visit From Saint Nicholas. He described Santa as a man dressed all in fur from head to toe and his clothes were stained with ashes and dirt, although the color of the suit was not precise.

Thomas Nast was the first artist to draw Santa the way in which he is seen today based on Moore’s poem. Five of Nast’s drawings into colored lithographs were made by George P. Webster. Santa Claus was presented as a happy, excessively fat and white bearded-elf wearing a red-brown spotted skin tight suit. The jacket’s base was trimmed in white fur lined with attachments or spots just under the red sash. North Pole was identified as Santa’s home in the poem.

The coat made of red deerskin and white ermine fur
As North Pole was thought to be the home of Santa Claus, it was natural to expect him in warm clothes. People living in cold places mostly wear coats made of deerskin and fur. According to the legend, Santa Claus met a squire who was wearing a wonderful suit of red deerskin trimmed with soft white fur of ermine round the collar, cuffs and the bottom and same fur around the hat.

Santa wanted the same type of suit but he was not wealthy like the squire, he asked the village’s seamstress to prepare a same kind of suit for him. The seamstress used a bolt of strong woven cloth and dyed a rich red and white rabbit skin for the trimmings.

However, the seamstress made a mistake and made a suit for a larger man. This is the reason why the earlier image of Saint Nick is a slimmer man wearing a loose red coat fastened by a belt around the waist.

Father Christmas
Santa Claus was not always wearing red clothes before the 19th century. During the Saxons and Celts times, they called a man Father Christmas or Old Winter dressed in green visited homes to celebrate the midwinter solstice. Green is represented as a color of spring and this man wore it as a gesture to welcome the spring. He was not a person who brought gifts neither one who climbed down chimneys. He simply visited houses to eat dinner with families.

Santa Claus used to wear blue
Santa Claus used to wear a long blue hooded cloak in Norse tradition. The Norse believed that Father Christmas was an Odin disguised in his winter form as a well built aged man sporting a white beard riding around the world on his eight-legged deer Sleipnir at solstice. Similar to the modern Santa Claus, he also carried a sack of riches with him and distributed riches to the poor.

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