Christmas is wrapped in traditions, from lights aglow on an evergreen tree to a jolly generous, bearded man who sneaks down chimneys.
Here are details on where some of these traditional figures or items came from.
Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, Papa Noel, Father Christmas — Santa Claus has many names depending on story or country.
But most accounts go back to Saint Nicholas, who was born in 280 A.D. in what is now modern-day Turkey. He was known for his piety and kindness and, most famously, for filling the stockings of three poor girls with gold for their dowries so they could marry, according to an article about Santa Claus at History.com.
“Over the course of many years, Nicholas’s popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors,” History.com says.
The Dutch brought their celebration of the day of Sinterklaas’ death, Dec. 6, with them to the U.S. — Sinterklass is a variation of the Dutch Saint Nikolaas. Reports of those feast days can be found in New York newspapers from the 1770s, History.com says.
With years and tales Nicholas morphed into Santa Claus, and the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” on Dec. 23, 1823, changed him a lot, at least in the U.S.
“The piece offered a different take on Santa Claus, a figure who was, until that time, traditionally depicted as a thinner, less jolly, horse-riding disciplinarian … But the poem in the newspaper painted a different picture: it gave Santa eight reindeer, and even named them; it described a Santa who could magically sneak in and out of homes via chimneys; and it created the venerated cheerful, chubby icon,” according information about the poem at Poets.org.
The cartoonist Thomas Nast depicted a jolly Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly in 1860s, providing a physical image to go with the mental one drawn by the poem, according to an entry at Britannica.com.
Nast’s drawings also are credited with giving away Santa’s living arrangements at the North Pole, Smithsonianmag.com says.
In the years since, Santa’s legend and look have been expanded upon through books, movies and advertising. Depending on the source, his story includes bits and pieces from that of the German Kris Kringle and the British Father Christmas.
“The Christmas Chronicles” on Netflix and “The Santa Clauses” series on Disney+ are some of the latest additions to a lore that likely will continue to evolve in the years to come.
RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER
When it comes to Christmas traditions, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is young.
He was born in 1939 as a character in a children’s book by a Montgomery Ward catalog writer named Robert L. May, according to a 2013 NPR “Morning Edition” interview between host David Greene and May’s daughter, Barbara May Lewis.
Montgomery Ward printed a couple million copies of May’s book to give away at Christmas, according to the interview.
Then May and his brother-in-law wrote a song about Rudolph that was picked up by cowboy singer Gene Autry and became an instant Christmas hit in 1949. The stop-animation Christmas TV special came out in 1964 with a plot somewhat different and expanded from May’s book.
Candy canes probably weren’t the result of a German choirmaster wanting to keep children quiet in church, one common legend about the candy.
It’s more likely that this classic Christmas treat has medicinal roots, according to a 2019 article written for the website The Conversation by a food science graduate student and a chemistry/biology professor.
In the 18th century, peppermint with bit of sugar was used by apothecaries to treat upset stomachs and digestive complaints and to mask the nasty flavor of medicine, says the story headlined “The history of candy canes and why they taste so cool.”
In the 19th century, sugar became less expensive and candy, including peppermints, became popular, the article says.
The first U.S. cookbook to include a candy cane recipe was written in 1844 and mentions stripes, and the first documented decorating of a tree using candy was in 1847, the article says.
In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1860s Christmas account from her book “Little House in the Big Woods,” she mentions getting a stick of red and white peppermint candy in her stocking, according to “The Sweet and Sticky Story of Candy Canes” at NationalGeographic.com.
However this classic candy developed, it was candy maker Bob McCormack and his McCormack’s Famous Candy Co. that made them common in the 20th century.
“Production skyrocketed when McCormack’s brother-in-law, Father Gregory Keller, a Catholic priest, invented a machine that automatically put the crook in the candy cane,” the National Geographic story says.
“Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes,” according to “History of Christmas Trees” at History.com.
However, decorating with evergreens at the time of the winter solstice was common in cultures from ancient Egypt to the Vikings of Scandinavia. “In many counties, it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits and illness,” the article says.
By the Renaissance, Christmas trees were part of the Christian celebration of Christmas in Germany — there are some stories about a similar “paradise tree” before that, according to History.com and Britannica.com.
Decorations have changed through the years from apples to glass balls, roses to tinsel and so on. Legend has it that Martin Luther, who led the Protestant Reformation, came up with the idea for placing small candles on the tree, the websites say.
In America, Christmas trees were long viewed as a pagan practice. “The first record of one being on display was in the 1830s by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, although trees had been a tradition in many German homes much earlier,” the History.com article says.
Queen Victoria and her German-born husband, Prince Albert, were responsible for popularizing the Christmas tree with the British. Then Godey’s Lady’s Book published an Americanized illustration of the royals, and “this and other efforts helped make the Christmas trees popular in the United States by the 1970s,” Britannica.com says.
Unfortunately, as the tradition took hold, the candles used to light Christmas trees also became a widespread hazard.
Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the first strand of electric lights. Howard H. Johnson, Edison’s business partner and friend, came up with the idea of replacing candles with those strands of lights in 1882, according a Library of Congress question and answer page at loc.gov.
The idea took a while to catch on and for electricity to become widely available, but “today we expect to see the holiday season become aglow with electric strands of light,” the site says.
Maybe Saint Nicholas slid down a chimney and filled three poor Turkish girls’ stockings — they were recently laundered and drying by the fireplace, of course — with gold so that they had dowries and could marry.
But as far as history goes, this story is folklore with variations depending on the teller.
However, the story does seem to be related to the European tradition of hanging up stockings at Christmastime, a practice families brought with them to the U.S.
The best known literary mention of Christmas stockings in the U.S. came with the 1823 poem “A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” which is generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore.
“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, /In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,” is how it goes. And later, “He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, /And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk.”
Literary and artistic evidence of Christmas stockings spreads from there, including that of illustrator Thomas Nast, according to “History of Christmas Stockings: A Legendary Tale,” by Megan Cooper at LoveToKnow.com.
“Although traditions might vary from person to person, one thing has remained constant throughout the stocking’s history — there’s always a child’s delighted face at the other end…,” the story says.
“Jingle Bells” was written by James Lord Pierpont and originally published with the name “One Horse Open Sleigh” in 1857. It became known as “Jingle Bells” two years later.
“Although ‘Jingle Bells’ is now a Yuletide staple, there is no mention of Christmas or any other holiday in the song,” according to “8 Things You May Not know About ‘Jingle Bells’” at History.com.
The song has four verses about being out in a sleigh with girls, racing a sleigh, having wintertime fun and a “jingle all the way.” It was all rather rebellious for its time, the History.com article says.
Pierpont was quite a character, the article points out. He was the uncle of Gilded Age financier J.P. Morgan. He ran away from boarding school to join the crew of a whaling ship. He left his family to strike it rich during the California Gold Rush — it didn’t work out. He joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War, while his family was on the Union side.
Nevertheless, “Jingle Bells” has persisted. The melody Pierpont came up with is slightly different than the one we love to sing today — see hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com, where pdfs of the original Library of Congress sheet music can be viewed — but the joy of singing about wintry fun remains, so much so that two astronauts could not help but add another note to its history.
Astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Thomas P. Strafford on Gemini 6 used a harmonica and bells to make “Jingle Bells” the first song broadcast from space in 1965. They played the song after spotting an “object” (Santa in his sleigh, of course) nine days before Christmas, the History.com article says.
Mistletoe is a parasitic plant and various species can commonly be found around the world. Various cultures associated it with fertility and vitality and thought it to have curative powers. (It doesn’t.)
But it might be the ancient Greeks we have to thank for the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe, according to the article “Pucker Up! Why Do People Kiss Under the Mistletoe?” published earlier this year on livescience.com.
Kissing under the mistletoe was a tradition during Saturnalia, the December festival of Saturn. Later, Greek couples kissed under mistletoe “in marriage ceremonies, because of the plant’s association with fertility,” the article says.
Celtic Druids decorated with mistletoe, but didn’t kiss under it. And there’s a Nordic myth related to the mistletoe, kisses and the son of Frigga, goddess of love. But “just how it made the jump from sacred herb to holiday decoration remains up for debate,” says the article “Why Do We Kiss Under the Mistletoe?” at History.com.
By the time Victorian England arrived, kissing under the mistletoe was part of Christmastime.
“Men were allowed to steal a kiss from any woman caught standing under the mistletoe, and refusing was viewed as bad luck,” History.com says.
Some etiquette declared that a kiss could be given for each white berry plucked from the mistletoe.
Side note: Mistletoe’s kissing cousin, the dwarf mistletoe, is a problem in Colorado and can severely damage ponderosa and lodgepole pines, according to the Colorado State Forest Service, (https://csfs.colostate.edu/)
