what is going on mere mortals my name is John solo and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas which as we all know is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year Santa Claus is coming to town and he's bringing me a Lego medieval blacksmith set or at least he should unless he wants broken legs for Christmas there's really no debate that Santa Claus is one of the most well-known and legendary figures in all of folklore every year millions of children around the world eagerly wait for this benevolent stranger to break into their home and
give them free stuff I was one of those children once upon a time and if you're watching this episode then chances are so were you but have you ever wondered where this weird tradition came from it's actually a pretty complex question to answer because the origins of the character we Americans call Santa Claus have splintered and fractured time and time again dozens of cultures have put their own tweaks on this legendary Gift Giver based on their societal norms and values in other words instead of his Evolution consisting of a straight line from point A to
point B I'd compare it to a snowflake with the benevolent Gift Giver archetype at the very center and the snowflakes branches representing his or her numerous identities around the world sidebar did I say that right do snowflakes have branches what else do you call the little points that Branch out the point I'm trying to make here is that it's impossible for us to trace the exact path Santa Claus took from the point of his creation all the way to becoming America's most popular folklore character however we have found some critical moments in history that caused
his Legend to grow and change in major ways so that's what I'm sharing with you today [Music] so if you've done any of your own research into this topic then you've probably seen some claims by both Scholars and casuals that the modern day idea of Santa Claus is in some way connected to Saint Nicholas of Mira he was a Turkish Bishop who lived during the 4th century and had a reputation for generosity and gift giving before we talk about him though it's absolutely worth pointing out that long before Saint Nick was even born there was
a number of pagan religions that had their own wintertime gift givers in ancient Rome there was the yearly celebration of saturnalia where social Customs were tossed aside for a designated time and sacrifices were made to Saturn the Roman equivalent of Cronus Zeus's father similar to Santa he was often portrayed with a glorious beard flying through the sky in a chariot pulled by two serpents not quite as endearing as Santa's reindeer but I hear they sang some lovely songs about Salazar the red-nosed basilisk another Pagan deity who's often compared to Santa Claus is the all-father himself
Odin in the North regions around Scandinavia the winter solstice was celebrated every year in the form of yule referred to as the Yule father he would ride through the sky on his eight-legged horse slept near with his long bushy beard flowing in the wind there's also evidence that some tribes considered Thor the leader of the hunt and he was depicted flying through the sky pulled by his goats now while these similarities with Santa seem a little too big to call a coincidence not everyone agrees that they played a direct role in shaping Santa Claus's Legend
instead many attribute his Origins to the aforementioned Saint Nicholas of Mira in full disclosure the life of Saint Nicholas is a messy web to untangle it turns out that during the 10th Century about 600 years after Saint Nick supposedly lived a scribe named Simeon metaphrastes was making records of the lives of all the previous Saints and he combined the life stories of two different Saint Nicks as if they were one guy as a result the Saint Nick that we have record of technically never existed and it's nearly possible to tell what parts of his life
should be attributed to Nicholas of Mira which are from Nicholas of Scion and what stories are made up completely despite this complication there are many who've chosen to believe that Saint Nick of Mira really was as kind and generous as his Legends say there's one story about him saving three innocent men from being executed after their jury had been bribed to condemn them and another claims that he literally scared off a storm that was about to capsize a ship he was sailing on both of those are sus in their own special ways but they aren't
the only reason he's thought of as the OG Santa there's another famous tale about a starving father who'd been reduced to such poverty that he was on the verge of selling his daughters into prostitution and how when Saint Nick heard about this he snuck up to the farmer's window in the middle of the night to drop off a briefcase full of cash or a sack full of coins but I think the briefcase is more theatrical either way this single act of generosity has caused countless people to link Saint Nick to Santa Clause's practice of delivering
presents at night but don't get it twisted mere mortals even if Santa was born out of Saint Nick's charitable habits he had a few more Evolutions to go through before he became the legend that we all know and love today after all Charmander doesn't just become Charizard he has to go through his ugly teenage phase first during the 16th century the Catholic Church started catching a lot of flack from its followers who felt like the church prioritized the wealth and well-being of its officials as opposed to the poor believers who were responsible for having wealth
and power in the first place kinda sad that it hasn't gotten even remotely better in the past 500 years but that's not the point the point is that when a guy named Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of his local church outlining catholicism's various offenses this caused an avalanche of Catholics to leave the church an event known as the Protestant Reformation along with trying to get away from and abandon Catholic Traditions Protestants were instructed to stop worshiping and celebrating Catholic saints like they were Gods which meant that people no longer celebrated Saint
Nicholas as the benevolent Gift Giver instead Protestants created the figure christkind or Christ Kindle to take over that domain and even though the Christ Kindle is referred to as Christ's child the Christ Kindle is not actually an infant babe in Tom German's book Santa Claus worldwide he States the Christ Kindle is not depicted as an actual infant presumably because newborns aren't really suitable for dramatic roles much less caring heavy bags of gifts but often appears as a girl typically with blonde hair dressed in white and gold Chris Kendall is sometimes portrayed by a young girl
creating the look of an angel or cheerah but more commonly is played by a teenager or a young woman not all Protestants were willing to give up their worship of Saint Nicholas and the Christmas traditions that went along with him though up in the Netherlands they had defined a loophole in this new law so they said the figure that survived the Reformation named sinterklos was not meant to be Saint Nicholas of Mira any more than the German figure of belshnickel was granted Santa Claus's clothes sure resembled the typical Bishop drip complete with hat and staff
but to placate any Skeptics they rescheduled their celebration so it didn't overlap with Christmas or Christ's birth instead Santa Claus arrived on December 6th and instead of him arriving like Santa Claus he rides in on a ship from Spain is accompanied by his helper shrate Pete or black Peter and sometimes he mounts his White Horse and rides through the streets spreading cheer and giving presents to well-behaved children it's easy to see the resemblance between sinterklos and Santa Claus minus the whole black Peter thing that's a bad look for Santa Claus but I will admit I
am kind of glad that at least one racially insensitive tradition didn't start here in the U.S that being said the center class figure did go through some serious changes after arriving here in America some of them wholesome and some not so much before we dive into those changes though I want to shout out expressvpn for sponsoring this episode and making the weeks of research it required possible internet access may be cheaper now than ever before but it's not because internet service providers are generous they've just found a much more lucrative product you and your data
they lure you into their ecosystem with a halfway reasonable price then they take detailed notes on your internet activity and sell those notes to the highest bidder it's a really creepy process but the good news is there's an easy way to protect yourself and your personal info today's sponsor expressvpn for those who haven't heard expressvpn is an app that creates a secure tunnel between your devices and the internet so that everything you do online is encrypted it does this by rerouting your connection through expressvpn's secure server which blocks your not so friendly neighborhood ISP from
spying on everything you do it's not just your phone or your computer either expressvpn works on all of your devices tablets Smart TVs even your router cut those creeps off at the source and keep your family safe all you have to do is download expressvpn like you would any app then you press one button to turn it on and it works quietly in the background to protect you your data and your peace of mind so if you want to join me and keep your data private with the VPN rated number one by Forbes and rolling
stone go to expressvpn.com John solo to get three extra months of expressvpn protection for free that's exp r e s s vpn.com John solo when it comes to the creation of the American Santa Claus there are three men who are usually given the credit Washington Irving author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Clement Clark Moore also known as the author of Twas the Night Before Christmas and lastly Thomas Nast an illustrator who gave Santa many of his most iconic qualities through his art naturally there is some debate about exactly how much
credit these men should receive considering how well established the wintertime Gift Giver was by the time word of him reached America's Shores but there is no question they contributed heavily to his Evolution into the Santa we know today well maybe we can question Irving's contribution because all he did was write a satirical history book called the history of New York under the pseudonym of Diedrich Knickerbocker Dutch historian in said book he claimed that it was Dutch immigrants who brought the Santa Claus tradition with them it's not an unreasonable claim but there's no evidence for how
he verified it and considering the context of a satirical history book it doesn't seem like something thing we should take too seriously that being said it's not the claim itself but his including the claim in his book that's said to have popularized the idea of Santa in other words many Americans supposedly discovered the wintertime gift-giver tradition by reading his book another author who pushed the legend of Santa Claus a long way was Clement Clark Moore a scholar and teacher who's best known for writing the Christmas poem a visit from Saint Nicholas AKA Twas the Night
Before Christmas I'm not going to recite the entire poem to you because that'd be weird and chances are you know most of it anyway but believe it or not Moore's poem is where many of Santa Claus's most iconic qualities come from this was the first written record that mentioned Santa flying in a sleigh the sleigh being pulled by eight tiny reindeer and those eight reindeers names him coming down the chimney these stockings hung by the chimney with care his rosy red cheeks shaking his belly like a bowl full of jelly and his famous pursue I
know right that's like everything about Sam what's even left for Thomas nass to add it turns out quite a lot by way of his illustrations that were published in Harper's magazine throughout the 1800s Nast filled in many of the cracks of Santa Claus's Legend where does he get the toys he brings to kids here he is building them in his Workshop where is that Workshop you can see written on the border of this scene it's in Santa clausville North Pole Nast created scenes of Santa Claus answering letters from children reviewing his naughty and nice list
and watching out for naughty and nice behavior through his telescope another artist whose depictions of Santa Claus you may recognize is had on sundblom he Illustrated Santa for the Coca-Cola Company from 1931 to 1964 and these illustrations have actually caused a false Legend to spread some of you may have heard that Santa Claus's red suit originated from Coca-Cola's advertising campaigns as some kind of marketing scheme to get the public to subconsciously associate Santa and the holidays with their brand but that is not at all true Thomas now was the true originator of the red suit
but not intentionally you see his illustrations of Santa were heavily influenced by the character's description in the Twas the Night Before Christmas poem but the poem never specified the color of Santa's Sue so Nast colored it multiple ways including blue green yellow and brown according to the president of the Thomas nass Society nast's illustrations appearing in children's books were intended to show Santa in a brown fursuit but the colors mixed and evolved into a brownish red so the people who really deserve the credit were the owners of the printing company and their lack of quality
control foreign the cool thing about folklore is that even though we tend to talk about it in historical terms folk tales and myths continue to evolve to this day Santa Claus is a perfect example of that Christmas was made a Federal holiday here in America on June 26 1870 and in the 150 years since then there have been a ton of stories to tell new Santa Claus tales and expand on his Legend in some pretty meaningful ways a great example from literature would be the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus written by Frank L Baum
the author of Wizard of Oz in 1902. his story explains the birth of Santa his upbringing and how he became Immortal and it's been adapted to film a few times one such adaptation was directed by the Legends Rankin and bass who had also made their own Santa Claus backstory movie in 1970 called Santa Claus is Coming to Town the Polar Express is another classic written in 1985 in this one we learn of a magical train that brings children to the North Pole on Christmas Eve and emphasizes the importance of believing in Santa by introducing the
magic bells that only those who truly believe can hear this story was also turned into a film in 2004 and therefore had its themes further cemented into Santa folklore while its art style became a bit of a meme who are you got the Polar Express eyes the movie Elf also had a special contribution in 2003 it raised the question of how Santa's sleigh flies it's more than just the reindeer pulling it the sleigh Sports a closet meter that's powered by Christmas spirit also a jet engine but by the end it's mostly Christmas spirit and when
I saw the movie for the first time in third grade it became my official headcanon that that's how a sleigh gets around and it's probably what I'll tell my kids someday too the Santa Claus with Tim Allen attempts to explain Santa's apparent agelessness it turns out he isn't Immortal at all he can fall off a roof and straight up die right in front of your eyes and if you put on the Santa suit you'll become the next Santa yeah it's a bit gruesome honestly but people freaking love that movie so as you can see there
have been no shortage of attempts to expand on Santa Claus's Legend in most families who celebrate Christmas have certain portrayals of the character they make a tradition out of watching my family's favorite was another Rankin Bass Classic The Year Without a Santa Claus where things get messy is when artists and writers try to retcon or change what folks consider Staples of the character for instance almost all of nast's illustrations show Santa smoking a pipe a trait that he was given in Clement Clark Moore's poem the stump of a pipe he held tighten his teeth and
the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath while his time has passed and as the hazards of smoking have become irrefutable there have been efforts by parents to change Santa Claus's image in order to avoid negatively influencing the youth in fact a Canadian lady named Pamela mccole released her own politically correct version of the poem where the lines about the pipe are completely removed and if that's got you Santa traditionalists riled up just wait because she pushes the envelope even further by clarifying that Santa's suit is not made out of real fur out of
respect to the polar bears living in the North Pole now personally I find these changes pretty silly I guarantee there's not a single tobacco smoker in the world who picked up the Habit because they saw Santa doing it and I highly doubt there are any children who want to kill animals for their fur after learning that Santa wears a red fursuit the only place they could find that kind of fur would be if they hunted down Clifford the Big Red Dog and unlike Santa he's fictional I really don't mind that the book exists as an
alternative for paranoid parents who want to Shield their child from the dangers of tobacco use and animal poaching because those are dangerous hobbies for a seven-year-old to get into that being said I don't think the release of the censored version has had a remotely measurable impact on literally anyone positive or negative unless you count the parents who are way too emotionally invested in whether Santa smokes or not and Pamela's bank account because I'm sure she's enjoyed profiting from those paranoid parents personally I'm just glad that she didn't give him a vape if that happened I'd
be Marching In the Streets with a sign that said hashtag not my Santa Pamela isn't the only one trying to make changes to Santa Claus's folklore though there have also been pushes in recent years to change his skin color his gender and his sexual orientation HBO even has a new documentary series called Santa camp that focuses on the New England Santa society's push for a more diverse representation for Santa Claus look this issue is a Minefield for someone who looks like me to try and navigate and you can call me crazy for having this stance
but I think it comes down to what you want to do in your own home everyone should be allowed to dress up like Santa Claus regardless of the traits you were randomly born with if anything I don't think Santa should have an identity at all I know it's a little idealistic in these days but labeling this guy is Black Santa and this one is trans Santa isn't doing anyone any favors if anything it separates them even more if you really want to normalize it just call them both Santa and leave it at that because the
point of Santa has never been his skin color his gender or who he's married to sure those are parts of his story but the value of his character has always come from his actions every year the dude bends time and space to try travel the world and reward children for what they did not how they look there's a reason it's the naughty and nice list not the black and white list or girl and guy list it's because physical traits mean nothing when compared to who you are on the inside as long as you're a positive
person whose goal is to spread Joy gratitude kindness and holiday cheer go ahead and be Santa Claus that's what it's really about just don't Vape while you're in the suit and we'll be okay I don't doubt there's going to be some vocal comments from people who refuse to accept the Nuance of my stance and to those people I just want to say I love you I'm sorry there's a void in your life that you're trying to fill by spreading toxicity to strangers on the internet but I truly hope you have a great holiday season and
that 2023 is the year that you get everything you ever wanted to everyone else I love you all too and I'm so happy that you enjoyed this episode enough to make it to this point but now I've got a question for you all to answer does your family have any special or unique holiday traditions if so I would love to hear about that so let me know in a comment down below and hopefully our appreciation and gratitude will drown out any negativity that may result from that last section then if you haven't yet follow messed
up Origins on your favorite podcast platform and then on Twitter or Instagram because YouTube sub box is broken Beyond repair and those are the best backup ways of being notified whenever I upload I'll see you all again next week with the final episode of messed up Origins for the year and then the week after that with our biggest episode of featured folklore yet until then my name is John solo and don't forget John shot first and happy holidays everybody [Music] foreign [Music]
