Thomas Nast - A Cartoonist Who Created a Modern Image of Santa Claus

The season of winter holidays always evokes tender feelings and brings joy to most people across the globe. Celebrating Christmas, primarily in the Western hemisphere, is hard to imagine without the imagery of Santa Claus, snowmen, and over-decorated pine trees. But how did this particular depiction of a white-bearded man with the ho-ho-ho laugh offering presents to the ones who have been good all year long became that popular?

From the 4th-century Christian bishop Saint Nicholas over Britain’s 16th century Father Christmas to the Dutch and Belgian character known as Sinterklaas, this fictitious figure has been interpreted differently, but certainly adored by many. However, thanks to the famous imagery produced by the German-born American caricaturist and cartoonist, Thomas Nast, Santa got his famous looks.

Widely known as the Father of the American Cartoon, he was a devoted critic of corruption encountered at the Tammany Hall Democratic party political machine, the creator of the iconic Uncle Sam image as the personification of the US government, and the donkey and the elephant symbols for the Democratic and Republican parties.

While working as a contributor of the magazine Harper’s Weekly, in 1863 Nast produced the Santa Claus image that gradually became a standard. The jolly grandpa, often with spectacles and in a red coat with white fur collar and cuffs, gained enormous fame in the United States. This popularity was later solidified through poems, children’s books songs, family Christmas traditions, advertising, radio, television, and films.

Thomas Nast – The Cartoonist of Many Virtues

In 1860, this talented practitioner traveled to England to conduct a reportage for the New York Illustrated News about a major sporting event of the era, the boxing match between the American John C. Heenan and the English Thomas Sayers. A few months later, Nast was on an assignment for The Illustrated London News; he joined Garibaldi in Italy and produced cartoons and articles about the unification of Italy.

After leaving the New York Illustrated News he briefly worked for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News, until settling as a staff illustrator at Harper’s Weekly. There he blossomed and gained popularity for sentimental politically charged compositions like Christmas Eve (1862), and Compromise with the South (1864), that supported the ending of the American Civil War. Nast was also known for depicting battlefields in border and southern states, and for that imagery, he was described by President Abraham Lincoln as „America’s best recruiting sergeant“. After the war ended, the cartoonist was against the Reconstruction policy of President Andrew Johnson, whom he depicted in a series of political cartoons that marked Nast’s plunge into the field of caricature.

In the 1890s, Nast published Christmas Drawings for the Human Race, took over a failing magazine, The New York Gazette, renamed it Nast’s Weekly, however, the magazine had little impact and ceased to exist after eleven months. In 1902, he applied for a job in the State Department. Although such a position was not available, President Theodore Roosevelt, who admired Nast’s work, offered him an appointment as the US Consul in Ecuador. Thomas Nast accepted the position, but soon he contracted yellow fever and died shortly after.

The Becoming Of Santa Claus

The Thomas Nast’s Santa Claus image was made after Clement Clarke Moore’s poem A Visit from St. Nicholas. The artist even used the figure of a cherry-nosed benevolent man to follow up the military propaganda of the time (Santa empowers Union soldiers). His 1862 cartoon Santa Claus in Camp was the illustrator’s first image of Santa that appeared in Harper’s Weekly’s Christmas edition.

Santa dressed in a fur coat covered with American stars stands before a crowd of entranced listeners; he shows the jumping jack doll with the word “Jeff” inscribed on his chest  — i.e. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, who is perceived as the representation of the ill-fated future. Santa’s sleigh is filled with gifts, as well as samples of Harper’s papers. Tents and fires mark the landscape in the background, while a large wreath decorated with a star stands above the jolly old man.

Before Nast’s intervention, Santa was most often depicted as a skinny figure fashioned in a bishop’s vestment. The renewed character was based on traditional European imaginations of Saint Nicholas and Germanic folk images of elves; he became cheerful, giving, and full of fantastic features. Thanks to Nast the whole composition was upgraded, and Santa got reindeer-drawn sleighs, awnings, stockings on mantles, and the workshop at the North Pole (at the time this part of the world was scarcely explored).

The Relevance of Thomas Nast

Thomas Nast was the one who had a profound influence on the way Americans approached their socio-political reality at the time. His practice was profane and in the service of building a better society. Anti-Catholicism was an omnipresent motif in his work, followed by an anti-Irish sentiment (Nast saw Irish people as a symbol of mob violence and the exploitation of immigrants by political bosses); he opposed racial segregation, and used his weekly cartoons as a way of advocating for the civil rights of American Indians and Chinese Americans, and stood for the abolition of slavery.

Despite being a political radical, Nast was a talented artist who produced works characterized by depth and linear mastery. Thomas Nast’s Santa Claus image also illuminates another side of this artist as he understood the importance of popular culture as media for navigating the taste of different society members.

The Coca-Cola commercial which cemented the image of Santa Claus forever could not be possible if it wasn’t for Thomas Nast, a man who left a tremendous mark on the development of what turned out to be the imagery of the holiday season today.