Santa Claus Origin Story Sets the Record Straight

Asheville, NC , November 17, 2022 — Santa Claus, St. Nick, Belsnickle and Kris Kringle are all used to describe the celebrated jolly old elf. But these monikers, and a host of others from around the world, have vastly different origin stories.

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In his award-winning book, Santa Claus Worldwide: A History of St. Nicholas and Other Holiday Gift-Bringers, researcher and author Tom Jerman sets the record straight on America’s version of Santa Claus and treats readers to a comprehensive history of the world’s midwinter gift-givers, showcasing the extreme diversity in their depictions as well as the many traits and functions these characters share.

Jerman began collecting Santa Claus figurines in the 1980s as a hobby, and the sheer variety of Santa Claus incarnations he encountered fueled his curiosity.

“Santa is whoever you think he is,” Jerman said in an interview. “You can envision him any way you want to envision him; there are no constrictions on who can be Santa Claus.”

The product of years of exhaustive historical research, Santa Claus Worldwide is the first legitimate history of Santa Claus in more than a decade, and the first history in more than 100 years to provide a comprehensive look at the Yuletide gift-givers throughout the world. 

Some of Jerman’s fascinating insights include:

– “Santa Claus” is not merely the American name for St. Nicholas.

– Jerman also corrects a significant inaccuracy perpetrated in 1953 by an eminent Berkeley historian, Charles W. Jones, that American author Washington Irving created, in effect, the American Santa Claus.

– The original American Santa was one of the shabby, unkempt, secular gift-givers known by two dozen different names in Germany who immigrated to America with German children during the early nineteenth century. One of them, Pelznickel (“Nicholas in furs”), became known as Belsnickle in Pennsylvania while another, Christkindl (“Christ child”), became known as Kriss Kringle (more commonly written as “Kris” today).

– The name “Santeclaus,” the bearded German gift-giver who descended down the chimney and left gifts in stockings on Christmas and a sleigh pulled by a flying reindeer were united in 1821 by publisher William B. Gilley in a book called The Children’s Friend, which disappeared from history until it was rediscovered in 1953.

-And so much more.

Ultimately, Santa Claus Worldwide proves, conclusively, the existence of Santa and his impact on our world.

“Santa indisputably exists as the symbol of Christmas, and Christmas represents our most noble virtues,” Jerman says. “Symbols are real, and they can be very powerful.”

About the Author

Tom A. Jerman, a resident of Asheville, N.C., has bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and journalism and a juris doctorate degree from the University of Utah. Employed as a copy editor with The Salt Lake Tribune between 1974-78, he went on to practice labor and employment law for 35 years. In 2015, he took early retirement to pursue his desire to write something more interesting and enduring than legal treatises.

A serious collector, Jerman has amassed some 4,500 Santa figurines and ornaments, and thousands of antique postcards printed between 1900 and 1910. The enormous diversity of figures — temporal, geographic, historical, size, attire, date of gift-giving, mode of travel — prompted him to write Santa Claus Worldwide, the first volume of a planned trilogy that will include a volume on the authorship of “The Night Before Christmas” and a volume on collecting Santa Claus figurines. If all goes according to plan, the second volume will be published in winter 2023, the bicentennial of “The Night Before Christmas.” The third volume, currently under construction, will be a guide for individuals who collect Santa Claus figurines and ornaments.

For more information, please visit http://acollectionofsantas.com, or follow the author on Twitter at @tomajerman.