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Santa Claus / Father Christmas: Costume / Attire

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Durhamghostwhisperer

Junior Acolyte
Joined
Aug 10, 2001
Messages
87
I had a disagreement today we were talking about christmas and a workmate asked when father christmas started to be depicked wearing a red and white suit I said it was in the late 1800's. He said that this was wrong and it was in 1946-47 when coca-cola put him in too an advertisment. Can anyone settle this question.
cheers
 
You'll find the answer on snopes.com. I thought coca-cola did it as well until I read on there that it's actually just an urban legend.
 
I heard a theory that the red and white uniform is slavonic shamans outfit: a freshly cut hide turned inside out. The fur shows as white trim and the outside is still bloody (may have even been FT).

True or not, I like it. Good for xmas dinner conversations when "seasonal festivities" become too kitsch :D
 
prefered truth - coke did it
prefered truth when feeling grusome - shaman
prefered truth when feeling odd - based on fly agaric mushrooms
 
"Father Christmas is still depicted in shaman's costume, wearing his freshly-flayed animal skin, fur inside and the bloody side outwards."
-Nigel Pennick, FT60:25.
 
It's an excellent opportunity to ruin the reputation of xmas's number one commercial icon.

-J
 
I've spent the autumn working in Germany, where they do christmas pretty intensely, and I was interested to find that about half the depictions of Santa have him dressed in blue and white, not red and and white. Any thoughts?
 
This holiday I browsed through the chronicle of the miniscule - but 1350 year old - village of Prümzurlay. It had a lot of weird details, but I was struck by this traditional Santa Claus festivity from 1950:

i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/st-nicolas.jpg
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
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uair01 said:
This holiday I browsed through the chronicle of the miniscule - but 1350 year old - village of Prümzurlay. It had a lot of weird details, but I was struck by this traditional Santa Claus festivity from 1950:

i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/st-nicolas.jpg
Click to expand...

Interesting ... Maybe I'm misinterpreting this photo, but am I to understand the St. Nicholas character was portrayed by a woman? ... I don't think I've ever seen this before ...
 
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AlGore~ said:
You'll find the answer on snopes.com. I thought coca-cola did it as well until I read on there that it's actually just an urban legend.
Click to expand...

The Snopes writeup debunking the 'Coca Cola introduced the red-clothed Santa myth' cites an 1885 Christmas card (newly-introduced in North America) as a key event in solidifying the red-suited bearded man image as the 'norm' ...
 
EnolaGaia said:
Interesting ... Maybe I'm misinterpreting this photo, but am I to understand the St. Nicholas character was portrayed by a woman? ... I don't think I've ever seen this before ...
Click to expand...

No, St Nicholas would be the person with the dodgy beard dressed as a Bishop, which is what St Nicholas was.
 
I understand that - sorry for any confusion ...

I was referring to the caption underneath the image, which *seems* to be identifying both persons in the photo as female (last name / first name) ...
 
Sorry for that, the image on my screen was too small to read the caption and I didn't blow it up...
 
As a child, I noticed that Father Christmas was quite often dressed in green in some depictions. I haven't noticed this so much in recent years.
 
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StormMagic said:
As a child, I noticed that Father Christmas was quite often dressed in green in some depictions. I haven't noticed this so much in recent years.
Click to expand...

Father Christmas as the spirit of Christmas was originally a traditional English figure, who in the 19th and 20th centuries became merged with the American Santa Claus which derived from the Dutch tradition.

Old Father Christmas is sometimes depicted in green, particularly in the form of the "Ghost of Christmas Present" in Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
 
Santa and fly agaric / shamanism

Can anyone let me know which issue of Fortean times the article on santa claus and fly agaric/ shaminism is to be found, I have found no. 60 and no.118 have articles on Santa but they are not the ones that I remember (and looking for). Can anyone help me as I have gone through all my back issues and am pulling my hair out trying to find it. Or is it just one of another of my slips of memory due to advancing age ;)

thanks in advance


John
 
I have some of the CD's, I will have a look tomorrow and if I find it will let you know.
 
I recently saw some Xmas postcards and holiday ephemera dating from the first and second decades of the 20th century. Some of the items still showed Santa in a wholly or primarily green suit. One showed the blue version of the suit that's rarely seen outside central Europe.

I've seen claims that his suit was sometimes represented as purple in the 1800's, but I don't think I've ever seen this.
 
Re: Santa and fly agaric / shamanism

johnthejock said:
Can anyone let me know which issue of Fortean times the article on santa claus and fly agaric/ shaminism is to be found, I have found no. 60 and no.118 have articles on Santa but they are not the ones that I remember (and looking for). Can anyone help me as I have gone through all my back issues and am pulling my hair out trying to find it. Or is it just one of another of my slips of memory due to advancing age ;)

thanks in advance


John
Click to expand...
Don't know which issue that article was in but If it's any help, Patrick Harding wrote at length about those very connections in his 2002 book "Christmas unwrapped"
 
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