Charlotte Bond

Author, Editor and Podcaster

Santa Claus and magic mushrooms

In the previous blog, I looked at the real Saint Nicholas who was one of the key influences on our current Santa Claus. I say “one of” because, despite everyone thinking that the figure portrayed in Clement C Moore’s poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” (more commonly known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas”) is the epitome of the Santa we know and love, it turns out that’s far from the truth. And the popular theory that Santa wears red and white because of a Coca Cola advertising campaign is not as straightforward or as accurate as it may seem.

If you go back to that famous poem and look at it carefully, you’ll notice the following lines:

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
…
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle

Forget, for a moment, what you know about Santa Claus, and look at what the poem is actually telling us: the sleigh is “miniature”, the reindeer are “tiny” and when they fly away they’re like “the down of a thistle”. Even Santa is described as an “elf”, an unusual description given that normally these are explicitly mentioned as his helpers. Everything, even the simile, is on a small scale.

The first illustration of this famous poem was by TC Boyd. Since he was Bavarian, Boyd was influenced by the traditions associated with Knecht Ruprecht, so in the picture that accompanied the poem, the figure of Saint Nicholas looked more like a grinning gnome that a cheery old gent.

Santa Dancing

So thus far we have: Moore’s diminutive descriptions, a Knecht Ruprecht figure drawn by Boyd, and the historic Saint Nicholas as possible origins for the current Santa Claus. Which one of these is the true ancestor of Santa Claus? The answer: all of them! And not just them!

Consider, for a moment, “Father Christmas”. The name is often used interchangeably by English parents for Santa yet this figure is another, completely separate influence on our modern Santa. Just as Knecht Ruprecht is German and Sinterklaas is Dutch, so Father Christmas is English. They all represent the mid-winter mythical figure that brings gifts and joy to children and households, albeit each in his own distinct way. Everyone from Moore to Boyd and Sundblom to Washington Irving (who wrote “The History of New York” in 1809) had their own idea of what Santa Claus looked like, and over time all of them have merged to produce a figure who is wholly distinct from any of his original sources.

But what about that famous red and white suit? Myths abound about how the villainous Coca Cola forced our dear old Father Christmas out of his traditional green suit and into the more corporate colours of red and white. This was allegedly due to a marketing campaign in 1931 where Haddon Sundblom drew Santa enjoying Coca Cola in a bright red suit trimmed with white. This was a cunning strategy since, at that time, Coca Cola was an adults-only drink and while showing Santa drinking it didn’t breach that image, it nevertheless made the drink instantly appealing to children.

However, the allegation that Santa was completely taken over by Coca Cola isn’t strictly true. There are examples of Santa Claus wearing red before the advertising campaign, such as the illustrations in “The Father Christmas Letters” by JRR Tolkien. He illustrated them himself, some of them predating the Coca Cola campaign and these clearly show Santa wearing red. Thus it appears that Santa was already verging towards his favourite colour before Coca Cola even conceived of its own idea. If you check out Snopes.com, it has some other examples to confound this theory. And if you look on the Coca Cola company website itself, even they admit that Santa’s red and white suit isn’t wholly of their own creation.

Harding and Frodsham both have another suggestion to explain not just Santa’s coloured suit, but also some of his more unusual traits. They theorise that Santa actually has some roots in the shamans of Siberia and their use of the intoxicating mushroom, fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). This mushroom, with its distinctive red and white colouring, could produce an hallucinogenic effect when consumed. However, it could also be toxic so it was best to ingest it either dried, or via the urine of someone who has drunk it (makes you wonder who was the first person to discover this fact). The Saami people of Lapland were known to feed fly agarics to their reindeer then drink their urine to gain a safe, intoxicated effect (a possible origin of the phrase “getting pissed”). When a shaman ingested fly agaric, he claimed he could able to fly to the heavens to gain knowledge from the gods with which to help his tribe. And if he needed to visit a sick person in the winter, his flying spirit would enter via the smoke hole.

So in one fell swoop we have: flying (intoxicated) reindeer, flying humans bringing gifts (in this case, of healing), red and white, and entering via a chimney in midwinter. Furthermore, the same nomadic people had the idea that you had to burn messages to get them to the gods. If you’re like me and grew up in a time of open fires, perhaps you also burned your letter in the fireplace, your parents telling you that the smoke and the flames were carrying your words up to the North Pole to reach Santa.

It’s fascinating to see just how many people and how many myths went in to creating our modern day Santa. If you’re interested in reading more, check out one of the books in the bibliography below.

And if you’re in the mood for some darker Christmas reading, why not check out my short story “The Knife Before Christmas”

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