of America was called Saint Nicholas. The Dutch who colonized what was called New Amsterdam, now New York, had imported a custom from their home country of Holland. The sixth of December is the feast of their Patron saint. Nicholas of Myra. The day was traditionally marked by a figure in red and white Episcopal vestments visiting every household in which there were children. If the youngsters had been good throughout the year, they were rewarded with small presents. If not they were liable to a mild form of punishment at the hands of Klaubauf the assistant who accompanied St. Nicholas.
In 1822, Clement Moore, professor of Greek and Hebrew at New York State University, charmed by the custom, wrote a fifty-six-line poem ‘The Visit of St. Nicholas’, with its now famous line:
“T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…”
The poem was intended solely for his children, his audience, when he first read it, numbered a lady who arranged for its anonymous publication in a local paper. The story was later taken up by Thomas Nast, a magazine illustrator of Bavarian descent. He was the person who turned St. Nicholas, his name now abbreviated to Santa Claus or Klaus (from the Dutch Sankt Nikolaus) into the cheerful, rubicund, bearded figure that became the personification of Christmas.
Soon popular throughout the United States, Santa Claus began to lose any connection with his Dutch and religious past. His secularization went still further when he crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the British Isles in the mid-nineteenth century. Here the figure quickly merged with an ancient personage, Father Christmas or Old