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The Old Pueblo has a lot going for it: it is the longest continually inhabited spot in the United States¹, the winter weather can’t be beat, and it is the birthplace of that delicious Mexican entrée the chimichanga. As if that wasn’t enough we just recently learned that Tucson can add the birth of that jolly, chubby, red-suited, white-bearded man known as Santa Claus to its list of distinctions. Yes, we know that the legend of Santa Claus (or Saint Nicholas or Father Christmas or Kris Kringle) comes from the Old World but if you look at some of the oldest historical depictions of Santa, he is a thin and serious-looking man.

Not quite the same image of the Santa that we grew up with. The legend of Santa came across the Atlantic and was cemented as part of American popular culture in Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem The Night Before Christmas. Though in Moore’s tale Santa was portrayed as a tiny, jolly, elf with a little, round belly. In 1863 Thomas Nast, an American political cartoonist, was the first to draw Santa as a full grown, well-fed man. But that still wasn’t Santa as we think of him today. Our modern version of Santa: tall, big-bellied, white-bearded, jolly, and clad in a red suit trimmed with white came about in the 1930s as part of an advertising campaign.

In 1931 Haddon H. Sundblom was hired by the Coca Cola Company to depict a gift-bearing and jovial Santa for their holiday advertising campaign. Sundblom chose a quiet guest ranch in the foothills overlooking the tiny town of Tucson as the location for his creative endeavors. Sundblom’s Santa was soon seen all across the country in Coca Cola ads, and the iconic image stuck. So even though Santa has a long history, our modern American version was born right here in the dusty little desert town called Tucson.

© 2009 The Coca-Cola Company (Click image for full-size version.)

While Santa is the subject of much controversy (which we will not delve into here) we would like to borrow his jolly demeanor and say:

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!

Notes:

¹ Prehistoric Native Americans, known as the Hohokam, lived along the banks of the Santa Cruz River for thousands of years and their descendants were still in residence when the Spanish established El Presidio San Agustín del Tucson in the late 1770s. ↩