Santa Hauling His Sack Through the Snow

About this drawing

Santa walking with sack in a red suit looks like a fixed tradition, but that outfit took a while to settle. You may have heard that a twentieth-century soda ad invented it. That's a myth. Red Santas had already appeared on American postcards and magazine covers well before then.

The color probably goes back to Saint Nicholas, a bishop often shown in red robes. Throughout the 1800s, however, illustrators felt free to experiment. Santa wore green, brown, blue, or fur from head to toe, and he could be a tiny elf or a tall thin man depending on the publication.

Thomas Nast did a lot to pull the character together. His Harper's Weekly drawings were first printed in black and white, but a color version from the 1880s shows him in a red coat. Louis Prang's Christmas cards and other printers repeated the look, and red slowly won out, since it stands out against snow and catches the eye in a store window. The wide belt, tall boots, and pom-pom hat finished the costume. Today, a red cap with white trim is all it takes for any kid to know who you mean, even with no beard in sight.

• santa
• gift sack
• red suit
• snow