The history of Santa Claus
"Joulu" which is the Finnish word for Christmas originates from an ancient Scandinavian language meaning twelve days festival period.
The roots of the present day Santa Claus actually lies within the territory of modern Turkey where in the three hundreds dwelled the bishop of Myrna the Holy St. Nicholas who was well-known for giving presents on the 6th December Childrens' Day.. Dutch sailors connected the tradition of the Holy St. Nicholas to Christmas time and soon the custom spread to England and the United States.
In 1809 an American named Washington Irving when writing about the history of New York described the Holy St. Nicholas as a good humoured, cheerful old man who flew through the air in his sleigh and dropped gifts down chimneys.
The American Santa Claus got its present form in 1822 when Clement C. Moore wrote a poem for his own children about Saint Nicholas who was flying in a sleigh pulled by reindeers. It is possible that the reindeer fantasy came from Scandinavian immigrants in the United States.
The eventual Santa Claus dress with his beard and red clothes together with reindeers came from a drawing by an American Thomas Nash in 1863. Markus Rautio otherwise known as "Uncle Markus" who was the head of children and youth programme at the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation found in 1927 a residence for Santa Claus at Korvatunturi (Ear Mountain) in Finnish Lapland.
It is of interest to mention that Haddon Hubert Sundholm nicknamed "Sunny" who was the creator of the Coca Cola Santa Claus which is claimed to be the most famous drawing of Santa Claus in the world has Finnish family roots. His father emigrated to the new world from a Finnish archipelago Åland in the 1880's. "Sunny" was born in 1899 in Chicago and established an advertising agency in the 1920's. His clients included, to name but a few: Ford, Lincoln, Pierce-Arrow, Maxwell House, Colgate, Palmolive and Coca Cola. The first time the Coca Cola Santa Claus drawing by Sunny came out was in the Saturday Evening Post in 1931.
The short Santa biography of Timo Pakkanen
| Born: | 28th August 1944 |
| High school: | Graduated 1964 |
| University: | Tampere University, Finland 1967 1970, graduated at the faculty of youth work |
| Institute: | Marketing Institute of Finland, Helsinki, 1975 |
Career as Santa Claus
| 1961-1991 | Traditional Finnish Santa visiting private homes on Christmas Eve, most visits on one Christams Eve 39 homes |
| 1992 | Amsterdam, Netherlands, five days |
| 1993 | Cyprus, 2 weeks |
| 1994 | Jordan, one week + Cyprus two weeks |
| 1995 | Cyprus, two weeks + Japan, 2 weeks |
| 1996 | Taiwan, two weeks |
| 1997 | Cyprus, three weeks |
| 1998 | Cyprus, one week + Thailand, two weeks |
| 1999 | Cyprus, one week + Thailand, two weeks |
| 2000 | Japan, five weeks |
| 2001 | Japan, six weeks |
| 2002 | Japan, six weeks |
| 2003 | Japan, six weeks |
| 2004 | Japan, six weeks |
| 2005 | Japan, five weeks |
| 2006 | Japan, five weeks |
| 2007 | Japan, five weeks |
| 2008 | Hamburg, Germany, five days in May + Japan, five weeks |
| 2009 | Singapore, five days + Japan, five weeks |
| 2010 | Georgia, twelve days in January + Japan, five weeks |
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1993 and 1998 appointments with Mr. Glafkos Klerides, the president of Cyprus 2008 an appointment of Mrs Tarja Halonen, the president of Finland 2003 an appointment of Mr. Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany 2008-2009 several appointments of Japanese senators 2009 24th December an interview at NHK (Japan Broadcasting Company) | |
