Coca-Cola didn't invent modern image of Santa Claus. Here's how centuries of Christmas tradition shaped it

Santa Claus is iconic. Wherever people see him during the Christmas season, be it at the mall, in classic movie specials or on seasonal decor, the legendary gift-giver's appearance generally remains the same: a red suit with white fluff, jolly, rotund and a pale face.

Over the years, people on social media have credited the modern image of Santa Claus to Coca-Cola. Some have said (archived) that Santa did not have one fixed look (archived) before a 1932 Coca-Cola advertisement, whereas others have gone so far as to claim Santa never wore red (archived) until the soft drink company rebranded him. The rumors rely heavily on the fact that Santa's red-and-white suit matches the colors central to Coca-Cola's branding. 

These claims prompted Reddit (archived) threads (archived) questioning whether they were true. But did Santa as Americans know him today really come into existence to help sell soda?

The persistent rumor isn't true. Coca-Cola can — and does — take credit for helping to popularize the modern image of Santa, but the depiction of a round old man clad in red and white predates the company's iconic 1930s advertisements. 

Snopes previously reported on this subject in 2008.

Santa's origins

Santa Claus as we know him today cannot be credited to a single creator. Instead, his image took shape through the gradual fusion of several figures associated with Christmas lore. 

Most people likely associate Santa with St. Nicholas, a Catholic bishop known for his generosity. For more than 700 years, the Dutch, who founded what later became New York City, celebrated the saint as Sinterklaas, a figure who primarily dressed in red and white. Meanwhile, the English, whose descendants lived alongside Dutch descendants in early New York City, had been celebrating Father Christmas since the 17th century. This figure had a long white beard, and often wore a robe or cloak. While he was depicted wearing various colors, green was one of the most common.

It's unclear exactly when these figures morphed into the modern American Santa Claus. Some sources point to a 1773 article in a New York City newspaper as the first mention of Santa Claus. However, it wasn't until the early 1800s that the mythos of Santa Claus as it's known today began taking shape.

In 1808, author Washington Irving wrote that St. Nicholas was "vulgarly called Santa Claus." An 1810 article in New York City's The Evening Post also said St. Nicholas was "usually pronounced Sancte Claus."

Irving's "Knickerbocker's History of New York," a satirical account of the city's Dutch origins published in 1809, was one of the earliest sources to describe a figure like the modern-day Santa Claus. While Irving never referred to St. Nicholas as Santa Claus in this story, his portrayal of St. Nick helped establish some of the characteristics that later appeared in the iconic poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas." Irving's St. Nicholas smoked from a long pipe, rode a wagon "over the tops of the trees" to deliver gifts to children, dropped presents down chimneys, and laid a finger beside his nose and winked.

The central figure of the 1823 poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," sometimes called "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," shared many attributes with Irving's version of St. Nicholas, albeit with a few differences. The poem's gift-giver got around on a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer instead of a wagon, and was described as "chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf" with a rosy face and a beard "as white as snow." Like Irving's St. Nicholas, he smoked a pipe — but instead of dropping presents down the chimney, he descended it himself to fill children's stockings. 

Clement Clark Moore took credit for "A Visit from St. Nicholas," which was first published anonymously. The author, whether it was Moore or someone else, may have been inspired by another anonymous 1821 poem, the illustrated "Old Santeclaus." That poem appeared to be the first in which Santa rode a sleigh pulled by a flying reindeer and delivered presents on Christmas Eve; earlier figures, such as Sinterklaas, often gave children presents earlier in December. There were three illustrations of the poem's titular character: one in which he wore red clothing and a brown hat, another in which he wore green clothing and a brown hat, and another one in which he wore red and white clothing and a hat.

Santa Claus' visual evolution

In 1863, during the Civil War, the magazine Harper's Weekly published an image featuring Santa Claus drawn by political cartoonist Thomas Nast. Nast's first Santa Claus wore stars and stripes and handed out presents at a Union army camp. For the next two decades, Nast drew Santa 33 times for Harper's Weekly, ending in 1886 according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Nast's 1881 drawing, "Merry Old Santa Claus," was his most famous, depicting Santa as a round, toy-carrying man sporting a white beard and red clothes.

Santa appeared in many different outfits and colors before and after Nast's 1881 drawing, but the white beard and round figure remained the same.

According to a New York Times article from 1927, a few years before Coca-Cola's famous Santa cartoons from the 1930s, Santa began to take on a more consistent look. The article read:

In other years children who went from one store to another frequently were disturbed by a succession of Santa Clauses of different sizes and figures—tall and thin, short and fat, lean, burly and nondescript. Parents this year will be less hard put to it to explain why one Santa Claus differs from another, for one type is in demand. Height, weight, stature are almost as exactly standardized as are the red garments, the hood, the white whiskers and the pack full of toys. Ruddy cheeks and nose, bushy white eyebrows and a jolly paunchy effect are also inevitable parts of the requisite make-up.

Coca-Cola and Santa Claus

Coca-Cola began using Santa Claus in its ads in the 1920s. That version of him, however, had a strict demeanor that Coca-Cola itself likened to Thomas Nast's depictions of Santa Claus. 

Then in 1931, Coca-Cola commissioned artist Haddon Sundblom to draw a "wholesome and approachable Santa Claus." Sundblom took inspiration from the 1823 poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," in designing a plump Santa Claus with a jolly demeanor and a rosy face.

Sundblom continued drawing Santa for Coca-Cola until 1964, and Coca-Cola continued using his paintings long after Sundblom retired. While Coca-Cola does claim it played a "big role in shaping the jolly character we know today," the company doesn't claim to have invented Santa or his red attire.

Sundblom's Santa was built on past iterations of the character that existed long before Coca-Cola's famous ads.

Snopes' archives contributed to this report.