The man in the red suit

An endearing enigma in a scarlet fur-trimmed jacket, Santa has spent the past 150 years spreading joy -- and shilling for Macy's, Maxwell House and Dewar's scotch.

By Mary Lisa Gavenas

Read more: Advertising, Christmas, Holidays, Life

Dec. 23, 2006 | He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.

There is no Santa Claus. Not in the poem now known as "The Night Before Christmas" published anonymously in 1823 and credited to Clement Clarke Moore, whose verses feature a weirdly elvish figure named St. Nicholas. Not in Charles Dickens' 1842 "Christmas Carol," with all its sanctimonious sermonizing about Tiny Tim and the true meaning of Christmas. For all practical purposes, there is no Santa Claus before 1862, the year that Rowland H. Macy took the gift-giving gnome known around New York as Sinterklaas (from the Dutch "Sint Nicolaas"), used an Anglicized name, had him impersonated by a reassuringly full-size human, costumed him in a nice, clean cloak, and installed him in the store as a means of snaring more Christmas shoppers.

True, there was St. Nicholas, an early Catholic saint from Asia Minor who went on to become the all-purpose patron of Greece, Russia, children, spinsters, brides and workers ranging from bootblack to brewer. Old Nick had survived the Reformation by ingratiating himself with prosperous Protestants as an unthreateningly unclerical dispenser of presents and punisher of naughtiness. But by the time Washington Irving, writing as the pseudonymous Diedrich Knickerbocker, put him in the fictional 1809 "History of New York," the Dutch settlers' St. Nicholas had shrunk to a small folkloric figure wholly without canonical clout.

That St. Nick, however, was still a long way from Santa. In 1841, Philadelphia store owner J.W. Parkinson hired someone to pose as St. Nicholas climbing the store's chimney, thus becoming the first retailer on record to sense the sales potential of Moore's much-published poem. (Though decades ahead of Macy, Parkinson unfortunately missed Macy's insight that the payoff comes from luring shoppers inside a store.) During the 1860s, Bavarian-born illustrator and war correspondent Thomas Nast featured Moore's version of St. Nick in a popular series of woodcuts made for Harper's Weekly. But Nast, who gave America its Republican elephant, Democratic donkey, and Uncle Sam, followed the verse descriptions and depicted a pot-bellied fairy figure wearing a tight fur jumpsuit and smoking a long clay pipe.

It took another German immigrant, Louis Prang, to Americanize the appearance of the character who, thanks in part to his annual appearance at Macy's, was fast becoming more famous as Santa Claus. Though stationers had started the custom of sending Christmas cards well before the Civil War, Prang, a chromolithographer, recognized the money to be made from postwar improvements in the U.S. postal system. Alongside his season's greetings showing bonny tykes frolicking in the snow and darling kittens sitting down to the dinner table, Prang came up with a Santa Claus so cute, so cheery, so chubby and charming, that it set the standard forever after. Santa was now identifiable by his white beard, his colorful red coat, his stocking hat, and his sturdy belt and boots. Trimmed in tasteful winter ermine, unsoiled by ashes and soot, the reformed goblin was now well-suited for welcome into middle-class Victorian households. Nast stuck close to the original and died more or less broke. Prang sanitized Santa and died a rich man.

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

Today, Macy's remains Santa's longest-running gig. "Macy's has postcards showing Santa in the 1870s: In one, Santa is coming down the chimney wearing a red suit without fur and carrying a white bag with the Macy's star on it," says Bob Rutan, director of event operations and thus the man in charge of readying Santa for this year's 144th round of in-store appearances as well as his TV time as grand marshal of the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade.

At Macy's, Santa Claus sticks to two versions of the same suit, which is a 7/8 coat worn over matching pants cut extra-roomy (so that hundreds of thousands of kids can perch comfortably on his knee and tell him what they want for Christmas) that stay on Santa by means of a bib front and straps (a modification made decades ago when a little girl tugging on Santa's pants tugged them off on national television). On Parade Day and on Christmas Eve, when he comes prepared to fly out of the store at the stroke of 6 p.m., Santa wears what is known as the "flight suit." It's trimmed with real rabbit fur, comes with a coordinated quilted cotton greatcoat and weighs about 40 pounds. For everyday duties in Santaland, where he saw 238,000 Macy's shoppers last year, his costume is a fake fur-trimmed wool twill that weighs around 18 pounds.

Because no one wants to sit on the knee of a smelly, sweaty Santa and because quite a bit of body heat builds up when the line snaking through Macy's eighth-floor maze hits 500 or more on a holiday weekend, Santaland got its own air conditioning system in 1998. Even so, each time Santa takes a break, he changes the white blouse he wears under his suit jacket, and the suit itself lasts only a couple of days -- at most -- before being dispatched to the dry cleaner's.

"It's a big job to keep Santa sparkling. We have a dry cleaner sworn to secrecy," Rutan explains. Ever conscientious, Santa also changes gloves constantly. "We try to stop the germs spreading from one kid to another. The same parent who pulls a kid out of school for no reason, thinks nothing of sending a kid with a 103-degree fever to see Santa," Rutan says. "We use the same type of white gloves they use for the West Point cadets: They're flexible, sturdy, and stand up to lots of washing."

Seemingly ubiquitous -- Macy's Santa has the magical ability to appear simultaneously at up to six different workshops inside the New York Santaland alone -- and supernaturally spotless, Santa relies on 30 identical everyday suits and four flight suits in steady rotation from Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve. "We select the materials for durability. One outfit will last three or four years," says Rutan, a veteran of Christmas at Macy's since 1991. "We stock five fresh outfits every year."

Though the elves' outfits come and go, the last major revamp of Santa's costume came in the late 1970s, when Macy's then vice president and director of special productions, Jean McFaddin, updated Santa to look more old-fashioned. Since then, Macy's brass has repeatedly rejected attempts to put Santa in closer touch with his times. Rutan recalls that "back when we were doing Spiderman and Batman, there was also a modern superhero design submitted for Santa."

That was nixed too. "People relish the tradition. We've been doing the parade since 1924, and people have a certain expectation," says Rutan, although he willingly admits that Santa's suit hasn't always been the same. "Back in the teens and '20s, his robe was almost ankle-length. Going back to the 1800s, I have postcards of him wearing green or blue or brown or even yellow ... Ultimately Santa's image is now ingrained in the American consciousness."

Macy's doesn't attempt to take all the credit for that. As Rutan says: "It was really the Coca-Cola advertising of the 1930s that solidified the red suit and spread the image."

His eyes how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

"The Coca-Cola Santa is not an elf," explains Coke archivist Phil Mooney. "He's a big, happy guy with a twinkle in his eye. He's a synthesizer. Unlike previous interpretations, this Santa really gets into the fun of the season: He's not so strict as the Nast illustration. You see him going to the refrigerator to steal a turkey leg."

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