A while back my wife and I partook in a novel Advent activity. We took turns reading The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn. It told of a number of historical characters that helped give rise to the modern day legend of Santa Claus. I understood the relevance of Clement Moore, the author of the epic poem A Visit From Saint Nick. I even understood why President Teddy Roosevelt was included what with his influence on the popularity of the Teddy Bear and the story of how one of his sons wanted a live Christmas tree but Roosevelt being a stanch conservationist was against it. Those figures were ones I understood why they were considered great allies of Kris Kringle. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out the addition of L. Frank Baum.
Baum is most famously known for writing The Wizard of Oz and its subsequent sequels. I had known from a hard cover graphic novel I found at a local thrift store that Baum had penned a short story farce called A Kidnapped Santa Claus. But surely this wasn't enough of an influence on Father Christmas to warrant him inclusion into Santa's life story.
It's actually this short novel, published in 1902 that made L. Frank Baum one of the utmost contributors to the modern Santa Claus. It tells of how a neglected little babe is found by faeries, raised to respect the magical creatures of nature and makes it his life goal to gift all the children of the world with gifts every Christmas Eve.
In this story, there's no living at the North Pole. The names of his reindeer are vastly different from Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and the rest. Heck, Santa isn't really even a jolly old fat man. Though he does eventually grow a beard.
Clement Moore's 1809 poem which is now colloquially known as 'T'was the Night Before Christmas', did introduce St. Nick to the United States. But other than that poem, little was really known about the Yule time gift giver in America. Baum noticed this and sought to create an origin story that took away any religious references and replaced it with a more pagan beginning with the baby being blessed throughout his life by mystical woodland beings.
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus does take a lot of elements from Clement Moore and gives a backstory to them, which humanizes the character instead of canonizing Claus. Take the origin of the stockings. According to the Catholic Church, the real life influence of Santa was one who placed a dowry into the leggings of a trio of young poor girls, that were drying by a fire. In Baum's story, the accidental placement of some gifts into some wet socks ends up becoming a real time saver for Claus, who has only 24 hours to deliver toys around the world annually. Things like how parents use Santa as a threat to keep naughty children in line, how he becomes deemed a saint, and his relationship with Christmas time are all out of necessity or word of mouth. Anything remotely religious is not tied in with the 'true' story of Claus.
Maybe that lack of Christianity is why Signet books chose storyteller Max Apple to write an afterword about this book. Apple is Jewish and admits that as a child he hated Santa because Christmas being a gentile holiday makes the character unapproachable for him and other children of the Tribe. Max Apple writes that if he knew that Baum's Santa was created as being the most furthest religious character imaginable, other than Wiccan or pagan, the writer would have delighted in annual visits from Santa Claus as a lad.
It was an enjoyable read. Definitely a different sort of holiday character from what Coca-Cola and Rankin/Bass have created over the past 100 years. Speaking of Rankin/Bass, this story was made into that stop-motion production company's last original work in the mid-80s. No wonder some segments of this book seemed familiar to me despite having never read the book. And if the chapter in which Santa is kidnapped by evil creatures who hate children seems familiar, that's because Baum recycled that story into A Kidnapped Santa Claus, which is a far more bleaker romp that this book.
A short enough read that families could break this down into chunks over the course of a frosty December. Some of the language is a tad outdated. But it's something the whole family can enjoy just once or as a new holiday annual tradition.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
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