Home for the Holidays
Mike Lyons
Graduate Student, Department of History at the College of Charleston
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas – Magnolia’s Santa Connection!
Magnolia will be redecorating the House with festive 1920’s decorations, vintage ornaments, and Southern traditions this December. But there’s an older connection between Magnolia and Christmas traditions that far predates the 1920’s, and we’ll recognize this with a room dedicated to the history of Santa Claus. Practically all of us learned the names of Santa’s reindeer from Clement Moore’s famous poem, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas:
Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
But how many of us know that Magnolia Plantation has a direct connection to the man who wrote that poem?
‘Twas the Night was first published in The Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823. Author Clement Moore was at that time and for years after a professor at the General Theological Seminary in New York. And one of the students there in 1839 was John Grimke Drayton - the 23-year old owner of Magnolia Plantation (Moore and Drayton appear together in the minutes of a board of trustees meeting of June 24, 1839).
Santa was a developing character during the 19th century. First brought to America by the Dutch as “Sinterklaas,” he was translated into English as “Santa Claus” by Washington Irving in 1809 in his Knickerbocker’s History of New York. He appeared in a children’s book of 1821 with a sleigh and onereindeer. But it was Moore’s poem of 1823 that created the Santa we know today - of the big belly, the jolly laugh, and the eight reindeer.
After Moore’s poem had grabbed the public’s eye, Santa became a bigger and bigger part of the Christmas season in the United States. By mid-century, he was even pictured visiting Union troops during the Civil War.
As the two images just above show, the Santa Claus we all know and love — that big, jolly man in the red suit with a white beard — didn’t always look that way. Until the 1920’s, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky looking elf. But in the 1920’s and 1930’s, his modern image as that big jolly man was solidified in the American mind as he was shown happily consuming Coca-Cola in one of the first great advertising campaigns of the modern consumer age.
Come and join us at the Magnolia House this December and enjoy our 1920’s holiday theme - including Santa as we’ve known him ever since!
