Sister Susy and Santa Claus - How We Learned that Santa Claus Lives at the North Pole

In a recent post I traced the origin of the expression “flyover country” to the dismissive attitude of television executives and writers who referred to a large portion of their audience as the “people they fly over” while shutting back and forth between New York and Hollywood.

See - Hollywood Execs, New York Writers and the People they Fly Over - the Origin of "Flyover Country"

In this post, I look at a more positive form of “flyover” – Santa Claus’ annual trek around the world dispensing gifts and joy to girls and boys (and hopefully someday to a blog writer who’s been very good this year).

While the origins of the Santa Claus myth (if we can call something that is absolutely true a myth he adds, hedging his bets) are generally well known, there are a few elements of secular Christmas folklore whose origins are less well known.  The leg-lamp made famous in the classic film A Christmas Story, for example, dates to at least 1921;  Charlie Brown’s sad Christmas tree predates the TV-special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, by nearly a century; Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s dentist friend, Hermiethe Elf (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), appeared in an advertisement for Gimbel’s Department Store in 1914; and the popular notion that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole is several years older than generally believed – at least as early as 1863 as opposed to 1866.

A series of drawings illustrating life on the streets of Washington DC during the holiday season of 1921 included this image of an early leg-lamp.

The Washington Times, December 4, 1921, 36.

I was also naively unaware of and never fully appreciated the "deep" thematic relationship between leg-lamp stockings and Christmas stockings until I saw this shapely poem published in 1884:

What’s in your stocking?

The cover art for the book, Kriss Kringle’s Christmas Tree (Philadelphia, E. Ferrett & Co., 1845) shows a very short Santa Claus hanging toys in a Spartan, if not quite Charlie Brown-like, tree.

A spittin’ image of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree appeared on the cover of a German humor magazine in 1867:

 

And a photograph of a more authentic American version appeared in the New York Tribune in 1903 (left):

Rudolph the Reindeer’s dentist friend, Hermie the Elf (it seems), appeared without his cap in a Christmas ad for Gimbel’s department store in 1914 (lower left):

The Evening World (New York), November 23, 1914.

Compare: 

In this age of satellite imagery and regularly scheduled transcontinental flights along the polar route, it is a well established fact that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole.  But when transportation and technology was more primitive and more limited, it was more difficult to pin him down to a precise location. 

In 1844 the signature line of a letter to the editor by Santa Claus himself suggested that he may have lived at Mont Blanc, Quebec.  But the letter was dated January 1, 1844, so perhaps he was just relaxing there after a busy Christmas before returning home to the Pole.  Surprisingly, the letter also reveals that he used to deliver gifts on Christmas and New Year’s Eve:

A Christmas story published in 1853 suggested that Santa Claus’ home base was still not widely known:

Even the crack investigative staff of the New York Times was stymied, referring merely to Santa's "mysterious home" (December 28, 1857).  And in 1860, the humorist Philander Doesticks wrote that he had heard, "Santy kept a toy-shop in the moon . . . ."Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 27, 1860, page 2.  The truth would not be revealed until several years later.
 
Most sources date the earliest known reference to Santa Claus’ home base at the North Pole to Thomas Nast’s 1866 illustration, “Santa Claus and His Works”:[iii]

A detail from just to the right of top-center reads:

Presumably the initials N. P. refer to the North Pole.  An illustrated book published three years later, and likewise entitled Santa Claus and His Works, expressly referred to his home as the “North Pole”.

But Thomas Nast and the editors of Harper’s Weekly were not the first people to be aware of Santa’s base of operations.  Young readers of Sophia May’s (real name Rebecca Sophia Clarke) popular Little Prudie Series of books knew where Santa lived as early as 1863, when Santa Claus, in May’s book Sister Susy revealed:

 It is not clear whether Sophie May invented the story from whole cloth or merely put into print something that had already been widely known or suspected.  But she was from Maine, so perhaps her proximity to the North Pole gave her access to some inside information.

Just in case there are still any doubters out there, here is an image of the real Santa Claus:

So have a merry Christmas, Festivus or other appropriate holiday as desired, but please – be careful.  If you can’t wait for the real Santa Claus, and choose to dress up as Santa Claus yourself, dress appropriately – or use electric lights instead of traditional candles: