1940 Haddon Sundblom Santa; Oglethorpe University collection

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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

1930s Coca Cola Santa Claus


During the Great Depression the Coca Cola Company solidified the image of Santa Claus that persists to today.

Coke hired a Chicago artist to create their 1931 Christmas advertising campaign. The artist, Haddon Sundblom, produced a new archetype for Santa Claus. True, he wasn’t the first artist to put Santa in a red suit, or portray him with a long white beard and ruddy cheeks. What did he do that was different from the previous versions?

Political cartoonist Thomas Nast generally gets the credit for being the first to conceptualize Santa the way we think of him. Nast’s Santa drawings appeared in Harper’s Weekly from 1862 until 1886, amounting to 33 illustrations in total. His 1881 Merry Old Santa Claus tends to be the one we think of first. “To the casual observer, it looks like Santa, with his bag of toys, wearing his characteristic red suit,”says Ryan Hyman, a curator at the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum, which has a large collection of Nast’s work.

Thomas Nast's 1881 "Merry Old Santa Claus" points the way toward how we visualize Santa today.
Thomas Nast’s 1881 “Merry Old Santa Claus” points the way toward how we visualize Santa today.

“But actually,” he continues, it’s propaganda, related to the government’s indecisiveness over paying higher wages to members of the military. On his back isn’t a sack full of toys—it’s actually an army backpack from enlisted men.

“He’s holding a dress sword and belt buckle to represent the Army, whereas the toy horse is a callback to the Trojan horse, symbolizing the treachery of the government. A pocket watch showing a time of ten ’til midnight indicates the United States Senate has little time left to give fair wages to the men of the Army and Navy.”

British illustrator Reginald Birch stripped Thomas Nast’s political edge away from Santa and added much more warmth to his version of St. Nick. Santa now has the iconic hat, the boots, and the sack of toys. No big buckled belt yet, nor do the boots have any buckles. And the sack seems oddly plain. Note that this 1906 cover of St. Nicholas magazine features at top a ‘fairy story by Frances Hodgson Burnett.’ This Knoxville based writer gave us the children’s classics ‘A Secret Garden’ and ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy.’

Reginald Birch's Santa Claus is warmer than Thomas Nast's, and his outfit now includes the iconic hat.
Reginald Birch’s Santa Claus is warmer than Thomas Nast’s, and his outfit now includes the iconic hat.

By the 1920s, nationally known illustrators J.C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell produced the versions that Coke used as its models. Like Birch before them, they removed Santa’s image from editorial comment on the day’s issues…although the 1930 Leyendecker cover shown below is a veiled insider reference to his disciple Rockwell riding on his coattails, according to wagging tongues in the illustration community of the era. Leyendecker was the first to give us jolly, ruddy cheeked, warmly lit Santa. Mr. Claus now has the iconic leather belt with buckle in place, and the toy sack is merrily decorated with bells in a way that makes Birch’s Santa feel drab.

Leyendecker’s portraits were so powerful that he is the reason we don’t see Santa dressed in green, blue, yellow or in any other of his earlier manifestations.

The first of Leyendecker’s Santas for the Saturday Evening Post, however, was a little different. It appeared on the cover of the Christmas 1912 edition and showed an old, thin man dressed as Santa in a long, grubby red coat. This 1912 Santa actually depicts one of the many Salvation Army volunteers who used to stand on streets and ring a bell and collect donations from passers-by. In August that year the founder of the Salvation Army, Gen. William Booth, had died, and Leyendecker’s illustration was a tribute to him. 

Most of Leyendecker’s work for the Post and others often featured the same male model. Leyendecker’s artwork turned Charles Beach into a something of a minor celebrity. People would stop Beach in the street because they recognised him from Leyendecker’s work.

The 1930 Leyendecker Saturday Evening Post cover shown here is a veiled insider reference to his disciple Norman Rockwell riding on his coattails.
The 1930 Leyendecker Saturday Evening Post cover shown here is a veiled insider reference to his disciple Norman Rockwell riding on his coattails.

Charles Beach became Leyendecker’s manager and agent and pushed the artist’s work to a level where Leyendecker was earning the equivalent of a million dollars and more a year. Leyendecker produced over 300 covers (most of them not Christmas covers) for the Saturday Evening Post, over a period of 44 years.

Norman Rockwell painted Santa Claus over thirty times over the course of his career, not counting people dressed as Santa, or paintings of Saint Nicholas. As with Leyendecker, Rockwell made the Saturday Evening Post his personal showcase, one that reached a million subscribers each week in its heyday. According to the Norman Rockwell Museum, many of Rockwell’s depictions of the holidays are inspired by the work of Charles Dickens, which he read as a child with his family.

He painted his final Christmas cover (discussed in the video) in 1956, though he continued with other covers for the Post for the next 7 years.

Rockwell Video Minute: Discovering Santa Claus

Saturday Evening Post readers were surprised by the realism Norman Rockwell used for his last Christmas cover.

In 2007, a Norman Rockwell painting of Santa Claus perched on a stepladder sold for $2.17 million at auction in New York.

The painting, Extra Good Boys and Girls, is the original of a 1939 cover of Saturday Evening Post magazine. It shows Santa going over his book of good boys and girls and planning his Christmas Eve route. A world map is in the background.

Working construction jobs during the day, young Haddon Sundblom took night classes in illustration at the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Academy of Art. Soon after, he began as an apprentice at one of Chicago’s largest illustration firms—the Charles Everett Johnson Studios. By 1925, Sundblom and two colleagues had opened their own firm.

The Coca-Cola Company was one of the firm’s earliest clients; Sundblom created more art for Coca-Cola than any other single artist. From 1931 to 1964, he produced at least one image of Santa Claus annually for Coca-Cola.

Sundblom’s original model was a neighbor and retired salesman, Lou Prentice. After Prentice died in the 1950’s, Sundblom used himself as a model.

Why does Sundblom’s Santa endure as our go-to? First, it built on the familiar, comfortable Santa pattern 20th century consumers had already encountered in Leyendecker and Rockwell.

Second, millions of dollars of Coca-Cola backed promotion over decades. Sundblom’s work was reproduced on calendars, billboards, posters, cut-outs, and in magazines, ensuring the widespread popularity of his particular conception of Santa.

sources: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/

Magazine Cartoons: Reginald Birch and St Nicholas Magazine

Did Coca-Cola Invent the Modern Image of Santa Claus?

Norman Rockwell Santa Claus Paintings Gallery

Norman Rockwell’s Home for the Holidays

More articles on Santa:

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Time for Kris Kringling(Opens in a new browser tab)

Get ready for the Santa Train(Opens in a new browser tab)

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