Welcome to A Collection of Santas

My fascination with the winter solstice gift-giver that Americans call Santa Claus--particularly the diverse ways in which has been depicted over some five thousand years.  My interest began some thirty-five years ago as a collector of Santa Claus figurines.  When my collection got so large

Mesopotamian Sun Gods An And Enka

Perfection

Santa Claus Worldwide distills the cheerful essence of Christmas from many sources and studies, old and new. In addition to his wide reading, author Tom A. Jerman has brought a wealth of personal experience

Great Read!

Santa Claus Worldwide describes gift givers throughout the world in history from the pagan god Odin to the present day Father Christmas, Weihnachten, Père Noël, Ded Moroz, and Santa Claus. Mr. Jerman’s thorough research of this subject, takes the reader on a journey...

Amazing!

Until now I’ve been especially interested in Clement C. Moore and his transcendent poem The Night Before Christmas. Tom Jerman puts Moore’s classic in perspective with a broad and highly informative look at the international history of Santa Claus. For my own...

This book is REALLY impressive

I’m not a historian (I work with a lot of historians, but I’m not one!) but this book REALLY impressive piece of work! Extensively referenced and Tom Jerman does a great, scholarly job of telling the “stories” that should be told with the support of a lot of...
A Collection Of Santas

Welcome!  “A Collection of Santas” is a web site, www.acollectionofsantas, and a Facebook page devoted to my fascination with the winter solstice gift-giver that Americans call Santa Claus–particularly the diverse ways in which has been depicted over some five thousand years.  My interest began some thirty-five years ago as a collector of Santa Claus figurines.  When my collection got so large I needed to have another floor added to my house to store them, I decided to focus on telling the story of how Santa evolved from the pagan gods who led the midwinter celebrations at places like Stonehenge in northern Europe and my retirement from my career, I changed my focus from collecting to writing.

My first book, Santa Claus Worldwide: A History of St. Nicholas and Other Holiday Gift-Bringers, was published in May 2020 by McFarland & Co., of Jefferson, N.C., and I am currently working on a book addressing the surprisingly controversial question of who wrote an untitled and anonymous poem published in The Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel on December 23, 1823, which has since become known worldwide by its first line, “Twas the night before Christmas.”   I hope to publish it in advance of the poem’s bicentennial in 2023.

In the meantime, this blog is designed to provide a forum for Santa enthusiasts, discussing how Santa developed, offering up historical tidbits, facilitating discussions about the history of Santa and celebration of Christmas throughout the world, and explaining that Santa exists as the personification of the Christmas season–“the feast of humankind” in the words of English author Michael Harrison in his 1959 study, The Story of Christmas.  As Harrison explains:

Christmas is the feast, not only of man’s redemption but of man himself. It is because it releases—if only for a few days in every year—tendencies that a savage self-interest causes mankind in the ordinary to repress. At Christmas-tide tyrants grow benevolent—even merciful; misers spend, not only freely, but willingly; the fierce flames of religious and political prejudice die for a short while to a cold cinder; selfish memories are stirred by the recollection—tardy but intense—of the neglected and the outcast.  For a few days, once a year, the atrophied souls of the grown-ups are filled again with that spirit which inspires the wisdom of fools and children.

“Santa” is a term I will typically use when I want to refer to the world’s Winter Solstice gift-givers as a group whereas I will use “Santa Claus” to refer to the American version.  Santa has been known in earlier times or other nations as St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kriss Kringle, Sinterklaas, Babbo Natale, Kerstman, Grandfather Frost, Père Noël, Papai Noel, Papá Noel, Pai Natal, Baba Noel, Pelznickel, Belsnickle, Aschenklas, Ru-Klaus, Weihnachtsmann, Ded Moroz, Knecht Ruprecht, Svaty Mikalas, Veijo Pasuero, Dun Lao Che Ren, Old Man Christmas, Uncle Chimney, Mos Nicolae, Mos Cracium, Daidi na Nollag, Mikulás, Mikolaj, Olentzero, Samichlaus, Hoteiosho, and many others.

These are all depicted as men but Winter Solstice gift-giver can also be a woman (Christkindl, Berchta, Babushka, La Befana, Kolyada, Snegurochka, Tante Arie, Vieja Belen or St. Lucia), a child (Christkindl, El Nino, Gesu Bambino or Le Petit Noel), an elf (the Scandinavian Julenisse and Jultomten), an animal (Julbock, the Yule goat, in Scandinavia or the Gentle Camel of Jesus in Syria) or a group of gift-givers: Las Tres Reyes Magos, also known as the Magi, the Three Wise Men or the Three Kings, who are the holiday gift-givers in Spain and much of Latin America, and the Jolasveinar, the Icelandic “Yule Lads,” thirteen children of a couple of child-eating Icelandic ogres with such wonderful names in English as Spoon-Licker, Pot-Scraper, Sausage-Swiper, Window-Peeper, Door-Slammer, Doorway-Sniffer, and Meat Hook.