Santa Claus is a Jersey guy. The image of Santa Claus we Americans all know and love—jolly, rotund, rosy-cheeked—was the creation of Thomas Nast, a long-time resident of Morristown.
From the 1820s on, inspired by Clement Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” artists in the United States had turned out graphic images of St. Nick, many of them drawn from European models. But none seemed to stick. Nast’s Santa capture the imagination of the American public.
Nast drew his first versions of Santa during the Civil War to Harper’s Weekly, but it was during the 1870s and the 1880s, from his home in Morristown, that he developed the images of Santa adored throughout the world today.
—Source: New Jersey Countryside Magazine; New Jersey Curiosities, Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff by Peter Genovese.
Posted by Lynne on 12/16/2006 at 09:19 AM
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