A little digression into the world of advertising for today’s Christmas-themed advent calendar fact. As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, there is a common idea that Coca-Cola ‘invented’ the modern Santa Claus, with the red and white robes being an invention of the soft drinks company – because these were, and are, the colours of their brand. However, the truth is a little more interesting than this urban legend.
As we also revealed in yesterday’s post, the modern image of Santa Claus was largely a product of the early nineteenth century, and, in particular, a famous poem. But the illustrations portraying St Nick as a jovial man in a red 
suit were similarly a nineteenth-century invention – long before Haddon Sundblom’s celebrated Coca-Cola billboard advertisements of the 1920s and 1930s.
The red robes we now associate with Santa Claus slightly predated the creation of Coca-Cola (in the mid-1880s). Thomas Nast’s cartoons of Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly in the 1880s appear to have been the first occasion on which the world glimpsed a red-clad Santa. As Joseph J. Walsh puts it in his book Were They Wise Men or Kings? The Book of Christmas Questions, ‘The poor man has not had the opportunity to change his clothes since.’
Indeed, Coca-Cola weren’t even the first soft drinks giant to depict a red-robed Santa. It was another soft drinks company, called White Rock Beverages, that had the idea to use a red-clothed St Nick to advertise their mineral water, in a series of ads run from 1915 onwards.
Image: Coca-Cola truck fragment (author: Husky), Wikimedia Commons.
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Thank you! My godmother’s husband worked for White Rock, and I remember their Santas!
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This was very interesting but is it also urban legend that when Coca Cola started advertising with a Santa that he wore GREEN and white robes? This was my understanding; and that the red and white didn’t come until later.
Hi Ken, I think the story is that Santa’s robes were originally green and white but Coca-Cola (supposedly) made them red and white. That said, I’ve not been able to find a source that depicts Santa in green robes (yet!) so this may be an urban legend… Will report back if I do find a source!
Here’s a link to a BBC page suggesting the British Father Christmas (at least) was green – and brings up many of the issues of numerous characters eventually merging into one as your post dealt with! It’s a beginning for the research :)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/york/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8394000/8394067.stm
Brilliant! Thanks for this. It may lead to the writing of another festive post eventually!
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Love this series!