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"The New York elite succeeded in domesticating Christmas through a new "Santa Claus" tradition invented by Washington Irving, John Pintard and Clement Clarke Moore. Moore's poem was printed in four new almanacs in 1824, just one year after it was in the Troy, New York, paper. The poem and other descriptions of the Santa Claus ritual appeared in more and more local papers. More than anything else, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" introduced the custom of a cozy, domestic Santa Christmas tradition to the nation.
Other artists and writers continued the change to an elf-like St. Nicholas, "Sancte Claus," or "Santa Claus," unlike the stately European bishop. In 1863, during the Civil War, political cartoonist Thomas Nast began a series of annual black-and-white drawings in Harper's Weekly, based on the descriptions found in the poem and Washington Irving's work. These drawings established a rotund Santa with flowing beard, fur garments, and an omnipresent clay pipe. Nast's Santa supported the Union and President Lincoln believed this contributed to the Union troops' success by demoralizing Confederate soldiers. As Nast drew Santas until 1886, his work had considerable influence in forming the American Santa Claus.
Along with appearance changes, the saint's name shifted to Santa Claus—a natural phonetic alteration from the German Sankt Niklaus.
Churches, influenced by German immigrants who loved Christmas, Clement Clarke Moore, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, the Oxford Movement in the Anglican church, and church musicians embracing carol singing, began to bring Christmas observances into their lives. The growth of Sunday Schools in cities exposed hundreds of thousands of children to Christianity. Initially oopposed to Christmas observance, by the 1850s Sunday Schools had discovered that a Christmas tree, Santa and gifts, greatly improved attendance. So, in a strange twist of fate, the new "secular" Santa Claus, no longer seen as a religious figure, helped return Christmas observance to churches."-
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/origin-of-santa/
BU