Asheville, NC, (News of The South) — “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” and a St. Nick and a Belsnickle and a Kris Kringle and other midwinter gift-givers from around the globe, and researcher and author Tom Jerman brings them all to life in his award-winning book, Santa Claus Worldwide: A History of St. Nicholas and Other Holiday Gift-Bringers.
Jerman’s book explores the origins and traditions related to a diverse spectrum of holiday characters and sets the record straight on what he calls “the most important event in the history of Santa Claus:” the publication in 1821 of William B. Gilley’s eight-page booklet, The Children’s Friend: A New-Year’s Present to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve.
Readers have called Santa Claus Worldwide, “Entertaining, persuasive, and in places hilarious!” … “a well-researched and enjoyable book” … “for anyone interested in the history of Santa Claus as a constantly changing, adapting, and evolving cultural figure” … and “a true delight for those wanting to know the historical facts and history of one of the world’s most celebrated givers.”
Jerman began collecting Santa Claus figurines in the 1980s as a hobby, and the sheer variety of Santa Claus incarnations he encountered fueled his curiosity.
“Santa is whoever you think he is,” Jerman said in an interview. “You can envision him any way you want to envision him; there are no constrictions on who can be Santa Claus.”
The product of years of exhaustive historical research, Santa Claus Worldwide is the first legitimate history of Santa Claus in more than a decade, and the first history in more than 100 years to provide a comprehensive look at the Yuletide gift-givers throughout the world.
Some of Jerman’s fascinating insights include:
– “Santa Claus” is not merely the American name for St. Nicholas.
– Jerman also corrects a significant inaccuracy perpetrated in 1953 by an eminent Berkeley historian, Charles W. Jones, that American author Washington Irving created, in effect, the American Santa Claus.
– The original American Santa was one of the shabby, unkempt, secular gift-givers known by two dozen different names in Germany who immigrated to America with German children during the early nineteenth century. One of them, Pelznickel (“Nicholas in furs”), became known as Belsnickle in Pennsylvania while another, Christkindl (“Christ child”), became known as Kriss Kringle (more commonly written as “Kris” today).
– The name “Santeclaus,” the bearded German gift-giver who descended down the chimney and left gifts in stockings on Christmas and a sleigh pulled by a flying reindeer were united in 1821 by publisher William B. Gilley in a book called The Children’s Friend, which disappeared from history until it was rediscovered in 1953.
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-And so much more.
Ultimately, Santa Claus Worldwide proves, conclusively, the existence of Santa and his impact on our world.
“Santa indisputably exists as the symbol of Christmas, and Christmas represents our most noble virtues,” Jerman says. “Symbols are real, and they can be very powerful.”
About the Author
Tom A. Jerman, a resident of Asheville, N.C., has bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and journalism and a juris doctorate degree from the University of Utah. Employed as a copy editor with The Salt Lake Tribune between 1974-78, he went on to practice labor and employment law for 35 years. In 2015, he took early retirement to pursue his desire to write something more interesting and enduring than legal treatises.
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