Every year excitable people get their undergarments in knots worried that nefarious forces are at war with Christmas. It’s as much a modern tradition as inflatable lawn reindeer. But according to Steven Nissenbaum in his book “The Battle for Christmas” every generation feels that the holiday  they celebrate is less pure and less true that it had once been in some more noble time. In truth, ever since Christians started observing Christ’s birth on December 25 – which was at least as early as AD 354 - there has always been a battle for the soul of the holiday.

The December 25 Christmas was built upon the ashes of the Roman festival Saturnalia. Saturnalia was a winter solstice observation characterized by excessive eating, excessive drinking, and excessive…other activities. Throughout the centuries it was very difficult to divorce these Bacchanalian practices from the season of Christ’s nativity. It was in the very nature of the month of December itself, according to Nissenbaum that encouraged this bawdry behavior. “The deep freeze of midwinter had not yet set in; the work of gathering the harvest and preparing it for winter was done; and there was plenty of newly fermented beer or wine as well as meat from freshly slaughtered animals – meat that had to be consumed before it spoiled.” In December, the table was set for a party.

In the middle ages a social contract developed between lords of the manor and their peasants. At Christmas, in the guise of minstrels and wassailers, the lower orders could demand of there social betters hospitality and hand outs in exchange for a performance, one that was invariably unwelcome and forced upon them. These revelers were variously known as wassailers, Christmas Waits, and Mummers depending on the specifics of the performance, but all used the implied threat that if their loud drunken demonstrations of good cheer for the health and good fortune of the rich folks inside we're not met with rewards of food and drink, unfortunate things might happen.Wassailing was like trick-or-treating but with teeth.

Variations on this existed at least into the nineteenth century and became a threat to civil order and private property. It was at that time that a group of New York gentleman took it upon himself to try and tame Christmas once and for all by getting it off the street and into the parlor.

First was Washington Irving, who was very much enamored and bemused by the original Dutch settlers of New York and through the art of what British historian Eric Hobsbawn calls "invented tradition" claimed the “Dutch” St. Nicholas (the real St. Nicholas, Nicholas of Myra was an Anatolian Greek) as a New Yorker and the patron saint of that city. Irving’s friend, John Pintard, who was very displeased at the raucous way Christmas was celebrated, sought to copy the real Dutch practice of giving of presents to children – ostensibly from St. Nicholas – first on St. Nicholas Day (December 6) as was the Dutch practice but later shifting it to Christmas. A third friend, Clement Clark Moore wrote the poem that would change everything: “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in 1822. It was Moore who gave Santa his named reindeer and the down-the-chimney means of entrance to the homes of people all nestled and snug in their beds. A generation later, a fourth New Yorker, the brilliant political cartoonist Thomas Nast, fleshed out Santa even more making him a toy maker with a North Pole address.

The warm friendly domestic Santa was immediately embraced by merchants who were more than happy to sell to their customers all that was needed to plan for the perfect Christmas centered on the home. As commerce became more sophisticated and name brands started to appear at the turn of the 20^th century, Santa was enlisted to sell even more products. In the 1920s, world-class artists like N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell painted Santa for the cover of publications like the Saturday Evening Post and Country Gentleman. And in 1931 the Coca-Cola Company hired Haddon Sunblom to paint a series of ads featuring Santa to show that Coke was not just a warm weather drink. It was Sunblom who created the enduring and definitive image of Santa that we know today: full grown man not elf, full red suit with white trim, seriously jolly.

In many ways it is at Santa’s feet that we can lay blame to how commercial Christmas has become. Santa’s Christmas is about Christmas morning and presents under the tree. Unless you have a factory staffed by elves, presents require shopping. Christmas today tilts more towards the giving and the getting than the Gospel of St. Luke. So be it. But it was Santa -and a handful of New York gentlemen - who wrestled the great holiday away from the drunks and gave it to the children. The Christmas we know and that we bequeath to our children is Santa’s Christmas and that’s the greatest gift we ever got from jolly old St. Nick.