Charlemagne is Santa Claus
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| St Nicholas depicted in a medieval Book of Hours, LUL MS.F.2.8, from University of Liverpool Library |
“His body was large and
strong; his stature tall but not ungainly, for the measure of his height was
seven times the length of his own feet. The top of his head was round; his eyes
were very large and piercing. His nose was rather larger than is usual; he had
beautiful white hair; and his expression was brisk and cheerful; so that,
whether sitting or standing, his appearance was dignified and impressive.
Although his neck was rather thick and short and he was somewhat corpulent this
was not noticed owing to the good proportions of the rest of his body. His step
was firm and the whole carriage of his body manly; his voice was clear, but
hardly so strong as you would have expected.”[2]
Santa
Clausy, right? Well compare this to the
description in the famous poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, by Clement
Clarke Moore, which is better known by its opening line, ‘'Twas the night
before Christmas'. Clement writing for
his children gave a very careful description of Santa Claus,
His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples,
how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like
a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a
bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as
the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his
teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like
a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round
belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl
full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old
elf...[3]
On closer examination, Santa is portrayed as a happy,
genial fellow, and no one alive or dead would refer to Charlemagne as an 'elf'
but look at some of the comparisons. Like Santa Claus, in the English version
of the Vita, Charlemagne's hair is described as white, however,
in Latin Einhard used the phrase 'canitie pulchra' beautiful grey or
greyish white hair. I think perhaps
there may be some ageism on the part of the English translators who cannot
imagine beautiful hair being any shade of grey and so translate it out to
white. Maybe Einhard would have
agreed.
Both writers spend time on small details highlighting
features that I bet most people, or just me, hardly pay attention to. Charlemagne's eyes are very large and
piercing, while Santa's are
twinkling.
Both descriptions imply lively intelligence and the ability to quickly
assess any situation. Santa must know
whether you are naughty or nice. Santa
is a 'right jolly old elf' while Charlemagne was 'brisk and cheerful'. Both had noses worth noting, Charlemagne's
large and Santa's like a cherry, but neither were mundane run-of-the-mill
noses. Both are a tad corpulent, though only Santa's belly shakes like
jelly. Oh, the rhymes! Both are
described in physical terms which create the sense of good natured, physically
and mentally capable older men who enjoy a good chuckle, the older fun uncle
who tells great stories at Christmas, not that other one, you know, who drinks
too much and wants to talk about politics. Certainly, neither description is frightening
or intimidating.
 |
| Coronation of Charlemagne, Grandes Chroniques de France. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 2813, fol. 85v. 14th Century |
Therefore, Santa is Charlemagne and Charlemagne is
Santa. You have never seen them in the
same room, have you? Charlemagne, sadly,
is nowhere reported to ascend or descend chimneys. That would have clinched it.
So why might these two characters, and I use the term
purposefully, have similar appearances, or more precisely appearances crafted
in this specific way? The reason that I
call both men 'characters' is not to say that Charlemagne is not a real person,
of course he was. This description of
him though was written at some time after he died. Einhard (c. 770 - March 14, 840) the
biographer who penned the Vita Karoli, had served in Charlemagne's court
and by his own admission owed the king much.[4] Since the life describes Charlemagne's death,
it had to be written after 814, but exactly how long after is not known. Also not known is how accurate Einhard could have
been, had he wanted to be accurate? What is known is Einhard's very Carolingian
habit of using other texts as models for his work. Models which lent phrases and an
organizational structure to the Vita. One text in particular offered Einhard a a way
of organizing the biography and also a way to frame Charlemagne so that his
biography could stand as a shining example to his son, Louis the Pious (778-
June 20, 840).[5] This text was the De vita Caesarum, About
the lives of the Caesars, by Suetonius, written sometime in the late first
to second centuries. Life under Louis
the Pious was turbulent, just as the period in which Suetonius had lived. Both writers were offering their readers
examples of proper, peaceful rule.
Minjie Su makes this argument when they compare the parts of Suetonius
Einhard used and what he did not. The
white hair and the perfect proportions ascribed to Charlemagne are lifted
almost directly from De vita Caesarum.
Equally important, Einhard left out many violent episodes from the Royal
Frankish Annals. Perhaps Einhard hoped
that highlighting Charlemagne's less violent methods might help to guide
Louis's choices.[6] So one can say that Einhard took the best
parts of Charlemagne and reflected them in his biography, carefully crafting
the greatness in Charles's persona and person.
Now Santa Claus, on the other hand, is a fictional
character; sorry Virginia. And so, Santa
as the focus of scholarly attention might surprise you. While some of that attention serves as a foil
to pursue other avenues of intellectual debate, as when Justin Barrett
submitted the jolly old elf to the test for godhood; he fails. Likewise, the computational dilemma of
getting Santa ready to go on Christmas Eve is known as the Santa Claus Problem[7],
which was solved by Mordechai Ben-Ari in 1998.
These studies underline how deeply entrenched Santa Claus is in North
American culture, and to varying degrees in Europe.
Santa Claus has become a secular icon, but he did not
start out that way. In 1809, Washington
Irving removed St. Nicholas's mitre and bishop's clothes and gave him 'a
low-brimmed hat, a huge pair of Flemish trunk hose, and a pipe that reached to
the end of the bowsprit.' Washington was
writing a tongue in cheek history of New York City under the pseudonym of
Dietrich Knickerbocker.[8] The Knickerbocker came from a term used to
describe New Yorkers of Dutch origins.
Maybe a not so nice term? And
viola! St. Nicholas, the fourth century saint from Myra, was firmly on the path
to Santa Claus. But this was not the first step in the saint's progression from
religious intermediary to shopping mall fixture. Jeremy Seal traces the personified saint
through this journey by taking his own.
When discussing the mid-nineteenth-century success of Santa, he
suggests,
"Santa had proved a enormous
success among Americans; it was striking how closely he had mirrored the
achievements of St. Nicholas though their worlds lay centuries apart. The truth was the Harper's [Bazaar]
and hagiographies, parades and saints' plays, Coke ads and frescoes served the
same purpose in those different worlds.
Santa and saint had always been interested in the same thing, which was
to spread their names among the widest audiences. It was true that they had come to be
associated with different values, but they still shared an essential notion of
generosity that was the core of their appeal to children and their parents alike. [9]"
Coca-cola just spurred things along when they claimed
the now unambiguously named Santa Claus; the name had taken awhile to settle. The image that was Santa in the Coke ads may
have reflected a collective memory of sorts, but the Coca Cola image of Santa was a formidable force in the development of a single, accepted vision of what the term Santa Claus represented by way of a physical description.[10] So, despite our having no frame of reference
for what Clement Clarke Moore was describing as Santa Claus we all fill in the
red suit wearing overweight white haired man we have come to know and instantly
recognize. So how is Santa Claus Charlemagne?
I would refer again to Seal's summation that
generosity is as the heart of who Santa is.
I would add that generosity comes from a generous spirit, which cannot
grow so easily in difficult times. Santa
and Charlemagne are both portrayed as men who aged reasonably well. Einhard does describe Charlemagne's health
problems in the year before his death, but he was already the cheerful,
slightly paunchy, white-haired man by then.
If we think back to the turbulence of Einhard's days when he was writing
the Vita and think that the text was encouraging behaviour that would
lead to peace, we realize that that is the message of the image. Charlemagne was at peace. Santa, St. Nicholas, can be generous because
he is at peace. And even if you have no
religion, you have to recognize that peace is part of the central message of
Christmas, after all the cards say, "Peace on Earth!" An old man grown fat in peaceful times can be
generous. Perhaps that is why Santa is
so successful, children love the toys he brings, and parents want to grow old
in peace and well being, able to shower future generations with
generosity. It's what Einhard wanted for himself and his kingdom and what he crafted in his image of Charlemagne.
Therefore, Charlemagne is Santa Claus. I wish you all Peace and Joy this holiday
season!
[1] Germanic
tribes are noted to have coloured their hair red, but in pre-Carolingian times.
The Carolingians represented a turn away from hair as a symbol of power. For
more on the hair habits of the barbarians, see: Paul Edward Dutton, Charlemagne’s
Mustache: And Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age, 1st ed, The New Middle
Ages (New York, N.Y: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 9.
[2]
There
are many translations of Einhard’s Vita Karoli, however, this is the one I
found while on the phone, so it is this translation which started the ball
rolling. Einhard, A. J Grant, and Notker, Early Lives of Charlemagne,
(New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966), chap. 22.
[3]
Clement
Clarke Moore, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” The Sentinel, December 23,
1823; There is some debate as to who actually wrote the poem, for more see:
MacDonald P. Jackson, Who Wrote “The Night Before Christmas”?: Analyzing the
Clement Clarke Moore vs. Henry Livingston Question (McFarland, 2016).
[4] Notker
The Stammerer and David Ganz, Two Lives of Charlemagne., 2008, 17; For
the most recent scholarship on Charlemagne, see: Janet L Nelson, King and
Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne (London: Allen Lane, 2019).
[5] Su (2019), Nicoll (1975), Kempshall (199Minjie
Su, “Profile of An Emperor: Reading Vita Karoli Magni in Light of Its Sources
and the Socio-Political Context of Its Composition,” Ceræ : An Australasian
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 5, no. 1 (April 17, 2019),
http://openjournals.arts.uwa.edu.au/index.php/cerae/article/view/135; W. S. M.
Nicoll, “Some Passages in Einhard’s ‘Vita Karoli’ in Relation to Suetonius,” Medium
Aevum; Oxford 44 (January 1, 1975): 117–121; Matthew S. Kempshall, “Some
Ciceronian Models for Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne,” Viator; Berkeley,
Calif. 26 (January 1, 1995): 11–37.
[6] For
a less negative take on the rule of Louis the Pious see: Rutger Kramer, Rethinking
Authority in the Carolingian Empire: Ideals and Expectations during the Reign
of Louis the Pious (813-828), The Early Medieval North Atlantic 6
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019).
[7] Mordechai
Ben‐Ari, “How to Solve the Santa Claus Problem,” Concurrency: Practice and
Experience 10, no. 6 (1998): 485–96,
https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1096-9128(199805)10:6<485::AID-CPE329>3.0.CO;2-2.
[10] Cara
Okleshen, Stacey Menzel Baker, and Robert Mittelstaedt, “Santa Claus Does More
than Deliver Toys: Advertising’s Commercialization of the Collective Memory of
Americans,” Consumption Markets & Culture 4, no. 3 (January 1,
2000): 207–40, https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2000.9670357.