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FSogol

(45,363 posts)
Sun Dec 16, 2018, 08:26 AM Dec 2018

FSogol's 2018 Advent Calendar Day 16: The Origin of Mrs. Claus & the War Years when Women took over

Marriage is a relatively new gig for Santa Claus. There’s no record of his original incarnation, Bishop of Myra St. Nicholas, having a wife. Although it’s not impossible for a fourth century Turkish bishop to have had a wife, the figure would expand and morph until, by the end of the 18th century, the bishop had transitioned into a full-time behavior monitor, jolly-maker, and bringer of toys.
But even mythological love affairs don’t just pop up overnight. It would be years and years before Santa found his lady. The first mention of Mrs. Claus appears in the 1849 short story “A Christmas Legend” by missionary James Rees, in which a couple disguise themselves, angel-like, as travelers, and seek shelter with a family. As it turns out, the two strangers are not the Clauses at all, but long-lost family members in double disguise. Still, real or not real, Rees had created a legend.
Over the next few decades, the legend took shape. Mentions of Mrs. Claus appeared in short stories, poems, and songs. She also began accompanying her husband to Christmas parties. Some reported that she dressed in red; others, like the architect/narrator in E.C. Gardner’s 1887 fanciful essay “A Hickory Back-Log,” decked her out in green and plaid.


http://mentalfloss.com/article/90113/secret-history-mrs-claus

The Mrs. Claus in Gardner’s tale (why would a Saint have a wife anyways?) harasses Garner over kitchen design.
Mrs. Claus next appears in Katharine Lee Bates’s 1889 poem "Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride" demands to accompany her husband on his rounds and wants to deliver the toys herself. Bates is more well know for writing "America the Beautiful.” (Goody is short for Goodwife or Mrs.)

The poem can be found here.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Goody_Santa_Claus_on_a_Sleigh_Ride

Filene’s Department Store in Boston was the first to have a Mrs Claus. They hired a Mrs. Claus to help Santa entertain the kiddies in 1906 which was a time when most people had not considered Santa as married.
Over the years, Mrs. Claus became depicted more as a plump, cheerful, and patient character.

But Mrs. Claus wouldn’t become a mainstay of the Christmas celebration until the Baby Boom era, with the help of Nat King Cole’s “Mrs. Santa Claus” in 1953 and Phyllis McGinley’s 1963 children’s book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/world-war-ii-america-female-santas-took-reins-180967580/#cOcecqYwxHS3bwhl.99

The Second World War saw American women break into many male-dominated jobs: riveters, crane operators, cab drivers, and professional baseball players, to name a few. But perhaps the most unusual breakthrough of all occurred 76 years ago this Christmas, when department stores began hiring women to play Santa, sitting in thrones previously monopolized by men. Pretty soon, still more women in red Santa suits and matching hats could be seen ringing bells on street corners and ho-ho-ho-ing it up for charity.

Even before the U.S. officially entered the war, some astute observers saw it coming. “It is customary in wartime for women to take over numerous fields of employment conventionally reserved for men,” the St. Louis Star-Times noted in 1941. But while the paper conceded that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt might be right that a “woman’s place is in the office, factory, courtroom, marketplace, corner filling station, and other locations too numerous to mention,” it drew a line in the snow at Santa.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/world-war-ii-america-female-santas-took-reins-180967580/

Charlie Howard, a department store Santa who also trained other practitioners, gave the concept a boost in 1937, when he announced that his program had gone co-ed. As he told the Associated Press, he planned to graduate two Mrs. Clauses that year, whose job, the story reported, would be to “greet little girls, learn what they want in their Christmas stockings, teach them how to play with dollies, doll houses, dishes and clothes.” The article, however, also quoted Howard as declaring, “And she’ll have to be good looking, too.”


Stay classy, Charlie.

Less than a year after the U.S. declared war on Japan, in November 1942, the first female department store Santa seems to have appeared in Chicago. “The manpower shortage has even hit old Saint Nick,” the caption on an Associated Press photo explained. “This lady Santa Claus has turned up—dressed like Mr. Claus except for the whiskers—at a Chicago department store, and youngsters seem just as happy telling her which gifts they are hoping for.” (Though other contemporary accounts would treat her as a full-fledged female Santa, the photo caption hedged a bit, ending with a reference to her as a “Mrs. Santa Claus” who would “pass on children’s wishes to her overworked husband.”)

In December 1942, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that, “Unable to find a man suitable for the job,” an F.W. Woolworth store in Union, New Jersey, had also hired a female Santa. Identified as Mrs. Anna Michaelson, she would “wear a skirt, instead of trousers, but all the other habiliments will be the same as those of the traditional Kris Kringle.” In Michaelson’s case that included a white wig and beard, which the mother of eight obligingly showed off for a news photographer.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/world-war-ii-america-female-santas-took-reins-180967580/#cOcecqYwxHS3bwhl.99

Makeup artist, Max Factor, Jr tried to standardize the appearance of Santa in 1939 to help prevent department stores from confusing kids and he created a template for Lady Santa Claus too. (Sadly, I can’t find a image of his work on Lady Santa)

NYC got it’s first female Santa in 1943 when Daisy Belmore was hired for Saks Fifth Ave. Belmore was most famous for appearing in Dracula and All Quiet on the Western Front.


Daisy Belmore as Santa

Some people and papers took the female Santas stoically. The Washington Post (Dec 1942) admitted it was better to have a female Santa than no Santa at all. Other writers and papers freaked out. Many of the Dept Store Santa’s felt that women would be incapable of doing the tough Santa work. The Smithsonian link about is good reading of the whining.

After the war ended the female department store Santas disappeared.

This link has a good timeline of the female Santas:
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/female-santa-history

My absolute favorite Female Santa has to be Mrs. Phoebe Seabrook, a diminutive 62-year-old grandmother. When challenged for having a fake beard and soft voice, she admitted she was Santa’s wife. When the kids said they didn’t think Santa had a wife, she replied, “Well, he’s got one now.”


(For an explanation of my advent project and a link to last years posts, see
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181152160 )
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FSogol's 2018 Advent Calendar Day 16: The Origin of Mrs. Claus & the War Years when Women took over (Original Post) FSogol Dec 2018 OP
I linked this post of yours in Gen Discussion because IcyPeas Dec 2018 #1
Of course not. Link away. n/t FSogol Dec 2018 #2

IcyPeas

(21,747 posts)
1. I linked this post of yours in Gen Discussion because
Tue Dec 18, 2018, 04:30 PM
Dec 2018

someone brought up the gender of Santa Clauses. Hope you don't mind.

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