Why is santa dressed in red

Santa is the most well-known figure when it comes to the holiday season, but could you possibly imagine him without his red coat? In fact, his famous red outfit has become so commonplace in the world that nobody even stops to question where on earth it came from. Rather than using all the money for his own pleasure and enjoyment, he used much of it to help the poor people.

They would receive secret gifts from him, and he was eventually made a saint because of his generosity. When it comes to why Santa is really red, historians have taken a look at the clothing of saints during the early centuries. Saint Nicholas lived during the 4 th century — a time when their robes were red and white. Nicholas is thought to have worn red and white attire, which could possibly be one of the reasons why our modernised Father Christmas wears those colors.

Beginning in the 16 th century, Father Christmas was introduced to the UK and was the Santa-figure of the Christmas season.

Mr Irving and Mr Moore also wanted to turn Christmas Eve from a raucous partying of street gangs into a hushed family affair, everyone tucked up in bed and not a creature stirring - not even a mouse.

Mr Moore - who penned the line "'Twas The Night Before Christmas" in - did as much as anyone to create the American idea of Santa Claus, the red-robed patron saint of giving presents to everyone whether they want them or not. It was in the s, too, that advertisements for Christmas presents became common in the United States. By the s, Santa himself was a frequent commercial icon in advertisements.

Retailers, after all, had to find some way to clear their end-of-year stock. In Boston in , 10, people paid to see Charles Dickens give readings of his Christmas Carol - a story light on biblical details and heavy on the idea of generosity.

Down the coast in New York the same year, Macy's department store decided it was worth keeping the doors open until midnight on Christmas Eve, for last-minute Christmas shoppers.

Its first line: "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents. Prof Joel Waldfogel, an economist and author of Scroogenomics, has been able to track the impact of Santa on the US economy back across the decades. By comparing retail sales in December with sales in November and January, Prof Waldfogel has estimated the size of the Christmas spending bump all the way back to , the era of the Coca-Cola Santa.

In fact, relative to the size of the economy, Christmas spending was three times bigger then than now. What is an everyday indulgence today would have been a once-a-year treat back in the s.

Prof Waldfogel has also compared the US Christmas boom to other high-income countries around the world. Again, perhaps surprisingly, the US's December spending boom is not particularly large, relative to other countries. You can find more information about the programme's sources and listen online or subscribe to the programme podcast.

In the grand scheme of things, Christmas is a modest affair, financially speaking. After all, you would have lunch anyway, pay your rent, fill your car with petrol and buy clothes to wear. However, for certain retail sectors - notably jewellery, department stores, electronics, and useless tat - Christmas is a very big deal indeed. Economists and moralisers do not often find themselves having common cause, but on the subject of Christmas we do: we agree that a lot of Christmas spending is wasteful.

Time, energy and natural resources are poured into creating Christmas gifts which the recipients often do not much like. Santa's gifts rarely miss the mark; he is, after all, the world's number one toy expert. The same cannot be said of the rest of us. Prof Waldfogel's most famous academic paper The Deadweight Loss of Christmas tried to measure the gap between how much various Christmas gifts had cost, and how much the recipients valued them - beyond the warm glow of "the thought that counts".

This wastage figure seems to be fairly robust across countries. To put it into context, that is about what the World Bank lends to developing country governments each year. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

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This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Any cookies that may not vital for our website to function. By accepting this type of cookies you agree to let us record more information about you and your use of our website. Evidence The story of Santa Claus goes back to a monk named St Nicholas , who is believed to have been born around AD in what is now modern-day Turkey.

Thomas Nast cartoon, The modern image of Father Christmas, which became broadly interchangeable with the American Santa Claus, was popularised in Victorian times by poems and short stories. Santa Claus in red suit used to advertised confectionary, Coca-Cola advert featuring Sandblum inspired Santa, Ferret Fact Service verdict: False The depiction of Santa Claus as a red-suited old man has been in existence since at least the 19th century.

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