Thomas Nast is credited with creating our popular image of Santa Claus. This is a very early Nast drawing of Santa Claus created in 1865. The image at right is an original leaf from an 1865 Harper's Weekly where the picture first appeared. The illustration is captioned, "A Merry Christmas to All", and features a portrait that all today would recognize as Santa Claus. From this picture, we can see that our modern image of Santa has changed little in the last 140 years. The image of Santa is surrounded by smaller images showing the typical Christmas Traditions of the 1860's. This is a classic Thomas Nast picture of Santa Claus.
Nast first presented Santa as we know him in December 1862, on the cover of HARPER'S WEEKLY, where he was seen bringing gifts to Union soldiers far from home during the Civil War. Nast's conception of Santa was influenced by Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Present in A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843). Santa hasn't changed much at all in the last 151 years!
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