I started reading this book from an edition borrowed from the library. Published in 1983 and illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark (ISBN 0517420627). Because I didn’t want to lug the book with me to my parents’ house, I finished reading it online at Page by Page Books.
I have vague memories of watching the cartoon of this on television. As I recall, I found it odd and boring. The book isn’t quite so boring, but it’s still odd. As a child, it seemed to me there should only be one story of Santa Claus. Oh, I suppose it could vary a little, as people tell stories differently, and some could get certain facts wrong — adults are frequently fallible this way — but the story should be essentially the same. And this one just falls far outside what I knew to be true about Santa Claus.
This Santa doesn’t have 9 reindeer, and their names are all wrong. He doesn’t have any elves. He doesn’t even live at the North Pole as far as I can tell!
I suppose I should give a summary before I continue. A nymph is bored one day and discovers and abandoned child and ask the great Ak if she can keep him and raise him as her own. Thus is born Santa Claus, an orphan raised in the woods by a bunch of Immortal creatures. When he’s older, he gets his first glimpse of mankind and decides the children need his help. So he slowly sets about his life’s work of making toys and delivering them to the kids. And this story relates how he gradually accrues various things he needs to help him.. mostly involving deer and a sledge.
This story just has the wrong feel to it. It may be a fantasy story, but it’s a fantasy mythos that doesn’t fit in with the Santa Claus one. At least not the Santa universe that I know. His reindeer don’t even fly!
Sometimes it also felt like the author was going out of his way to explain this or that inconsistency. Like, oh yea, and sometimes when the parents are kind and loving, Santa just drops the toys down in a heap and lets the parents arrange them nicely. Or, if the kids aren’t satisfied by what they got on Christmas, then Santa’s left some toys in toy stores so they can go and buy them(!).
I know this is an older story, and maybe he shouldn’t be expected to have the names of the reindeer ‘right’, and Rudolph’s absence is understandable, but.. where’d Mrs. Claus go? There’s not even any room for her in this story, because Santa uses up the only chance of any mortal becoming immortal.
Throughout the story, he’s known as Claus, which I had a lot of trouble getting over. In my head, I kept pronouncing it Klaus. Which just conjures up the image of a fish in a bowl.
The illustrations in the edition I started reading were rather annoying. There were spoilers! There’d be a picture of a cat with a bow, before the toy cat ever got a bow. There’d be pictures of dolls before Santa had ever made a doll. And there’s even a picture of a toy soldier. It doesn’t seem to fit with the text to me. I don’t think this Santa would be making toy soldiers for the kiddies. Especially ones that looked 18th century European. So bad marks on the illustrations all around.
One final thing that stood out to me, which isn’t unimportant, is that there is never any mention of what Christmas is. This head of all Rhyls guy just decides he’ll only loan his deer out to Santa on one night a year and that night will be Christmas Eve. And I’m wondering at this point, does Santa even know what Christmas celebrates? He wasn’t exactly raised by wolves, but almost may have well have been.
There is mention of a being who created all the Immortals, so God is definitely mentioned, if not by that particular name. You’d think there’d be some nod to Jesus. Some link between Christmas Eve and Santa other than it being a conveniently close date for the Rhyl King dude to be a jerk about. I mean, if I wanted to be a jerk about granting the request for the use of my deer, I’d pick the shortest night of the year, not close to the longest. (Being northern hemisphere-centric in that remark, yes.)
So, all in all, eh.
Was I still giving out stars? He almost doesn’t deserve a Christmas star for this, but I’ll give him 2. Okay story, but it’s not Santa, I don’t feel any Christmas magic, and it’s not a light-hearted romp or anything particularly enjoyable or amusing.
I really -liked- that there was no Christian baggage in this story. That the selection of Christmas as the day Santa was to provide toys (to ALL the children, not just the Christian ones) was completely arbitrary and he was not linked to any particular religion at all.
Somewhat unusual for his time, Baum made a real effort to excise religion and religious influence from most of his works.
He’s still Santa Claus. Even if Baum did try to say that anyone could be a Saint in people’s hearts just by doing good deeds, it’s still a Catholic concept.
It’s a Catholic concept inasmuch as the Catholics were pretty much the only game in town for about 1500 years. The concept of Saints permeates the entire Christian world, whether or not anything special is done about them. And most other cultures also have a concept by which people who are more good/nicer/help the most people are venerated in some way.
I think Baum did very well to stick with most of the familiar elements (reindeer, toys, name, going down chimneys, delivery on Christmas, trees) and come up with an original story that made Claus a secular figure.
Re: Mrs. Claus
I never really felt that Mrs. Claus served much purpose other than to safely plant Santa in a heteronormal relationship and make him less threatening as a grown man who spends all his time trying to please children.
(Which makes it interesting that she was “invented” by a Wellesley alum and probable lesbian…)
Heh. Yeah, I kept thinking, “Don’t these parents find Claus kind of creepy?” But no, they were just kind of baffled someone wanted to do something as unthinkable as hang out with their kids.