The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: B-

From the book jacket:
Every child knows about Santa Claus, the jolly man who brings gifts to all on Christmas Eve. There are many stories that tell of his life, but the delightful version related in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is by far the most charming and original. Only L. Frank Baum, the […]

From the book jacket:
Every child knows about Santa Claus, the jolly man who brings gifts to all on Christmas Eve. There are many stories that tell of his life, but the delightful version related in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is by far the most charming and original. Only L. Frank Baum, the man who created the wonderful land of Oz, could have told Santa’s tale in such rich, imaginative detail.

Deep in the Forest of Burzee, a wood-nymph discovers an abandoned baby and raises him as her child. Young Claus is taught by the wise mythological creatures of the Forest, who love him as one of their own. Though he lives among magical beings, he comes to cherish his fellow humans, especially the children. When Santa Claus whittles his first toy, he knows he has found the way to bring happiness and love to children all over the world.

Review:
In The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, L. Frank Baum sets out to provide a complete story of Claus’s origins, from his idyllic childhood spent raised by immortal creatures in a secluded forest until the time when his life of good deeds earns him the precious Mantle of Immortality.

The story, as told, differs from the accepted legends about Santa Claus. For example, Claus (as he is called in the novel) does not live in the North Pole along with Mrs. Claus and a merry band of elves who toil cheerfully to craft toys for all the good little boys and girls of the world. Instead, he lives alone in a place called the Laughing Valley, with four immortal creatures who became his helpers only after the population boomed so much that he could no longer handle the task alone. This Claus also makes no distinctions between naughty and nice children, conceding that even naughty children can be good, and vice versa.

Throughout the story, explanations for various traditional Christmas beliefs and customs are provided, like stockings and Christmas trees and how Claus first came to employ a team of reindeer on his yearly errand (though none bears any familiar name). Baum also works in a rationalization for the involvement of parents, saying they’re Claus’s deputies, and that Claus even sends heaps of toys to stores so that the parents can acquire them for their kids. I wonder if parents point their kids to this book to explain why Santa left a tell-tale price tag on their present.

The edition that I read was published in 2003 and is illustrated by Michael Hague. While many are nice to look upon, I found them rather confusing at times. For instance, the size of the “newborn” Claus changes radically amongst illustrations; in one he looks at least two and very tubby indeed. Also, the immortal creatures from the story appear liberally, but I’m never sure which is supposed to be which, since the images don’t always illustrate a particular, recognizable scene.

There are also a couple of inconsistencies in the story that bother me. In the beginning of the book, there is a line that reads “All the immortals are full-grown; there are no children among them.” This was used to explain why they felt such fascination when Claus was brought into the forest and allowed to be raised in their midst. Yet later, when Claus is outfitting his sledge, he reaches an agreement with the Gnome King (clearly shown as immortal by his presence at the council which grants Claus his immortality) to trade him toys FOR HIS CHILDREN in exchange for sleigh bells.

The second inconsistency involves Claus’s decision to leave the forest and live among mankind. Until his youth, he had known nothing of the existence of other members of his race, and after finally witnessing their suffering, he resolved to quit the forest. The book says that “he went forth bravely to meet his doom—the doom of the race of man—the necessity to worry and work.” Except that he doesn’t. Once he gets to the Laughing Valley, immortals pop up and build his house, promise to keep his cupboards stocked, and essentially take care of his every need.

Despite some grumblings I might have about certain particulars, I found the story to be decently entertaining, especially some turns of phrase. There’s one scene where a lioness called Shiegra is waiting in Claus’s house when he returns from an outing, while his pet cat cowers in the corner. Baum simply writes, “She did not care to associate with Shiegra.” I love that line, as it perfectly evokes a cat’s offended dignity.

I don’t know that I’d care to read this again, or any other Santa origin tales for that matter, but I think The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus would probably be fun to read aloud to a kid, particularly one who was open to embracing differences from the established legend.

Additional reviews of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus can be found at Triple Take.

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J’s Take on The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

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 […]

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.

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The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (L. Frank Baum)

The Plot
One day, a human infant is discovered by the immortals living in the Forest of Burzee. A wood nymph named Necile finds herself drawn to him and ends up taking responsibility for his care. Once he grows up, the young man, known as Claus, settles in a valley just outside the forest. […]

The Plot
One day, a human infant is discovered by the immortals living in the Forest of Burzee. A wood nymph named Necile finds herself drawn to him and ends up taking responsibility for his care. Once he grows up, the young man, known as Claus, settles in a valley just outside the forest. He visits nearby human villages and becomes friends with all the children there. He carves wooden toys for them to play with and eventually finds his purpose in life by bringing toys and treats to all the children of the world. Eventually, the immortals decide to let him join their number so that he can continue his efforts forever.

My Thoughts
L. Frank Baum, the author of this book, is much more well known for one of his other inventions: Oz. This one sort of overlaps with those, as Santa makes a brief visit to the Emerald City for Ozma’s birthday party in The Road to Oz, but otherwise this tale, taking place as it does on “Earth” of the far distant past, is separate and self-contained when compared to the mainline Oz and even some of the other books set in the Baum universe. This is fortunate, because the Oz books especially suffer very much from revisionist history syndrome, with the backstory changing frequently and contradictions arising all over the place. They are still lovely stories (I did name my daughter Dorothy, after all), but they are not internally consistent.

This particular tale by Baum, originally published in 1902 (and consequently out of copyright), is also more well known in another form — it served as the basis for a Rankin and Bass stop motion Christmas special. It was on my memory of this special that I’d long ago formed the intention of reading the original book. I had hoped to catch it on television this year so I could refresh my mind and compare the two, but I managed to miss the lone airing it got on ABC Family one early morning. BitTorrent was also a wash, but YouTube came to my rescue. And, as it turns out, I was confusing this special with another one called “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”! The actual special and the book’s plot are fairly close, though the former is simplified and several characters are composites or added to provide an easy method of exposition.

The book is divided into three parts: Claus’s youth in the forest with the Wood Nymphs, his early adulthood and the trials he faced in establishing himself, and finally his mature years, where he dealt with the dual problems of running a global business and serving an increasing population.

In the first section, Baum takes the approach of having Claus raised away from mankind, thus remaining innocent of the world and its problems until he is grown. Even after he comes into contact with other humans, he retains a childlike quality, allowing him to remain detached from the economic, social and political problems of adults. He is uninterested in them and focuses instead on the children, desiring to fill their lives — which, unlike his own childhood, must be lived out in harsh reality — with happiness and fun.

Once Claus starts interacting with the outside world, Baum begins to focus on his slow transformation into Santa and the creation of the traditions surrounding him. It is, of course, impossible to read this story, and any other story in which adults take a pointed interest in children and their doings, without wrestling with twenty-first century cynicism and sex offender panic. These feelings, forced upon us not just by the sex offenders themselves, but also by a fear mongering, sensationalistic government and media, make it difficult to evaluate the story within the context of its era and its original intent. There isn’t much here that could be misinterpreted, but I don’t doubt that it would be possible to do so.

There are only a small handful of children who receive enough individual attention to get names of their own. For the most part, the human populace is dealt with as a generic whole, with persons and places more or less interchangeable. I think this is a good choice, since it avoids the sense that judgements are being made upon cultures and ways of life. There’s just one real scene where the representation of a family is questionable, but even that brief bit is very vague and open to many interpretations.

This book, similar to a number of other Baum books, does not have a central villain or obstacle that Santa must overcome (other than his own mortality); the obstacles he does face are mostly isolated and do not return once conquered. The chapters, though arranged chronologically, are not always direct continuations of what came immediately prior. They’re more like a collection of anecdotes about Santa over the course of his first sixty or so years.

My favorites of the anecdotes center on Santa’s nighttime visits to houses, after he’s expanded his operations enough to begin requiring reindeer assistance. During his initial efforts, he is chagrined to discover that all the house doors are locked and everyone is asleep, making it impossible for him to get inside and deliver his toys. He finally lights upon the chimneys as a convenient alternative means of entrance, and uses that successfully for quite some time. Until! The relentless advance of technology eventually renders the chimney flues too skinny for him to use. He nearly gets stuck several times before one of his fairy helpers mentions in passing that they can walk through walls. You can practically hear Santa think, “And WHY am I still stuffing myself through chimneys?!”

In Short
Overall, this is a really cute Santa Claus origin story, suitable for any age. The Oz books were and are popular for a reason, and Baum’s imagination is in good form here as well. The story only suffers a little from Baum’s tendency to make up a multitude of fanciful places and names, and for the most part, these are not superfluous to the plot. With the accompanying special to recommend it, I’m surprised this book isn’t more popular.

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