180 years of Santa-hood

Santa Claus riding a hot-pink sleigh, sharing a pipe with an Indian chief or wearing Levi’s jeans and a 10-gallon Stetson.

These are a few interpretations of old Saint Nick that can be found in a large collection of “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” and other Christmas books on display at Carnegie Mellon University’s fine arts library.

Carnegie Mellon acquired nearly 400 books from Anne Lyon Haight, a bibliophile who wrote a reference work on banned books. University officials say Haight was inspired to start the Christmas book collection in the 1930s because of her children.

Because Haight started collecting early, she was able to preserve a wide range of editions from different eras, making the collection hard to match today, said Nancy H. Marshall, author of “The Night Before Christmas: A Descriptive Bibliography of Clement Clarke Moore’s Immortal Poem.” Marshall has one of the largest private collections of the poem at 1,300, but it is lacking some of the earliest editions found in Carnegie Mellon’s Hunt Library.

A retired former College of William and Mary library dean, Marshall plans to eventually donate her collection to the school. She says it will top the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s 1,000-piece collection and the hundreds at Brown University.

Carnegie Mellon’s collection has grown since the library acquired it in 1982 after Haight’s death. It includes a copy of the original 1823 poem that appeared in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel as well as toy books printed in 1864.

There are parodies of the poem and tales of Santa traveling the globe. There are children’s cookbooks; a play of Norman Corwin’s, “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas”; and a short story of Washington Irving’s, “The Christmas Dinner.”

The collection is dominated by the famous poem, all versions in English except for one book in French. Because the collection reflects nearly two centuries of Christmas, its caretakers say, cultural experts and historians are able to see the evolution of Santa Claus through illustrations accompanying the poem.

“The illustrations are almost always showing a nostalgic view of life in the United States,” said Mary Kay Johnsen, the special collections librarian at the Hunt Library. “The illustrations are always showing toys of the parents’ generation, not ... the toys the kids would be receiving with the book of that year.”

The illustrations in the books often reflect America’s materialistic culture. Even in the early 1900s, children can be seen hanging up their “union suits” -- or one-piece long underwear -- instead of stockings.

“The illustrations show the children are canny and maximize their loot,” Johnsen said.

Books in the 1920s had a touch of art deco, and rich watercolors were used in books from the 1930s. The psychedelic 1960s delivered Santa in a hot-pink sleigh. Technology is often deleted from the illustrations. Rarely do telephone wires appear, Johnsen said.

Although an 1840 illustration shows Santa Claus wearing a fur hat, fur jacket and knee britches, Thomas Nast is credited with creating the modern image of Santa Claus on the cover of Harper’s Weekly in 1862.

“ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” was first published anonymously as “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas,” but the poem is most commonly credited to Clement Clarke Moore, a Bible professor in New York City.

Descendants of Henry Livingston have insisted it was the Revolutionary War veteran who penned the popular holiday poem. Moore’s credibility was most recently questioned in “Author Unknown” by literary sleuth Don Foster, who revealed that Newsweek columnist Joe Klein wrote “Primary Colors.”

Marshall believes there is no controversy.

“There is absolutely nothing in writing that proves Livingston ever wrote the poem,” she said.

Johnsen says she’s less concerned with authorship than with how the books reflect American society.

“To me, what’s very intriguing about a collection like this is you notice this material culture aspect,” she said.