圣诞老人的由来_初中英语作文_初中英语-查字典英语网

圣诞老人的由来

Much of modern day Santa Claus lore including the reindeer drawn sleigh originated in America. Dr. Clement Clarke Moore composed "The Night Before Christmas" in 1822 to read to his children on Christmas Eve. The poem might have remained privately in the Moore family if a friend had not mailed a copy of it (without authorial attribution) to a newspaper and became part of the Santa legend.

It was in America that Santa put on weight. The rosy-cheeked roly-poly Santa is credited to the influential nineteenth-century cartoonist Thomas Nast. From 1863 until 1886 Nast created a series of Christmas drawings for Harper\'s Weekly. These drawings executed over twenty years exhibit a gradual evolution in Santa from the pudgy diminutive elf-like creature of Dr. Moore\'s immortal poem to the bearded potbellied life-size bell ringer familiar on street corners across America today. Nast\'s cartoons also showed the world how Santa spent his entire year constructing toys checking on children\'s behavior reading their requests for special gifts. His images were incorporated into the Santa lore.