When did Santa become full-sized?

Pigweed and I had an interesting conversation about Santa the other day. We were looking into the origins of various Christmas traditions, and Pigweed thought Santa was originally portrayed as a little guy until Coca Cola had their iconic image of him full-sized.

His evidence:

1. He’s an elf.

2. “A miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer, with a little old driver ….”

3. He slides down the chimney.

Taking them in order, it is true that there are two different traditions when it comes to elves. There are elves as little people (the Keebler elves) — somewhat like Leprechauns, I suppose — and there are elves as full-sized people (Norse Mythology, Tolkien). So that one could go either way with this.

About the miniature sleigh, I had always take that to mean that it was miniature because it was far away — the way you’d see an airplane in the sky. But I have to admit that it doesn’t necessarily mean that.

As to sliding down the chimney, this is a little more complicated. Chimneys come in all sizes, and this is a perpetual problem with the “large Santa” version of the story, usually resolved by magic. A small Santa might not have the same problem. (There’s still the problem of houses with no chimneys, but nobody says Santa has to come down the Chimney.)

On the whole, I prefer the “Santa was always large” interpretation for one simple reason: he’s associated with St. Nick, who was a man. That doesn’t completely answer the issue, since someone who was a man many hundreds of years ago, and is still around, certainly has some magic and trickery going on.

And speaking of Santa, “Fat Man” is a decently fun rental.