How did the idea for Santa Claus originate?

         How did the idea for Santa Claus originate?

         The American version （译本） of the Santa Claus figure received its inspiration （灵感）and its name from the Dutch legend of Sinterklass (a Dutch variant of the name Saint Nicholas).

         Dutch colonists （殖民者）took this tradition with them to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in the American colonies in the 17th century.

         As early as 1773 the name appeared in the American press（新闻）as "St. A Claus," but it was the popular author Washington Irving who gave Americans their first detailed information about the Dutch version of Saint Nicholas. In his History of New York, published in 1809 under the pseudonym （笔名）Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving described the arrival of the saint on horseback each Eve of Saint Nicholas.

         This Dutch-American Saint Nick achieved his fully Americanized form in 1823 in the poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas more commonly known as "The Night Before Christmas" by writer Clement Clarke Moore. Moore included such details as the names of the reindeer（驯鹿）; Santa Claus's laughs, winks（眨眼）, and nods.

         The American image of Santa Claus was further elaborated（详细阐述） by illustrator Thomas Nast, who depicted（描写）a rotund （胖乎乎的）Santa for Christmas issues of Harper's magazine from the 1860s to the 1880s. Nast added such details as Santa's workshop at the North Pole and Santa's list of the good and bad children of the world. In the first Nast illustration, Santa was delivering Christmas gifts to soldiers fighting in the Civil War. The cartoon, entitled "Santa Claus in Camp" appeared in Harper's Weekly on January 3, 1863.

         A human-sized version of Santa Claus, rather than the elf（侏儒）of Moore's poem, was depicted in a series of illustrations created by Haddom Sundblom for Coca-Cola advertisements introduced in 1931. In modern versions of the Santa Claus legend, only his toyshop（玩具店）workers are elves.

         An advertising writer named Robert May, invented Rudolph, the ninth reindeer, with a red and shiny nose, while working on a catalog for the Montgomery Ward Company in 1939.

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