Product Description

Much of the modern-day vision of Santa Claus is owed to the Clement Moore poem "The Night Before Christmas." His description of Saint Nicholas personified the "jolly old elf" known to millions of children throughout the world. However, far from being the offshoot of Saint Nicholas of Turkey, Santa Claus is the last of a long line of what scholars call 'Wild Men" who were worshipped in ancient European fertility rites and came to America through Pennsylvania's Germans. This pagan creature is described from prehistoric times through his various forms - Robin Hood, The Fool, Harlequin, Satan and Robin Goodfellow - into today's carnival and Christmas scenes. In this thoroughly researched work, the origins of Santa Claus are found to stretch back over 50,000 years, jolting the foundation of Christian myths about the jolly old elf.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #697934 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 227 pages

Fortean Times
"gripping.... Studies as rich as this are few and far between. Let the kids have their sanitized Santa; when they are a bit older they can scare themselves shitless reading this wonderful, dangerous book"

Come-All-Ye
"diligent research.... The excellent study, with many rare illustrations (b/w), will be of great interest to folklorists and other researchers and storytellers"

About the Author
The late Phyllis Siefker lived in Lawrence, Kansas.

Customer Reviews

This book IS about the real Santa! Truth is not sin!
Regardless of what the last 2 reviews state, this book is about the REAL origins of Santa Claus. However, you won't find fluffy, nice Norman Rockwell images here and your traditional views on the subject will be tested. However, the cultural anthropoligical study here is very believable and rooted in as-good-as-can-be-determined logical connections in regard to this field of study. Santa's present incarnation has no religious characteristics whatsoever which is distinguishable from other much older Christian figures who are completely seen as religious figures. This book shows that Santa has always been a secular, & more accurately a pagan, figure. The book is about the pagan folkbeliefs & their survivals that lead to the creation of the present Santa. It is a great study! Buy it!

Not about Santa Claus at all
The book's content belies its title. It has very little to do with Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas; rather, it is a study of how the pagan theme of the "wild man" has entered the myth, legend and folklore of many cultures. The 1st page of the 1st chapter leaves a very bad first impression, containing the glaring error of calling St. Nicholas a "Turk" (because he lived in present-day Turkey). However, that part of the world was Greek in St. Nicholas' day, so it seems highly unlikely that St. Nicholas was a Turk. To its credit, the book makes a very good argument that the origin of Santa Claus is not St. Nicholas, but his sidekick in Germanic lore known as Pelznichol "Furry Nicholas." However, I was expecting a study on the origin of Santa Claus and got a study of pagan myth and history instead. In another gaffe, the author quotes (on p. 30) a passage from the book The Children's Friend, but the author (Wm. Gilley) is not mentioned and the book does not even appear in the bibliography! The books ends very abruptly with a discussion of the Ainu and one final paragraph about Christmas; having presented lots of info it utterly fails to tie it all together at the end. In conclusion, although the work is apparently well researched, its title is highly misleading and it contains some errors and omissions uncharacteristic of a scholarly work.
If I could return this book, I would.

Debunking Siefker's Santa Claus
Santa Claus - Saint Nicholas, a patron of children and sailors of Greece. Traditionally identified as a 4th century bishop from the ancient city of Lycia. The city was visited was visited by St. Paul (Acts 27.5). Ruins include rock-cut tombs and Grecian sculptures from the 5th century. Please note that Santa Claus was a bishop and Saint - Turks and Ottomans never had neither. Ms Siefker's sin is that she is a revisionist of the first order.