Representation of Santa Claus in US-American movies (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,7, TU Dortmund (Kultuwissenschaften), course: Approaches to XMas, language: English, abstract: This term paper is concerned with the representation of Santa Claus in U.S. media culture. Various literary texts are examined, and the different representations of the character Santa Claus are presented.

What would a pre-Christmas season be without Santa in movies or in books? Or without seeing a Santa Claus in songs or his face in every store? The character "Santa Claus" is everywhere during winter, and it's hard to imagine Christmas culture without him. Whether in movies, literature, or songs; the story of the fictional character is told everywhere and made believable to children.

Especially in the American culture, Christmas would be nothing without the representation of Santa Claus. But there are many different versions and stories of the big old man with the white beard: Sometimes he has magical abilities, can fly, and fits through a very narrow chimney shaft. In other stories, he has a long list and knows which child was good and which was not. Occasionally, it is a normal person who is turned into Santa Claus by special behaviors and in other cases the historical side of St Nicholas is brought up.

All these different pictured types of Santa Claus have built a huge Christmas culture, both in the media and in commercialization in real life. The target of this term paper is to give an overview of the different representations of Santa in US Media and highlight how they originated.