Why is Santa Claus red and white ?

Answer 1

He used to be green more often.

Coca-cola is honestly the responsible party for matching him in the public mind to white and red.

Shows you how Commercial X-mas is.

I didn't say they invented RED AND WHITE. L. Frank Baum was the guy who came up with much of the mystical santa claus, the elves and so forth. I have seen red santa's from the 18th century.

But Coca-Cola is clearly responsible for it being his primary color to date!

Answer 2

He was in red and white, and other festive colours long before Coke. The advert people simply made the colours and Father Christmas' image more bright and even more cheery!
A Madly Merry, Wickedly Happy Christmas to all!
Charles "That Cheeky Lad"
Abbey and Angel

Answer 3

"Santa Claus is traditionally represented in a red cloak with white fur trimmings, a reference to St Nicholas, who reputably performed his charitable acts dressed in his red bishop's robes."

as stated in an earlier post.

Santa Claus - Sinterklaas - St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas, a 4th century Bishop of Myra, Lycia(modern day Turkey) under Roman empire rule, also served on the Council of Micea under Constantine, and is also contributed to the destruction of the pagan temple of Artemis(original 7 world wonder).

Father Christmas - Ghost of Christmas Present - Pagan belief

The traditional Father Christmas was neither a gift bringer, nor associated with children. Father Christmas is an alleged Saxon custom of dressing an elderly man as 'King Winter'. This was the 1600s.

The 2 were merged when the Santa Claus tradition came to America. Coca-Cola had nothing to do with it.

Answer 4

Santa Claus or Father Christmas actually has Pagan origins. He is the winter personification of the Green Man and was originally depicted, wearing green & white.

Answer 5

Santa Claus is traditionally represented in a red cloak with white fur trimmings, a reference to St Nicholas, who reputably performed his charitable acts dressed in his red bishop's robes.

Answer 6

The Santa Claus figure, although not yet standardized, was ubiquitous by the late 19th century. Santa was portrayed as both large and small; he was usually round but sometimes of normal or slight build; and he dressed in furs (like Belsnickle) or cloth suits of red, blue, green, or purple. A Boston printer named Louis Prang introduced the English custom of Christmas cards to America, and in 1885 he issued a card featuring a red-suited Santa. The chubby Santa with a red suit (like an "overweight superhero") began to replace the fur-dressed Belsnickle image and the multicolored Santas.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the burgeoning Coca-Cola company was still looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter, then a slow time of year for the soft drink market. They turned to a talented commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who created a series of memorable drawings that associated the figure of a larger than life, red-and-white garbed Santa Claus with Coca-Cola. Coke's annual advertisements — featuring Sundblom-drawn Santas holding bottles of Coca-Cola, drinking Coca-Cola, receiving Coca-Cola as gifts, and especially enjoying Coca-Cola — became a perennial Christmastime feature which helped spur Coca-Cola sales throughout the winter (and produced the bonus effect of appealing quite strongly to children, an important segment of the soft drink market). The success of this advertising campaign has helped fuel the legend that Coca-Cola actually invented the image of the modern Santa Claus, decking him out in a red-and-white suit to promote the company colors — or that at the very least, Coca-Cola chose to promote the red-and-white version of Santa Claus over a variety of competing Santa figures in order to establish it as the accepted image of Santa Claus.

This legend is not true. Although some versions of the Santa Claus figure still had him attired in various colors of outfits past the beginning of the 20th century, the jolly, ruddy, sack-carrying Santa with a red suit and flowing white whiskers had become the standard image of Santa Claus by the 1920s, several years before Sundlom drew his first Santa illustration for Coca-Cola. As The New York Times reported on 27 November 1927:

A standardized Santa Claus appears to New York children. Height, weight, stature are almost exactly standardized, as are the red garments, the hood and the white whiskers. The pack full of toys, ruddy cheeks and nose, bushy eyebrows and a jolly, paunchy effect are also inevitable parts of the requisite make-up.

Answer 7

In some pagan traditions the white represented the robes worn at the time the stag was killed for the yule feast and, the red the blood of the felled stag. however more often the holly king is represented as the male deity at this time.

Answer 8

He's not but his clothes are, it must be them coca-cola advertisements or it could be red represents Rudolph's nose and white represents Rudolph's teeth.Remember his beard is white and he is fat which has something with red because blood is red. It could be any of these 4 answers or maybe 3!

Answer 9

My marketing lecturer at University was telling us that Coca Cola decided to use Santa as an advertising tool. hence red and white, the colours of coca cola!

Answer 10

He is a huge fan of the Cincinnati Reds