Don’t believe every story you hear about Christmas

by Shelby Strang

Did Coca-Cola create the modern image of Santa Claus? Is it actually possible for Santa to deliver to all the children in the world? Were candy canes created to symbolize Jesus? Some of these legends sound weird, but some of them really make you stop and think: is it a myth or is it true?

One claim is that Coca-Cola created the modern image of Santa. No! In fact, the modern image of Santa developed in the 19th century. Santa was portrayed as both large and small; he dressed in furs or cloth suits of red, blue, green, or purple. Santa was an evolutionary creation, which brought about the fusion of two religious personages, which is now the symbol of Christmas celebration. The version of Santa became the dominant image around 1841, when a Philadelphia merchant named J.W. Parkinson hired a man to dress in red suit type clothing and climb the chimney outside his shop. But with all this, in the beginning the Coca-Cola company was still looking for ways to increase sales of their product during the winter, so they turned to a talented commercial illustrator , who created a series of memorable drawings that associated the a figure of Santa Claus.

Another legend is, is it actually possible for Santa to deliver all the presents to all of the children in the world? First, there is no known species of reindeer that can fly. There are two billion children in the world. But if you take out the Muslim, Hindu, the Jewish and Buddhist children, who don’t celebrate this type of Christmas, he is left with 378 million children according to the Population Reference Bureau. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. So Santa would have to visit 822.6 houses per second. This means that Santa’s sleigh would have to be moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. If he was traveling this fast, his sleigh would burst into flames almost instantaneously. THAT would not be good.

Another claim is that candy canes were created to symbolize Jesus, their shape represented the letter “J” and their colors stands for the purity and blood of Christ. The status of this claim is false. Candy canes were created in Ohio as a tree ornament, but then later became the best selling candy for Christmas time.