Celebration: Santa Comes to Town

Before he was round, Santa was slim. He has been seen as a saint, and as a gift-giver with a dangerous traveling companion named Black Pete. Before Clement Moore established that flying reindeer guaranteed Santa's swift completion of his Christmas Eve rounds, Santa was painted trudging through the snow on a donkey, or doing his best on Nordic skis. The pictorial evidence on old Christmas cards of Santa's complicated past is intelligently interpreted here by a Santa student with a fine sense of whimsy.