No, the Santa I’m talking about is the iconic white-haired bear in the red and white suit whose iconic appearance was perfected by a gay man: Joseph Christian (J.C.) Leyendecker, America’s foremost early 20th century illustrator and the man who popularised art in advertising.

The two men usually credited with the popular image are Thomas Nast whose 1860s Santa is portly but without the red costume, while Hubert Sundblom’s 1930s Santa for Coca-Cola using their red and white logo colours is a ‘rip-off’ of Leyendecker.

Leyendecker standardised Santa’s appearance both physical and couture for a Saturday Evening Post cover in 1923 as a result of a friend reading “A Visit from St. Nicholas” better known today as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”, the 1823 poem by Clement Clarke Moore which described St. Nick as having ‘a nose like a cherry,” a beard white as snow and a belly that shook like ‘a bowlful of jelly.’

Up until Leyendecker, Santa was portrayed as everything from anorexic to bear-like and his costumes every shade of the rainbow.

Little is known about J.C. apart from the fact he, and his gay brother Frank, went to Paris to study art and were heavily influenced by poster illustrators as illustrious as Toulouse-Lautrec.

With printing techniques improving he returned to New York where he created art for the masses through advertising art and magazine cover art. He holds the record for the most covers for the Saturday Evening Post, one more than his admirer, the mawkish Norman Rockwell who was a shameless self promoter and whose reputation now overshadows the older, and better, artist.

Perhaps even more important to gay history is that J.C. also created the first male sex symbol in advertising, the Arrow Collar Man, “not simply a man, but a manly man, a handsome man, an ideal American man.”

It’s ironic that America’s ideal of masculinity in the first half of the 20th century was painted by a gay man and modelled by the artist’s own lover, Charles Beach.

The two men met when Charles was 17 and Joe 29. The impressive 6’2” Beach, was “tall, powerfully built, and extraordinarily handsome”. He spoke with a clipped British accent and was always beautifully dressed. His manners were polished and impeccable” and he towered over the 5’6” Leyendecker.

The two became inseparable and their relationship lasted from 1903 until Joe died in 1951. Beach died a year later but not before destroying their correspondence and private papers on Leyendecker’s instructions.

Beach was a legendary culture hero along the lines of the later Marlboro man. Women wanted to date him, men wanted to be like him. Joe immortalised him. It’s difficult now, in looking back on Joe’s artwork not to see the homoeroticism rampant in the images even though there is an attempt to soften it with the strategic use of women.

But one look at some of Leyendecker’s men, particularly in his art for soap advertisements, and it’s difficult not to scream ‘Oh, Mary!’

So next time you see an illustration of Santa Claus, give thanks to J.C. Leyendecker and regret he never modelled the character on Charles Beach.

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