https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Father+Knickerbocker, Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary, the webmaster's page for free fun content, Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, Father Involvement Initiative Ontario Network, Father is passing himself off as daughter to collect inheritance. When did it all start? Like tuberculosis germs, Nicholas customs are always coming into our social body. John Pintard, according to the evidence the next to invoke St. Nicholas, was a Huguenot. The St. Nicholas Society and the St. Nicholas Club wear their dedications in their titles; but The New-York Historical Society observes St. Nicholas Day by listening to a lecture or other entertainment, then eating traditional Dutch goodies spread out on long tables in one of their galleries, while The Holland Society, The Long Island Historical, and the Knickerbocker Society show their devotion in their own several ways. crippled] boys and girls in the children's wards. Even this erudite son of the Episcopal Bishop of New York and President of Columbia College must have heard of Santa Claus after Irving. "Father Knickerbocker. As if that were not enough, his partner and brother-in-law, James K. Paulding, who could not leave a good joke alone, repeated it again and again. • Knickerbocker (surname), including a list of people with the surname I can see no reason whatever for the doubt. I only say that it has not yet been cited, and that I and those who have graciously assisted me have searched more specifically for it than have, for instance, H. L. Mencken for his American Language and the editors of the Dictionary of American English, who also found nothing. Moore’s St. Nicholas is Moore’s, despite claims to the contrary. It seems to me that half of my respected colleagues spend their holidays chewing pencils over doggerel for their children. But legend it surely is. There is no evidence that St. Nicholas suggested Holland to the New York patriots; for a century, ever since the Whig revolt in England, Holland was increasingly cut off from the Colonies, and as Hanover replaced Orange on the English throne the Dutch, if noticed at all, were not noticed with favor. Systematic records for the period 1804–1809 are not extant. The Knickerbocker Club (known informally as The Knick) is a gentlemen's club in New York City that was founded in 1871. Ours is not the European saint, but an American commodity, which we have exported to the whole world. I mention but two other incidents in the maturation of Santa Claus. The Knickerbockers moniker goes back to the Dutch settlerswho first settled in New York. A few years later, he published a small book listing 194 famous events of American history which had himself at their centers. We do not realize what saintly patronage meant around the year 1800 when, for instance, St. Cecilia Societies were being formed in every town. A magazine of the Metropolitan district, 318-326 West 39th Street New York " New York Public Library Digital Collections. Father Knickerbocker A 1908 soirée featured an elaborate celebration of Father Knickerbocker, the mythical white-wigged figure who was New York’s version of Uncle Sam. I quote but part of one ordinance, from Amsterdam: Of course, the very presence of such laws shows that St. Nicholas was lurking underground, like Karl Marx, and that the Dutch feared subversion. Knickerbocker himself—the name literally means “child’s marble baker”—is in certain flashes Mitchill, and in still other flashes Pintard and Hosack and Clinton. *Dr. Jones, Professor of English at the University of California (formerly at Cornell University), delivered an address which forms the basis for the present article at the New-York Historical Society’s St. Nicholas Day celebration, December 4, 1953.Charles W. Jones is the author of Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend, University of Chicago Press, 1978. Immigrants, temporarily settled in the city while awaiting an opportunity to migrate to the hinterland, consciously tried to shed the manners of the Old World and don the manners of the New. No question, Irving made our Santa Claus. They were the parents of at least 4 sons and 7 daughters. Diedrich Knickerbocker was created in 1809 by a young Washington Irving, who used the character to narrate his classic satire,A History of New York. These two items, though well known and discussed for the past hundred years, have never been explained, although many have commented that those Sons of St. Nicholas did not seem to know their father’s birthday—putting it on December 2nd one year and December 12th the next. But he was conventional in the best eighteenth-century manner, and pedantic. 65-66, he writes on “Festivals and Amusements of the People.” He reports only three holidays: Christmas, New Year, and May Day. If the legend were true, that Nicholas was the patron of New Amsterdam, he would certainly have appeared in these songs and similar popular comment. That year the Society held its first anniversary dinner for St. Nicholas, and the well-known broadside (reproduced herewith) which Pintard had Alexander Anderson engrave was published at his own expense. For example, Pintard set the appearance of St. Nicholas on December 6th in his calendar and in the first days of the Society; in 1820 he set the appearance on New Year Day; but now in 1828 he set it on Christmas, and thought it had occurred on Christmas throughout his life. While he and Pintard were working together with Bishop Hobart and others for the establishment of the General Theological Seminary, Pintard recorded in his private notebook: “I told [Moore] not to speak slightly or disrespectfully of what he was totally ignorant. Belknap Papers, II, 162. back8. The Library of Congress lists, for the single year 1947 alone, twenty-two new songs with Santa Claus as the first word in the song (I have no way of knowing how many more songs had the name somewhere in them). Of the variety of reactions, I describe only one—The Sons of St. Tammany. Weir, at West Point, was trying to rear a family of what was eventually eleven children on a salary of $900 a year and house. At the very moment in January 1808 that Washington and Peter Irving had the inspiration which became the Knickerbocker History, Salmagundi10 noticed Santa Claus: The embryo of the Knickerbocker History conceived at this date was, according to Irving, a take-off on the learned Doctor Samuel Latham Mitchill’s guide to the City of New York. Told from Knickerbocker's point of view, A History of New York is a chronicle of New York's fifty years under Dutch rule in the 1600s that plays fast and loose with the facts, to uproarious effect. Neither did the Historical Society, of which he was now a leading member, nor the Democrats, whom he represented in the Assembly and was shortly to represent in the Congress of the United States; nor the authors and artists whom he worked with and sponsored, nor the wealthy Dutch burghers, now, at last, by grace of Irving, the aristocracy of the city. Home; About. To my knowledge, the first appearance of St. Nicholas in a published almanac is Longworth’s Directory for 1816-17; the name does not appear in the first issue, 1815-16. back9. Even before the end of the seventeenth century, Jan Steen and other northern painters were creating their lovable scenes of St. Nicholas Eve. In New York City there are, or recently have been, three schools solely for the training of Santa Clauses; these Gotham schools are imitated in other major cities. As Irving’s biographer, Professor Stanley Williams, records, the act of writing this lovable satire interested the author in history, so that from his pen eventually flowed his Columbus, Astoria, and Washington. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional. The ease with which the mind confuses the chronology of popular customs is well documented. In 1951 The New-York Historical Society acquired a lovely painting of Santa Claus through the generosity of the late Mr. Zabriskie, who was one of the latest in a long line of friends of Santa Claus. professor.”. What we can assert with surety is that New York patriots formed a local society and dedicated it to St. Nicholas as a New York symbol, just as Philadelphians sanctified Tammany—all because of St. George. For example, in Stuyvesant, pp. Individual European emigrants have continuously imported Nicholas customs. Later, Gulian Verplanck (in his The State Triumvirate, 1819) was to take a dig at the same group: 13 Only three years later a juvenile (False Stories Corrected, published by Samuel Wood, 357 Pearl Street) tried to debunk “Old Santaclaw, of whom so often little children hear such foolish stories; and once in the year are encouraged to hang their stockings in the Chimney at night, and when they arise in the morning, they find in them cakes, nuts, money, etc. The lobby, on the Forty-second Street side, was much admired by the host of visitors, and all paused to take a look at the representation of Father Knickerbocker in the entrance hall. NYHS Quarterly, Oct. 1951, pp. Through Pintard, New York was symbolized by St. Nicholas, although very shortly Father Knickerbocker moved in. “When, in 1796, America’s external debt stood at twelve million dollars, the whole amount was owed to Holland.” (See NYHS Quarterly, April 1953, pp. This is a demonstrable argument that it pays to believe in Santa Claus. Dr. Vail has published two very informative articles19 on this painting and on a watercolor sketch from which it was done by Robert Weir, Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Military Academy at West Point, in 1837. I suspect that he now found it very easy to associate St. Nicholas with the Dutch. Today we are somewhat sheepish when we gather to acknowledge St. Nicholas as our patron. Professor of chemistry and natural philosophy at Columbia College, in these years 1804 to 1809 he was United States Senator, not by election, but by appointment of Clinton’s party as Clinton’s successor. Yet Professor Börsting has pointed out the incompleteness of these figures by indicating how, in the single diocese of Münster, there were fifty dedications, not eight, as Meisen calculated. In the Dutch communities of Michigan and Iowa, St. Nicholas used to call with oranges and switches on December 6th. Then, in 1809, a book appeared called A HISTORY OF NEW YORK FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD TO THE END OF THE DUTCH DYNASTY. New Amsterdam was controlled by the Reformation government of Holland. Soon that Society would be celebrating with him his special saint’s day. As commerce shifted here from Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston, this funnel of new immigration placed its stamp upon the popular culture of America. In 1836 Weir was in debt; he was also angling for a commission to paint one of the panels for the Rotunda in the new national Capitol. Knickerbocker's purported manuscript, A History of New York, was Irving's own. Meisen5 transcribes a few of many laws, passed against St. Nicholas by that government. To use Dr. Edgar Romig’s phrase, the Dutch were hagiophobic to a preeminent degree. But not the reindeer. He learned, too, to take his St. Nicholas prayerfully; so that he was primarily responsible for the founding, in 1835, of the St. Nicholas Society. Pintard never could have felt warmly about Verplanck, but they had worked closely together as leaders of The New-York Historical Society. By 1820, Santa Claus was fairly commonplace in New York journalism. As soon as the children of the family grow a bit older, the customs will probably disappear. Here are the descriptions of festivities on St. Nicholas Day in the colony, and of the church dedicated to him. Brown. The legends about this poem are growing nearly as fast as legends about Santa Claus himself. Santa Claus was a parasitic germ until the Knickerbocker History in 1809; after 1809 Santa Claus spread like a plague which has yet to reach its peak.13 The History was nationally hailed as the first notable work of imagination in the New World. Nor was that all. 87) through Judge Benson. The hagiolatry stirred up by revolutionary temper made popular a whole cycle of saints. These are the days, in 1789 to 1793, when his patriotism leads him to search for American history and antiquities; when he inspires Belknap to found the Massachusetts Historical; and when, blocked from founding a society in New York, he “engrafts” it, as he himself, writes, onto his Society of St. Tammany. His publisher gave him an advance royalty of $1400 on one book (The Dutchman’s Fireside, 1830), and he published about thirty. In 1946, basketball, particularly college basketball, was a growing and increasingly profitable sport in New York City. The place it has survived from early times is Switzerland and southern Germany. From Philadelphia, St. Tammany exercised his patronage wherever the patriot armies moved—even in the Jersey marshes. We have substituted other symbols for saints. Then no other mention of St. Nicholas until 1793, long after the Revolution. The New-York Historical Society. It is possible that evidence to substantiate this legend exists somewhere. In both, members of this Society played a part. Both Nick and Claus are natural phonetic changes. The Reformed-Church families would not give gifts on Christmas because it was a Christian holy day. Then came the Revolution. by Charles W. Jones*, The New-York Historical Society Quarterly, October 1954. I imagine that some of it is remarkably good; but I shall never know, for the author is protected by the iron curtain of the family circle. Verplanck had married my aunt, and Irving had been engaged to my sister who had died while still young … . Irving had not seen them for many years and it was as if their youth had returned to them again … . Americans were grateful for the help of the two Continental countries. Anapests for children’s verse were standard; see the 1810 verses quoted above. But the items can be explained. He is an early Gothic revivalist. The best estimates indicate that in this period the number of Dutch in the Colonies did not noticeably outnumber French, Flemish, Walloons, or Swedes, and were outnumbered by Germans—all of whom together constituted but ten per cent of the population. Sic transit gloria! But who made his? New Yorkers might borrow an attractive idea from their neighbors, but they would stamp it with their own trade-mark. Strangely enough this association of Santa Claus and reindeer, or rather, of the winter holidays and reindeer, may have resulted from the launching at Medford, December 12, 1814, of the brig Reindeer. That somewhat rowdy group of patriots was interested in regalia and picnics, not museums; but under Pintard’s reign, they established the Tammany Museum of American Antiquities. The History contains no less than twenty-five allusions to him—many of them the most delightful flights of imagination in the volume. Shakespeare showed Drayton; but who showed Moore? From then on, St. George’s parties grew more lavish and officialdom more irritating to the patriots, especially to underprivileged patriots. And so, when the History was published, it was derisively dedicated to this Society. I got these at my favorite local shop for a very good deal in the best condition that I have ever seen. The most common Dutch form now, as then, is the analogous Sinterklaes. He, or more probably his patriot uncle, may have been at those pre-Revolutionary meetings of the Sons of St. Nicholas. The patriots had, derisively, canonized a non-British, native American as their patron, and observed his Day on May 1st each year. An exception the excellent dissertation of K. Richards, How Christmas Came to the Sunday Schools, 1934, who, p. 52, expresses doubt about the New Amsterdam origin Santa Claus. Both women had Dutch connections. According to May Lamberton Becker in the Herald Tribune, sixty new books specifically about Christmas were published in 1952. Hockey was another popular sport at the time and generated considerable profits; however, the arenas were not used often. They might have gotten it from any one of the germinal ideas of emigrants which were brought to America to die. It seems clear from this almanac that he was thinking of St. Nicholas and Nicholas Day in the same patriotic spirit and would push the cult for the same patriotic reasons. Weir regarded the Society’s picture as the best work he had done to date. 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