12-23-2005, 09:56 AM
Quote:Though Santa's home may no longer be in Manhattan, his spirit remains here, in the city so influential in his creation.
A Cincinnati newspaper announced in 1844 that "the sterling old Dutchman, Santa Claus, has just arrived from the renowned regions of the Manhattoes," or Manhattan, "with his usual budget of knickknacks for the Christmas times."
Manhattan is where Santa Claus, the secular re-imagining of St. Nicholas, first emerged care of canny cultural nostalgics among the city's lettered and business classes, most notably Clement Clarke Moore. But he later relocated to the North Pole or, in the European tradition, to Lapland in northern Scandinavia...
full article: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/internat...47,00.html