From Santa to Rudolph: Where America's Favorite Lawn Characters Came From

Walk down any decorated street in December and you'll meet the same cast: Santa, Rudolph, a snowman or two, maybe a Grinch hanging off a gutter. None of them came from nowhere. Here's where the characters on America's lawns actually came from, and how to give them a better stage this year.

Santa gets his look (in stages)

In December 1823, a poem called "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" appeared anonymously in a newspaper in Troy, New York. You know it as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." It gave us the sleigh, the eight reindeer and the chimney. It is usually credited to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed it in 1837, although the family of Henry Livingston Jr. has long argued that he wrote it.

The cartoonist Thomas Nast then drew Santa for Harper's Weekly for more than twenty years, starting in January 1863. His first Santa was dressed in stars and stripes, visiting Union troops. Over the following years, Nast's drawings added the North Pole home and the toy workshop.

What about the famous red suit? A popular story says Coca-Cola invented it. It didn't. Red-suited Santas appeared well before Coke's ads, including in ads for White Rock beverages in 1915 and 1923. What Coca-Cola did do, starting in 1931 with paintings by Haddon Sundblom, was make one warm, jolly, red-suited Santa the version almost everyone pictures.

Rudolph was a department-store giveaway

In 1939, Robert L. May, a copywriter at Montgomery Ward, wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as a free booklet for the store's shoppers. About 2.4 million copies were given away that first year. Ten years later, May's brother-in-law Johnny Marks turned the story into a song, and Gene Autry's 1949 recording shot to number one at Christmas. A marketing booklet became a permanent member of the family.

Frosty and the Grinch

"Frosty the Snowman" came along in 1950, written by Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins and first recorded by, once again, Gene Autry. In 1957, Dr. Seuss published How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, giving holiday decorators their favorite villain and the excuse to hang a green arm out of the chimney.

The nativity: the oldest display of all

The oldest "lawn scene" is much older than any of these characters. In 1223, St. Francis of Assisi staged a live nativity in the Italian town of Greccio, complete with a real ox and donkey. Every nativity set on an American lawn descends from that idea.

Plastic people: blow molds and flamingos

In 1957, a young designer named Don Featherstone, working at Union Products in Leominster, Massachusetts, sculpted the famous pink lawn flamingo from photos in National Geographic. (Fun detail: the original flamingos weren't blow-molded; they were made in two halves and joined together.) Union Products also made Christmas decorations, and the lit-from-inside hollow plastic figures we call blow molds (Santas, snowmen, candles, choir kids) were everywhere from the 1960s through the 1990s. Today, vintage blow molds are serious collector items.

Inflatables take over

In 2001, Gemmy Industries released its first "Airblown" inflatable, an eight-foot Santa. The idea reportedly came from the giant inflatable gorillas used to attract attention at car dealerships. Within a few years, inflatables were on lawns everywhere, and they still are.

Ideas for giving your characters a better stage

Build a scene, not a lineup. A Grinch climbing a rope to the roof with a "stolen" wreath tells a story. A row of unrelated characters doesn't.
Give Rudolph his nose. A single red spotlight or red bulb on your reindeer makes the reference obvious from the street.
Make Frosty real. In snowy climates, a real snowman with a carrot nose and a scarf beats any inflatable.
Try a "blow mold museum." Line up vintage blow molds along the walk, then mix in one modern inflatable for contrast.
Honor Thomas Nast. A stars-and-stripes Santa or a Santa's-workshop vignette is a great conversation starter for history fans.
Light the nativity from the front. One warm spotlight gives a nativity real presence at night without harsh shadows.
Keep it quiet if you like. Rattan or wooden reindeer and a pair of nutcrackers flanking the door read as elegant, not busy.
Anchor everything. Stake inflatables and blow molds against the wind, and keep cords out of standing water and snow.

Put your whole cast in one photo and see how the AI judges your storytelling. Upload it to FestiFowl.

Sources

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Nast, "Santa Claus in Camp" (Harper's Weekly, January 3, 1863)
Delaware Art Museum, "Thomas Nast and the Making of the American Santa Claus"
The Coca-Cola Company, "Haddon Sundblom and the Coca-Cola Santas"
Snopes, fact check on the Coca-Cola Santa origin
Dartmouth College, "Rudolph's story" (2016)
Franciscan Media, "Greccio and the First Live Nativity"
Smithsonian Lemelson Center, "Making the Iconic Plastic Pink Lawn Flamingo"
Mental Floss, "How Christmas Inflatables Took Over Yards"