When did Santa Claus appear?
The contemporary image of Father Frost solidified in 1937. After a hiatus in celebrations, the first New Year tree featuring his presence was organized in the Moscow House of Unions building.
Yet the figure did not resemble the modern Saint Nicholas-style character at that time. The lineage includes several origins. One early form is Moroz Ivanovich, who first appeared in Vladimir Odoevsky’s 1840 collection Tales of Grandfather Iriney. This marks the first written reference to Moroz, a specialist in children’s literature who later led sociocultural educational work at the Moscow City Pedagogical University. Ekaterina Asonova explains this lineage and notes her position as an associate professor.
In its earliest iterations, Moroz Ivanovich did not resemble the holiday icon familiar to children today. He was linked more to the winter season than to Christmas or New Year. Folklore often cast him as a tester of children, who, if they performed well, could earn a reward from this strict winter mentor who could also act as a stern, instructive guide.
“I am Moroz Ivanovich! The old man is stern! I know what you need. You will have a bucket and another reward. Just serve me, my dull gray hair. Prepare dinner for me, sew my shirt, sweep the floors and fluff the feather bed. In the meantime, I will fill the clouds with snow to the top.”
(From Vladimir Odoevsky Tales of Grandfather Iriney)
“Over the next two decades, the Moroz image appears in Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem Red Nose Don (1863), where the governor Moroz roams his realm. It becomes clear that this early figure was not a gift-giver for New Year or Christmas,” notes Asonova.
Thus, through the 19th century, there was no Frost associated with Christmas, and a German-backed gift-giving tradition persisted in Russia tied to Saint Nicholas on the holiday. The development of a distinctly Russian donor figure followed.
Interesting is the notion that the prototype figures often related to thaw and the transition to spring rather than winter itself. The holiday’s modern association with winter made sense only later, though folklore sometimes linked frost guardians with seasonal thaw and cold imagery. The Brothers Grimm tale of Mother Snowstorm, where snow comes with a bird’s movement, is cited as a distant folkloric counterpart. The historical path simply diverged from that older, seasonal symbolism to the winter holiday figure we recognize now.
By the 1910s, Santa Claus began to appear in person on Christmas trees and pre-revolutionary postcards. After the revolution, Soviet authorities moved to suppress old rituals by banning Christmas and New Year celebrations.
Soviet propaganda framed Santa Claus as an evil pagan deity demanding sacrifices, a narrative deployed to discourage old church-based traditions. Toys on Christmas trees were sometimes explained as remnants of past practices where children played with them as gifts. The myth, while clearly a fabrication to support ideology, helped shape a new cultural role for the holiday figure.
Asonova notes that the tale of Santa Claus is really a blend of two separate folklore guardians of frost. Moroz Voevoda, from Nekrasov, and Moroz Ivanovich Odoyevsky merged to form a single character, with earlier, more archaic images fading from prominence. The emergence of Samuil Marshak’s Twelve Months introduced winter as a collective force split among three characters, offering a fresh lens on how the season could be represented in literature and theatre.
In later years, authors Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak offered a modern legend about the origin of Father Frost, with a book titled The True Story of Santa Claus. Like many festive tales, this work is often read during the New Year season to set a festive mood.
The Resurrection of Santa Claus and the Theft of a Grandchild
In the 1930s, Santa Claus reemerged in popular culture. Pavel Postyshev, a Soviet official, published an article in Pravda proposing a nationwide New Year celebration for children featuring a Christmas tree. Across the country, communities embraced a New Year reimagined with Father Frost and the Snow Maiden, creating a shared sense of national tradition.
As the Soviet state developed, the holiday figure grew with the era. The concept of a unified New Year and a guardian figure for children became a central feature of state cultural policy. This led to the creation of the modern Father Frost and his granddaughter Snegurochka, a pairing that helped anchor the holiday for the public at large.
The granddaughter, Snegurochka, draws from earlier fairy tales about a snow girl created by a childless elderly couple, who melts in summer. The origin of this character in Ostrovsky’s play The Snow Maiden (1873) is often cited as a defining moment in the mythos. In the play, Frost and Vesna-Krasna have a daughter named Snegurochka, who later becomes a symbolic figure in winter lore. A passage from Ostrovsky’s work is sometimes cited to illustrate this family dynamic, though translations and interpretations vary across sources.
Yet the tale of the Snow Maiden has long been treated as a cautionary and magical element in children’s literature, with the maiden melting upon exposure to sunlight. In many Christmas and winter stories, she appears in snow on Christmas Eve and is warmed by the hearth, only to melt away. The image of Moroz and Snegurochka did not appear together publicly until the first Soviet Christmas tree in 1937, marking a turning point in how the characters were presented to children.
Scholars argue that Santa Claus effectively absorbed or borrowed the Snow Maiden’s image to temper the harsher aspects of frost with a gentle intermediary for children. The dynamic was seen as a way to foster trust and warmth. There is little evidence that Snegurochka is portrayed as Frost’s daughter rather than his granddaughter, a distinction attributed to age and cultural framing.
Experts suggest that family ties and age perceptions shape these myths, and there is no firm assertion of a broader family beyond the existing pair. Looking ahead, voices in folklore studies speculate that these characters may evolve again as cultural narratives shift with new generations and creative interpretations.