Christmas century, Saint Nicholas was well known in the Netherlands, and the practice of gift-giving in his name spread to other parts of central and southern Europe. At the Reformation in 16th–17th-century Europe, many Protestants changed the gift bringer to the Christ Child or "Christkindl", corrupted in English to Kris Kringle, and the date of giving gifts changed from December 6 to Christmas Eve. The modern popular image of Santa Claus, however, was created in the United States, and in particular in New York. The transformation was accomplished with the aid of notable contributors including Washington Irving and the German-American cartoonist
The Christmas Album (Lynn Anderson album) Nashville country music songwriters of the day was enormously popular and became a Christmas classic itself among country music and American popular music fans. The album's opening song "Ding-A-Ling the Christmas Bell" was released as a single and at one point considered as a possible Christmas cartoon special but the project never got off the ground. The album was in print for a decade and, in the 1990s, Sony released limited quantities on CD with new cover art (the image shown above). In 2015 it was reissued on CD by the Real Gone Music label, with alternate charity single mixes