Father Christmas in "Punch", reproduced here. The caption reads: In 1951 an editorial in "The Times" opined that while most adults may be under the impression that [the English] Father Christmas is home-bred, and is "a good insular John Bull old gentleman", many children, "led away ... by the false romanticism of sledges and reindeer", post letters to Norway addressed simply to Father Christmas or, "giving him a foreign veneer, Santa Claus". Differences between the English and US representations were discussed in "The Illustrated London News" of 1985. The classic illustration by the US artist Thomas Nast was held to be "the
Thomas Nast lecturer and a sketch-artist. His activity on the lecture circuit made him wealthy. Nast was for many years a staunch Republican. Nast opposed inflation of the currency, notably with his famous rag-baby cartoons, and he played an important part in securing Rutherford B. Hayes' presidential election in 1876. Hayes later remarked that Nast was "the most powerful, single-handed aid [he] had", but Nast quickly became disillusioned with President Hayes, whose policy of Southern pacification he opposed. The death of the "Weekly"s publisher, Fletcher Harper, in 1877 resulted in a changed relationship between Nast and his editor George William Curtis. His