I’ve always been fascinated by the Coca-Cola ads featuring Santa.  I have about 20 various print advertisements.  Several years ago,  my hubby put a few of the ads behind the panes of an old green window.  The Santa window soon became one of our favorite Christmas decorations.

These particular ads were on the back page of
National Geographics from the late 1950s.

Santa and Coca-Cola

Many believe that the jolly, red and white-robed Santa was invented by Santa.  Acording to Snopes.com, “However, it is not true in any realistic sense that Coca-Cola “created” the modern Santa Claus: they did not invent the now-familiar rotund, bearded fellow clothed in red-and-white garb, nor did they pluck him from a pantheon of competing, visually different Christmastime figures and elevate him to the supreme symbol of Christmas gift-giving. The red-and-white Santa figure existed long before Coca-Cola began featuring him in print advertisements, and he had already supplanted a bevy of competitors to become the standard representation of Santa Claus before he began his tenure as a pitchman for Coke.”

“At the beginning of the 1930s, as the burgeoning Coca-Cola company was looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter (then a slow time of year for the soft drink market), they turned to a talented commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who created a series of memorable drawings (inspired in large part by Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”) that associated the figure of a larger than life, red-and-white garbed Santa Claus with Coca-Cola and the slogan “The Pause That Refreshes,”. (Snopes)”  You can read more about Santa and Coke on the Coca-Cola website.

Monochrome Madness Challenge

“Santa window” is my entry for this week’s Monochrome Madness Challenge. You can join the Monochrome Madness Challenge or view more monochrome photos by visiting Leanne Cole Photography. You can view my other Monochrome Madness Challenge entries by clicking on Monochrome Madness and scrolling down through the page.