In 1902, L. Frank Baum explained it all.
Two years after Dorothy first set foot on the Yellow Brick Road, the creator of Oz published The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. The book isn’t as well known as the Oz series, but it is just as colorful and imaginative.
Forget what you thought you knew about Santa’s life. Baum’s Santa Claus doesn’t live at the North Pole. He wasn’t always an old, chubby man with a white beard. He’s not married to Mrs. Claus and he doesn’t have a workshop filled with busy elves. Instead, Baum’s Santa Claus lives in a magical world shared by ordinary mortals, magical immortals, and wonderfully frightening creatures that are somewhere in between.
The story of Claus (he earns the Santa title later) begins when he is abandoned as a baby in the magical Forest of Burzee, which is populated by fairies, knooks, ryls, and nymphs. A wood-nymph named Necile breaks the Law of the Forest by adopting the mortal Claus and raising him among the immortals. When he becomes a young man, Claus decides to devote himself to the “care of the children of mankind” and moves to The Laughing Valley of Hohaho, where he has lived ever since. There, he begins carving simple wooden toys and delivering them to nearby children.
Gradually, his toy-delivery service expands. Two intelligent, talking deer suggest that Claus hitch them to a sled so he can travel greater distances. The Prince of the Knooks, the ruler of all animals, permits Claus to use ten deer, but he can only take them out once each year (on Christmas Eve, of course!), and they must return by daybreak. Baum also explains how Santa Claus can travel the entire world in one night, why we have Christmas trees, how Santa delivers toys to houses without chimneys, why children hang up stockings, how parents often help Santa with his duties, and, finally, how Santa Claus became immortal.
Claus’ quest to make children happy isn’t always easy. At one point, he and the immortals must battle the wicked Awgwas, a terrible race of invisible creatures who love to “inspire angry passions in the hearts of little children” and make them do naughty things. The Awgwas summon fire-breathing dragons, three-eyed giants, black demons “with great spreading wings like those of a bat, which swept terror and misery through the world as they beat upon the air”, and the Goozzle-Goblins “with long talons as sharp as swords” to battle Claus’ friends. As always, good conquers evil, the immortals triumph, and the evil creatures disappear forever.
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