Old Coca-Cola ads and Santa Claus, revisited

Factual Questions
1

I was sure we’d done this already, but I can’t find a specific thread on this. We’ve all heard the story that the modern image of Santa Claus was invented in a 1940s era Coca-Cola advertisement. I’ve seen illustrations of that campaign, and the story does seem convincing, but IIRC the Coca-Cola theory is usually dismissed as false.

One reason for that is that is undoubtedly that, in the poem “A Visit From Saint Nicholas”, he appears fully formed in his habits and accessories but is obviously diminutive in size. I can recall being young enough to believe in Santa, but never noticing that the poem mentions a “miniature” sleigh and “tiny” reindeer, and then goes on to call him an elf.

Was the Coke campaign the first time Santa Claus was conceived to be the size of a normal human being?

2

I don’t have any scholarly sort of answer. Just here is Snopes’ take on it

3

There’s an awful lot of history between “A Night Before Christmas” (which, some have argued, was NOT by Clement Clark Moore) and his possibly diminutive Santa (I’ve noticed that too) and Coca Cola ads. Thomas Nast, in partcular, drew very modern-=appearing (and human0sized) Santas in the 1860s and later, and there have been many others. Most of them, if they wore a color outfit, wore red.

4

Mostly UL, with perhaps a tiny shred of truth.

5

I think they didn’t invent it wholesale, but that imagery did help define it, in the sense that every costume since has matched that design almost exactly, including which bits are red, black, or white.