# Why is Santa fat? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 3, 2013, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326 "2013-12-03T00:07:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2013, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/21 "2013-12-04T03:04:30Z")
He’s an elderly alcoholic. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/22 "2013-12-24T17:01:45Z")
It’s from eating all those reindeer pies. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/23 "2013-12-24T18:10:35Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Thank Coke. > > ETA: [linky](http://qz.com/39029/how-coca-cola-and-others-made-santa-fat-red-and-bearded/) Debunked by Snopes. > **[Did Coca-Cola Invent the Modern Image of Santa Claus?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-claus-that-refreshes/)** > > The image of Santa Claus as a jolly large man in a red-and-white suit was the standard long before Coca-Cola co-opted it for their advertising. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/24 "2013-12-24T19:01:21Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Debunked by Snopes. > [Did Coca-Cola Invent the Modern Image of Santa Claus? | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp) Hardly. Snopes says that Coke popularized that image of Santa, which is good enough for me. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/25 "2013-12-24T20:55:15Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Exactly, when food was expensive and scarce, being fat was a sign of prosperity and success, essentially a prestige item. So a fat St. Nick was a big cheese (so to speak), someone important and respected. Poor people were thin people, because they could not afford enough food to get fat. And in a directly related fashion being prosperous was a sign of God’s favor. The rich, fat man was _ipso facto_ a particularly godly man ;). ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/26 "2013-12-24T21:05:13Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Hardly. > Snopes says that Coke popularized that image of Santa, which is good enough for me. “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. … One might therefore fairly grant Coca-Cola _some_ credit for cementing the modern image of Santa Claus in the public consciousness,…” “\*some \*credit”. ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/27 "2013-12-26T05:14:51Z")
250 ml of 2% milk runs about 130 calories. 50 grams of cookies is probably around 250. That’s 380 calories per household. Let’s say he hits a billion households, that’s 380 billion calories. Because math is hard, I will drop that to 350,000,000,000 calories. At 3500 calories per pound of fat, that’s 100,000,000 pounds of love handles every year. Even if (as seems likely since math is hard and beer is cheap) I am off by an order of magnitude or two, and accounting for the fact that humans are not bomb calorimeters, that’s just not a healthy lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2013, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326/28 "2013-12-28T06:12:32Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Clement C. Moore, Coca-Cola AND [Thomas Nast](http://www.google.com/imgres?sa=X&biw=1080&bih=697&tbm=isch&tbnid=oSsvZ-sUwxKnSM:&imgrefurl=http://www.paperdroids.com/2012/12/20/10-weird-christmas-traditions-and-where-they-came-from/&docid=TZ_ovWPyymcNtM&imgurl=http://www.paperdroids.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The_Coming_of_Santa_Claus_Thomas_Nast_1872.jpg&w=2328&h=1535&ei=69idUtSbK9TukQek9IGoDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=601&vpy=142&dur=31&hovh=182&hovw=277&tx=149&ty=108&page=1&tbnh=135&tbnw=201&start=0&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:0,i:103) I note with interest that the Nast drawing, like the Clement Moore quote, suggests that Saint Nick is diminutive in size (notice the cats, they seem as big as spaniels next to him). I wonder if the Coca-Cola ads really were the first to widely promote the image of Santa as not only fat but also of ordinary stature. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-santa-fat/675326.md?page=1)