Saint Nicholas to Father Christmas to Santa Claus: The Artistic Evolution of a Christmas Icon
December 7, 2025
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Members of The Frick Societies receive complimentary admission
To celebrate the holiday season, Dr. Kahren Jones Arbitman will entertain the audience with an illustrated history of Santa Claus from his European visage as a gaunt, dour Father Christmas to his American manifestation as a "Jolly Old Elf."
Advance reservations encouraged; walk-up tickets are available for purchase while space permits.
St. Nicholas, the Byzantine Bishop of Myra, is thought to have died in 343. Seventeen hundred years later, his avatar Santa Claus is among the world’s most recognizable figures. How did an early Christian miracle-worker morph into a beloved, but wholly imaginary, Christmas Eve visitor? And once established as the premier gift-giver, how did his image find its way into every medium from Christmas cards, to seasonal advertisements, to charitable appeals including war bonds and, somewhat incongruously, Easter Seals?
To celebrate the holiday season, Dr. Kahren Jones Arbitman will entertain the audience with an illustrated history of Santa Claus from his European visage as a gaunt, dour Father Christmas to his American manifestation as a "Jolly Old Elf."
Dr. Arbitman received both an MA and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Pittsburgh with a specialization in seventeenth-century Dutch art. After serving as the first curator-in-charge of The Frick Art Museum in 1985, she went on to become the director of the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University and the Executive Director of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Florida.
