The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall
of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York by Alex Palmer Name
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GENRE: History/True Crime
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BLURB:
Before the
charismatic John Duval Gluck, Jr. came along, letters from New York City
children to Santa Claus were destroyed, unopened, by the U.S. Post Office.
Gluck saw an opportunity, and created the Santa Claus Association. The effort
delighted the public, and for 15 years money and gifts flowed to the only group
authorized to answer Santa’s mail. Gluck became a Jazz Age celebrity, rubbing
shoulders with the era’s movie stars and politicians, and even planned to erect
a vast Santa Claus monument in the center of Manhattan — until Gotham’s
crusading charity commissioner discovered some dark secrets in Santa’s
workshop.
The rise and fall of
the Santa Claus Association is a caper both heartwarming and hardboiled,
involving stolen art, phony Boy Scouts, a kidnapping, pursuit by the FBI, a
Coney Island bullfight, and above all, the thrills and dangers of a wild
imagination. It’s also the larger story of how Christmas became the extravagant
holiday we celebrate today, from Santa’s early beginnings in New York to the
country’s first citywide Christmas tree and Macy’s first grand holiday parade.
The Santa Claus Man is a holiday tale with a dark underbelly, and an essential
read for lovers of Christmas stories, true crime, and New York City history.
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EXCERPT:
It’s impossible to say who wrote the first Santa letter, but
it was almost certainly from the mythical saint, not to him.
From the earliest conception of Santa Claus in the United
States, parents used the voice of St. Nicholas as a means of providing advice
and encouraging good behavior in their children. The earliest reference to a
Santa letter in America that I could find came from Theodore Ledyard Cuyler,
recalling his childhood in 1820s Western New York when he “once received an
autograph letter from Santa Claus, full of good counsels.”
Fanny Longfellow (wife of poet Henry Wadsworth) regularly
wrote her children Santa letters, commenting on their behavior over the
preceding year. “I am sorry I sometimes hear you are not so kind to your little
brother as I wish you were,” she wrote to her son Charley on Christmas Eve
1851.
Soon enough, children started writing back, generally
placing their letters on the fireplace, where they believed smoke would
transport the message to St. Nick.
By the 1870s, scattered reports appeared of the receipt of
Santa letters by local post offices. But with no actual fur-coated toymaker to
receive his mail, each January, the department destroyed them.
It was a depressing business. But, officials asked, if
mailmen began delivering Santa’s letters, to which other fictional characters
would mail be shuttled?
In the face of negative publicity, however, New York City’s
postmaster finally relented. Every year, for the entire month of December, any
approved organization could answer Santa’s mail. No one volunteered. Then, in
1913, just as the Post Office was about to give up, a man named John Duval
Gluck stepped forward. He’d be Santa Claus.
He was also a con artist.
.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Alex Palmer
is the author of The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man
and the Invention of Christmas in New York, called "required reading"
by the New York Post and "highly readable" by Publishers Weekly.
Available at:
Amazon.com -
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Claus-Man-Invention-Christmas/dp/1493008447/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430324363&sr=1-7
Barnes &
Noble - http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Claus-Man-Invention-Christmas/dp/1493008447/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430324363&sr=1-7
IndieBound -
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781493008445
It tells the
history of Christmas in America through the true-crime tale of a Jazz Age
hustler who founded an organization to answer children's Santa letters -- and
fuel his own dark dreams. Palmer curated an exhibit about this Santa Claus
Association for Brooklyn's City Reliquary Museum, earning attention from the
Village Voice, Time Out New York, and inspiring a memorable segment on WNYC
(http://wny.cc/1bQIx5k).
The son of
two teachers, Palmer's love of learning and sharing surprising stories behind
familiar subjects has led him to become a secret-history sleuth. In addition to
The Santa Claus Man, he is the author of Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Collection
of Surprising, Strange, and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly)
Ordinary Things, published in 2012 by Skyhorse Publishing. it offers up a
wealth of unexpected facts of familiar things. His first book, Literary
Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Literature, takes a look
at some of the more colorful aspects of great writers and their works, and was
published in 2010 by Skyhorse.
He is a
full-time freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Slate, Rhapsody,
Smithsonian, Vulture, the New York Daily News, Publishers Weekly, and The
Rumpus, among others.
See more at
www.alexpalmerwrites.com and follow him @theAlexPalmer.
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