Today, Santa Claus is instantly recognizable in his red suit with white fur trim. But before the 1930s, Santa was depicted in a wild variety of colors depending on the culture, region, and artist.
In Victorian England, Santa often wore green robes. This connected him to the "Green Man" of pagan tradition and Father Christmas, who was typically shown in forest green or sometimes dark brown fur-trimmed coats.
German illustrations showed him in brown or tan robes, sometimes purple, and occasionally blue. Russian depictions of their gift-bringer, Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), dressed him in blue robes with silver or white trim—and this version is still used in Russia today.
American cartoons in the 1800s couldn't agree on anything. Thomas Nast, who created many of our modern Santa conventions, drew him in red—but other artists used green, blue, purple, or even multicolored outfits. There was no standard.
Then in 1931, Coca-Cola hired illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create a Santa for their holiday advertising campaign. Sundblom painted Santa in bright red and white—Coca-Cola's brand colors—and made him the jolly, plump, rosy-cheeked figure we recognize today.
Coca-Cola's ads ran in major magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and appeared on billboards across America for decades. Year after year, millions of people saw the exact same red-suited Santa. The repetition worked.
By the 1950s, the red suit had become so standardized that other colors started to seem "wrong." Department store Santas wore red, greeting cards showed red, movies featured red. Any other color looked like a mistake or a cheap knockoff.
The most brilliant part of Coca-Cola's strategy? They never officially claimed to have invented red-suited Santa. They just made their version so ubiquitous that it became the default. Other depictions simply faded away through market saturation.
Today, people genuinely believe Santa has "always" worn red and white. The idea that he used to be green or blue seems like revisionist history. But photos and illustrations from before 1930 prove Santa was a fashion chameleon.
Some countries still resist the red suit. Russia's Ded Moroz remains blue, and some European Father Christmas figures wear green or brown. But globally, Coca-Cola's red-suited Santa has become the dominant image—a corporate creation that erased centuries of cultural variation.