How Coca-Cola Invented the Modern Santa (Sort Of)
Every December, the same claim resurfaces: Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus's red suit. It's everywhere on social media, repeated as
Every December, the same claim resurfaces: Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus’s red suit. It’s everywhere on social media, repeated as fact, often with a cynical edge about how corporations hijacked Christmas for profit.
It’s also wrong. Sort of.
Coca-Cola didn’t invent the red-suited Santa. That image existed decades before their first Christmas advertisement. But what they did do was arguably more impressive: they took one version of Santa amongst many competing images and turned it into the definitive global standard. They didn’t create the modern Santa. They popularised him so thoroughly that most people assume they did create him. That’s the kind of branding power that changes culture.
This is the story of how a soft drink company facing a winter sales problem ended up reshaping how billions of people imagine Christmas. The question “did Coca-Cola invent Santa” deserves a more nuanced answer than most people realise.
The Santa Nobody Could Agree On
Before we get to Coca-Cola, we need to understand what Santa Claus looked like in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Short answer: nobody really knew.
Prior to 1931, Santa appeared as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He’d worn a bishop’s robe and a Norse huntsman’s animal skin. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa for Harper’s Weekly starting in 1862, depicting him as a small elflike figure who supported the Union during the Civil War. Nast continued drawing Santa for 30 years, eventually changing his coat from tan to red.
But Nast’s Santa wasn’t the only version floating around. Some Santas wore green. Others wore blue. Some were tall and thin, almost sinister looking. Others were jolly but inconsistent in appearance. Red-suited Santas did exist before Coca-Cola. Examples from 1906, 1908, and 1925 show lavishly bearded figures in red suits with white fur trimming and black belts. An 1868 advertisement for Sugar Plums by the US Confection Company of New York featured Santa in a red outfit.
Santa Claus was in a state of flux. His appearance varied widely across regions and cultures. There was a period of overlap during which the modern Santa coexisted with other Christmas figures and other versions of himself as his character grew in popularity. By the 1920s, the red-and-white Santa had become fairly standard in America, but he hadn’t yet achieved global dominance or complete standardisation. So when people ask “did Coca-Cola invent Santa,” the accurate answer requires understanding what came before 1931.
Then Coca-Cola got involved.
A Winter Sales Problem
In the early 1930s, Coca-Cola faced a challenge: soft drink sales traditionally plummeted during winter months. People associated Coke with warm, summer days. The company needed a way to make their product appealing year-round. The solution? Tie the brand to Christmas, the biggest celebration of the winter season.
Coca-Cola began Christmas advertising in the 1920s with shopping-related ads in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. But in 1931, they decided to go bigger. Archie Lee, the D’Arcy Advertising Agency executive working with Coca-Cola, wanted a campaign showing a wholesome Santa who was both realistic and symbolic. Someone warm, friendly, relatable. Not a man dressed as Santa for a department store, but Santa himself.
They commissioned Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create advertising images. For inspiration, Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” commonly called “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Moore’s description led Sundblom to create a warm, friendly, pleasantly plump, and human Santa.
One crucial detail: Santa wore red and white before Sundblom painted him. The colours weren’t a Coca-Cola invention. But Sundblom’s Santa, conveniently matching Coca-Cola’s brand colours, would become the version everyone remembered.
Sundblom’s Santa debuted in 1931 in Coke ads in The Saturday Evening Post and appeared regularly in that magazine, as well as Ladies Home Journal, National Geographic, The New Yorker, and others. Sundblom used a live model initially—his friend Lou Prentiss, a retired salesman. When Prentiss passed away, Sundblom used himself as a model, painting whilst looking into a mirror. He created his final version of Santa in 1964, but Coca-Cola continued featuring images based on his work for decades.
What Made It Work
Sundblom’s Santa wasn’t just another illustration. He had something the competing versions lacked: consistency, personality, and ubiquity.
The campaigns showed Santa in recognizable, relatable scenes. In 1936, during the Great Depression, ads featured Santa with the tagline “Me too,” showing him in scenarios ordinary people understood. In 1937, “Give and take, say I” showed children leaving out Cokes for Santa at night. After this campaign ran, children actually started leaving Coca-Cola out for Santa. When one campaign showed Santa without a wedding ring, concerned fans wrote to Coca-Cola asking where Mrs Claus had gone.
This wasn’t just advertising. People were emotionally invested. Sundblom’s illustrations depicted Santa in warm interior settings: cosy fireplaces, Christmas trees twinkling in the background, wrapped presents scattered about. The artwork was detailed, beautiful, nostalgic. These paintings became some of the most prized pieces in Coca-Cola’s archives and have been exhibited at famous venues including the Louvre in Paris, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
Most importantly, Coca-Cola’s Santa appeared year after year after year, always looking the same. In marketing, consistency builds recognition. Repetition creates tradition. People began expecting to see Santa in Coca-Cola ads. The association between the brand and Christmas became automatic.
The Globalisation of Santa
As Coca-Cola expanded internationally, so did their version of Santa Claus. This spread the Americanised image of Christmas globally. Coca-Cola’s marketing campaigns ran in dozens of countries, introducing or reinforcing Sundblom’s jolly, red-suited Santa everywhere the company sold drinks.
Before Coca-Cola’s campaign, Santa’s appearance varied widely. Today, the red-suited, white-bearded Santa is recognised worldwide, thanks largely to Coca-Cola’s decades of consistent marketing. The company didn’t invent him, but they standardised him. They took a character that existed in many forms and solidified one specific version as the definitive image.
Coca-Cola even admits this themselves. Phil Mooney, director of the company’s Archives Department, explained in 2008: “Actually, we do not claim the colour of Santa’s coat, though it has worked out well for us since red is so closely related to Coca-Cola! But we did not come up with the idea of putting Santa in red clothes.”
Yet the myth persists that Coca-Cola invented red Santa because their branding was so effective. That’s the irony: they executed the campaign so well that people assume they created something they merely popularised. When people ask “did Coca-Cola invent Santa,” they’re asking the wrong question. The real question is: did Coca-Cola make one version of Santa the only version anyone remembers? Absolutely.
The Marketing Lessons
Coca-Cola’s Santa campaign succeeded because it solved several problems at once. The campaign boosted winter sales, built emotional connections with consumers, and linked the brand to values like joy, generosity, and family togetherness. It also gave Coca-Cola a seasonal marketing asset that could be reused year after year.
The campaign has evolved over time whilst maintaining its core. In 1995, Coca-Cola launched “Holidays Are Coming,” featuring illuminated trucks that became another Christmas tradition. Today, 44% of British consumers say this advert marks the true start of their Christmas season. The 2020 version achieved the highest possible 5.9-star rating on System1’s Test Your Ad platform, a score reached by only 1% of adverts.
Modern Coca-Cola Christmas campaigns continue referencing Sundblom’s original Santa whilst incorporating new technology. Recent campaigns use AI to create personalized experiences where consumers can chat with Santa in over 45 languages. The Christmas truck tours visit communities worldwide, turning advertising into real-world experiences. Social media campaigns encourage user-generated content whilst linking back to archival images.
But the core message remains unchanged: Christmas, togetherness, joy, and Coca-Cola belong together. That’s brand association at its most powerful.
Branding That Reshaped a Holiday
Coca-Cola’s Santa teaches a masterclass in branding and cultural influence. They didn’t need to invent Santa to own him. They just needed to depict him consistently, beautifully, and everywhere for long enough that he became inseparable from their brand.
Think about what was achieved. A centuries-old folk figure with wildly inconsistent appearances was shaped into one definitive version that became the global standard. A commercial character came to feel like authentic tradition. Over time, multiple generations accepted an advertising mascot as the real thing. The work was so effective that people still ask, every Christmas, whether Coca-Cola invented Santa, believing the company created something that actually predated its involvement by decades.
That’s not just good marketing. That’s cultural transformation through branding.
The red-suited Santa existed before Coca-Cola’s 1931 campaign. But the Santa we all picture when we think of Christmas—the specific jolly, rosy-cheeked, grandfatherly figure—that Santa reached his current status largely because Coca-Cola put him on magazine pages, billboards, and eventually screens across the world for decades.
So did Coca-Cola invent the modern Santa? No. But they might as well have. Their version won. Every other interpretation faded away. When you close your eyes and picture Santa Claus, you’re probably seeing Haddon Sundblom’s creation, commissioned by a company trying to sell more fizzy drinks in winter.
That’s the power of consistent, emotional, beautifully executed marketing over decades. It doesn’t just sell products. It shapes how billions of people imagine an entire holiday. Coca-Cola didn’t invent Santa’s red suit, but they made sure it’s the only suit anyone remembers.
And every December, when you see Santa in a shop window, on a Christmas card, or in a film, you’re looking at Coca-Cola’s lasting influence on Christmas itself. Whether they invented him or not hardly matters anymore. They own him in the public imagination, which might be even more impressive.
