“Discovering Santa”

IF CHARLES DICKENS WAS THE literary master of the Christmas story, surely Norman Rockwell holds the equivalent position among illustrators. No one has rung more variations on the theme than he has. He has given us everything from traditional Santa Claus subjects to documentary treatment of Chicago's Union Station during the Christmas rush. As his career progressed, it became more and more imperative for him to find new ways of dealing with Christmas.

In 1940 he tried something rather original, painting a young boy on a subway train spotting an exhausted department-store Santa on his way home. A glimmer of realization is apparent in the boy's eyes, but the illusion is not completely shattered. We are permitted to assume that he still believes in Santa, even though he recognizes that the man he saw at the store was not the real thing.

In 1956 Rockwell took this idea one stage further. In a cover that appeared four days after Christmas, he showed another young boy—he seems to be about seven years old—exploring his father's bottom drawer, where he finds a Santa suit put away in mothballs for the following year. This time disillusion is complete.