Exactly when did it become the custom to give presents at Christmas? In much of Europe, Santa Claus-style figures and the exchanging of gifts have a long heritage. Here, in the land of Scrooge, Santa Claus got majorly waylaid coming to town.

By 1911, The Times was certain that “in England at any rate (where the modern cult of childhood cannot be traced much further back than the first birthday of Charles Dickens) the distribution of toys was no part of the antique commemoration of Christ's Nativity”. Indeed, Merrie England's traditions tended to involve festive revels, pantomimes and plum pie. References to children's presents are more noticeable for their infrequency than their prevalence.

Arriving at Ratzeburg in 1799, Samuel Taylor Coleridge reported that German families gave each other presents at Christmas as if this was the most extraordinarily clever innovation. Furthermore, some presents were distributed by a man disguised “in high buskins, a white robe, a mask and an enormous flax wig”. Coleridge continued: “On Christmas night he goes round to every house and says that Jesus Christ his master sent him thither, the parents and elder children receive him with great pomp of reverence, while the little ones are most terribly frightened.” Lucky Germans.

It was not until 1888 that Santa Claus opened his first grotto in Britain. Surprisingly, he chose J.P.Robert's department store in Stratford, East London. However, other shops quickly caught on and by the century's end he had become an essential marketing tool, thanks to the belated realisation among Britons that Christmas was a time for shopping.

It was something that North Americans had long understood. As early as the 1840s, American stores were proclaiming themselves “Santa's Headquarters”. In 1841, crowds cheered while one Santa scaled the roof of a Philadelphia shop and threw himself down into the fireplace below. By the 1890s in New York, the Salvation Army was mass-producing Santa suits in which to dress the unemployed while they went about soliciting donations to feed them.

The recognisable image of Santa in a white fur-trimmed red cape was thus partly an American one that nonetheless pre-dated the popular Coca-Cola advertising campaigns featuring him from 1931 onwards. The urban myth that he adopted these colours to fit in with the drinks company's logo puts the sledge firmly before the reindeer.

Nonetheless, however tardy his appearance in Britain, he was here to stay. “Today, this alien saint has a thousand chapels in London,” The Times sniffed with scarcely concealed dismay at Christmas in 1911, before concluding with words that do have a ring of authenticity: “Manifestly toys are becoming too elaborate and far too costly in these latter days.”

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