Female Santa
🔞 ALL INFORMATION CLICK HERE 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻
Female Santa
Sorry, the browser you are using is no longer supported by Shutterstock. Please upgrade your browser to continue.
Female santa vectors 17,255 female santa vectors and graphics are available royalty-free. See female santa stock video clips
Printing, Typography, and Calligraphy
Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. Collect, curate and comment on your files.
Unable to complete your request at this time. Please try again later or contact us if the issue continues.
Experience our new, interactive way to find visual insights that matter.
Images Creative Editorial Video Creative Editorial
Best match Newest Oldest Most popular
Any date Last 24 hours Last 48 hours Last 72 hours Last 7 days Last 30 days Last 12 months Custom date range
NUMBER OF PEOPLE AGE PEOPLE COMPOSITION ETHNICITY
18,583 Female Santa Claus Premium High Res Photos
© 2022 Getty Images. The Getty Images design is a trademark of Getty Images.
Access the best of Getty Images and iStock with our simple subscription plan . Millions of high-quality images, video, and music options are waiting for you.
Tap into Getty Images' global scale, data-driven insights, and network of more than 340,000 creators to create content exclusively for your brand .
Streamline your workflow with our best-in-class digital asset management system . Organize, control, distribute and measure all of your digital content.
Grow your brand authentically by sharing brand content with the internet’s creators.
Me as Santi, the female Santa, during a staff association 2008 Christmas get together in UNICEF. Photos: COURTESY OF RUPA JOSHI
Vintage Christmas card of Santa Claus. Source: FINEARTAMERICA.COM
A more buxom Santi from the year earlier.
Kinship, karma, and kung fu November 14, 2021 All photos: KUNG FU NUNS y name is Jigme Konchok…
The monsoon, and nature’s arithmetic June 26, 2021 Photo: AMIT MACHAMASI udyard Kipling's 1893 short story ‘The Bridge…
New Delhi’s new dealings in Nepal November 7, 2020 Illustration: SUBHAS RAI hen Kathmandu Valley was still known as Swoniga (three…
I t is that time of the year again. Malls in Kathmandu have decorated themselves with tinsel, baubles, artificial trees, LED lights and Christmas themed gizmos on shelves, painting the town red (and green).
The other day I was almost tempted to buy a little snow globe in one of the stores before I balked at the price. Nonetheless, I did turn a couple of them upside down to watch the snow fall. Snowfall, jingling bells, presents. Christmas is here!
This fascination with Christmas goes back to childhood, studying in a Catholic missionary school. The nuns taught us carols, and shared with the ‘good girls’ cards that had been sent to them from across the world. It was an era when Christmas greetings were still in hardcopy — letters, cards and postcards.
The cards were precious, and we cherished the ones with glitter on them, or with pop-ups and layers. One year, I even made a scrapbook out of these cards as part of my ‘hobbies’ exhibit.
The Christmas tree with presents piled up underneath, the plump laughing guy with rosy cheeks in a red suit, twinkling eyes and snowy white beard riding his reindeer-driven sleigh laden with presents. And of course, white snowy scenes with boughs of holly and red berries.
So enamoured was I to have a piece of Christmas myself, I scoured the nooks and crannies of our compound, in the undergrowth, searching for any plant that had chevron spikes that looked like holly.
Drawing a Christmas tree also became an interesting pastime during the last days of school in December. A three tiered pointy pagoda-like tree with zigzag lines for tinsel, circles here and there for baubles, and not to forget a big star on top and a trapezoid pot at the bottom.
I loved our singing classes, and as December got closer we performed the feisty “Jingle Bells” and “Good King Wenceslas” or the solemn “Silent Night” with all our might.
I hankered for Christmas so much my parents took pity on me and decided to let me have a Christmas experience. I must have been eight, and had hung a sock on my bed on Christmas Eve, hoping the cherubic guy from the North Pole would come sleighing down to Kathmandu.
Next morning I found a yellow cloth doll with a pixie head and a plastic face peeping from the top of the sock. I was thrilled that Father Christmas had come all the way to my room. I had a doll named Bella that my father had given as a gift, so I named its companion, the yellow doll, Yella.
I played with Bella and Yella, and the next Christmas I hung up the sock again. And the next morning there was a Johnson & Johnson pink and blue striped tiffin-like tin box with soap, cream, and talcum powder set inside it. I still get the soft soapy aroma of that box in my nose today.
I was probably 10 when the Christmas bubble burst. I had put up my sock again but my mother probably did not have time to shop for a present. What I found inside the sock on Christmas morning was the glass bottle of ointment (with a chipped glass cap) that used to be in the showcase in my parent’s room. Dreams were shattered along with the broken glass cap. Christmas fizzled out after that.
It sparked again years later when I was in the US for my masters, and my three children had come over for a visit during the holidays. At their request we put up a Christmas tree, tinsels, twinkling lights, presents, enjoying the whole process along with them, and probably finally living up to my childhood dreams too.
But the feather in my Christmas cap came when I was with UNICEF Nepal and arranging a Christmas party for colleagues and their children. My dream of Santa Claus visiting me was exchanged for dressing up twice, not as Santa, but the female version Santi – with white curly locks, carrying a jute sack full of gifts and draped in a red sari with white edging of surgical cotton that I had hurriedly stitched the night before.
Read also: Ghosts of Christmas past , Lisa Choegyal
Editor Online: Sahina Shrestha | Executive Editor: Sonia Awale
Publisher: Kunda Dixit, Himalmedia Pvt Ltd | Patan Dhoka, Lalitpur | GPO Box 7251 Kathmandu
Submissions
editors@nepalitimes.com | www.nepalitimes.com | www.himalmedia.com | Tel: 01-5005601-08 Fax: +977-1-5005518
Department of Information Registration No. 2426/077-78
Site By: Hiti Design
Subscribe
Renew
Shop
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Renew
''
Smart News
History
Science
Innovation
Arts & Culture
Travel
Good News
History
Archaeology
U.S. History
World History
Untold Stories of American History
Video
Newsletter
Science
Human Behavior
Mind & Body
Our Planet
Space
Wildlife
Newsletter
Innovation
Innovation for Good
Education
Energy
Health & Medicine
Technology
Video
Newsletter
Arts & Culture
Museum Day
Art
Books
Design
Food
Music & Film
Video
Newsletter
Travel
Panama
Virtual Travel
Journeys
Newsletter
At The Smithsonian
Visit
Exhibitions
New Research
Artifacts
Curators' Corner
Ask Smithsonian
Podcasts
Voices
Newsletter
Photos
Photo Contest
Instagram
Video
Ingenuity Awards
Ask Smithsonian
Smithsonian Channel
Games
Daily Sudoku
Universal Crossword
Daily Word Search
Jumble
Mah Jong Quest
KenKen
Backgammon
Rosie the Riveter wasn’t the only woman who pitched in on the homefront
The Second World War saw American women break into many male-dominated jobs: riveters, crane operators, cab drivers, and professional baseball players, to name a few.
But perhaps the most unusual breakthrough of all occurred 75 years ago this Christmas, when department stores began hiring women to play Santa, sitting in thrones previously monopolized by men. Pretty soon, still more women in red Santa suits and matching hats could be seen ringing bells on street corners and ho-ho-ho-ing it up for charity.
Even before the U.S. officially entered the war, some astute observers saw it coming. “It is customary in wartime for women to take over numerous fields of employment conventionally reserved for men,” the St. Louis Star-Times noted in 1941. But while the paper conceded that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt might be right that a “woman’s place is in the office, factory, courtroom, marketplace, corner filling station, and other locations too numerous to mention,” it drew a line in the snow at Santa.
“There is one male domain, however, that should be defended at all costs,” it insisted. “A woman Santa Claus? Heaven forbid! That would be stretching the credulity of guileless little children too far.”
Women had already found some success in the Santa trade. Filene’s in Boston hired a Mrs. Claus to help its male Santa entertain young visitors as early as 1906, a time when the notion that he even had a spouse was relatively new and little publicized. (She seems to have made her first appearance in an 1849 short story, according to Mental Floss . )
Charlie Howard, a department store Santa who also trained other practitioners, gave the concept a boost in 1937, when he announced that his program had gone co-ed. As he told the Associated Press, he planned to graduate two Mrs. Clauses that year, whose job, the story reported, would be to “greet little girls, learn what they want in their Christmas stockings, teach them how to play with dollies, doll houses, dishes and clothes.” The article, however, also quoted Howard as declaring, “And she’ll have to be good looking, too.”
But Mrs. Claus wouldn’t become a mainstay of the Christmas celebration until the Baby Boom era, with the help of Nat King Cole’s “Mrs. Santa Claus” in 1953 and Phyllis McGinley’s 1963 children’s book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas.
Meanwhile, the top job, that of the Jolly Old Elf him (or her) self, still was the domain of just men.
Less than a year after the U.S. declared war on Japan, in November 1942, the first female department store Santa seems to have appeared in Chicago. “The manpower shortage has even hit old Saint Nick,” the caption on an Associated Press photo explained. “This lady Santa Claus has turned up—dressed like Mr. Claus except for the whiskers—at a Chicago department store, and youngsters seem just as happy telling her which gifts they are hoping for.” (Though other contemporary accounts would treat her as a full-fledged female Santa, the photo caption hedged a bit, ending with a reference to her as a “Mrs. Santa Claus” who would “pass on children’s wishes to her overworked husband.”)
In December 1942, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that, “Unable to find a man suitable for the job,” an F.W. Woolworth store in Union, New Jersey, had also hired a female Santa. Identified as Mrs. Anna Michaelson, she would “wear a skirt, instead of trousers, but all the other habiliments will be the same as those of the traditional Kris Kringle.” In Michaelson’s case that included a white wig and beard, which the mother of eight obligingly showed off for a news photographer.
The reaction to these new Santas was mixed, ranging from a sort of ho-hum acceptance to mock outrage.
The Washington Post , for example, took it philosophically. “Rather than disappoint the youngsters altogether, it seems better to have a feminine Santa than no Santa at all,” it conceded in a December 1942 editorial.
The Wichita Daily Times , in a November 1942 editorial titled “Invading Another Male Bastion,” examined the pros and cons: “It may jar the sensibilities of the youngsters to hear a soprano voice, instead of a basso profundo one, sounding forth from behind the whiskers. But probably today’s children will make whatever concessions are necessary on that account. They have been wise enough heretofore to pretend not to know that the department store Santa is a fraud: to accept a lady Santa will impose no intolerable strain upon their pretended innocence.”
But a syndicated newspaper columnist named Henry McLemore claimed to have gotten “the shock of my life” when he stumbled upon a woman Santa in a nameless department store. “If there is such a thing as a minor horror, then a minor horror of this war is female Santa Clauses,” he wrote. “Kristine Kringle! Sarah St. Nicholas! Susie Santa Claus! Holy Smoke!”
He went on to describe the cause of his distress as “a little ol’ wren of a Santa Claus. The pillow she used for a stomach didn’t help and neither did the soprano voice that squeaked through some cut-down gray whiskers.”
And he wasn’t done yet: “She didn’t walk like Santa Claus walks,” McLemore lamented. “He lumbered and flat-footed around, the result of years of carrying that massive pack on his back. This female Santa Claus minced around on size 3 shoes and worst of all, she giggled. The real Santa Claus never giggled.”
A report in the Geneva Daily Times in upstate New York speculated on whether female Santas would take Manhattan next. “News that Chicago had a Mrs. Santa reached New York Saturday,” it announced. “Notice of such a break with tradition was not received lightly. The Santa at Stern Brothers [a New York City department store] said he would like to meet a woman Santa and give her his picture, but he thought a Mrs. Santa could not stand the strain a real Santa has to undergo.”
A Macy’s Santa named Jim Willis “said he thought a feminine St. Nick would spoil the illusion for children,” the story added, “and that anyhow there were enough cheery old gentlemen to take the place of any Santas who might go off to war.”
New York City would indeed get its first female Santa, or something close to it, in December 1943. That’s when Daisy Belmore, an older British actress, took up residence at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Though Belmore referred to herself as Mrs. Santa Claus and said she was there to fill in for her busy husband, she represented a clear departure from the subservient Mrs. Clauses of the prewar years. Belmore was a solo act, with a throne of her own and all the magical gift-granting powers of her male peers.
Belmore, whose acting credits included small film roles in 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front and 1931’s Dracula , was described in a United Press article as a “white haired, blue-eyed woman” who “wore a suit like Santa Claus,” except that her red wool stockings showed below her skirt.” Contemporary photos show that she also skipped the beard.
Like her Chicago counterpart, Belmore had little trouble getting kids to share their wartime wish lists, according to a writer for the New York Herald Tribune:
“Why, the little girls all want nurses’ kits and the boys want medical things,” she told the reporter, who went on to describe her in action: “She stopped at this point to pat a small newcomer on the head. ‘And what do you want for Christmas?’ she asked. The customer was a little girl about seven years old. Miss Belmore leaned closer to hear her reply. In a moment she looked up.
“’There,’ she said triumphantly, ‘the little girl wants a machine gun.’”
Though still a relative rarity, women Santas now seemed to be in it for the duration of the war.
In December 1943, the Hollywood make-up artist Max Factor Jr., who’d led earlier efforts to standardize the look of America’s male Santas (at least 5’ 9” and 180 pounds, with a belt size of 48 inches or more, among other specs) turned his attention to the women as well. Factor believed that seeing too many different-looking Santas in movies and real life was befuddling to young believers.
A widely published wire service photo showed his vision of an ideal “Lady Santa Claus”—who might easily have passed for the male version except for her nail polish. Factor’s advice to aspiring female Santas: “lower their voices, puff out their cheeks with cotton and put on false noses.”
By Christmas 1944, female Santas were coming out in force.
Even comedian Bob Hope weighed in, quipping in his newspaper column that “a lot of the Hollywood actresses are playing Santa Clauses this year and when you think about it, it isn’t as silly as it sounds after all. Who can do a better job of filling a stocking than [famous actress] Betty Grable?”
The Volunteers of America, a charity whose Santa-suited bell ringers raised funds on city street corners, fielded seven female Santas in New York alone.
One, Mrs. Phoebe Seabrook, a 62-year-old grandmother, was described in an article as “five feet tall, weighing 123 pounds.” For those who might be wondering, it explained, “she fits into the Santa Claus uniform by tucking the waist surplus into her belt and the bottoms of the over-long trousers into her boots.”
Though she wore a “flowing white beard,” Mrs. Seabrook noted that her voice and shoe size were often a giveaway even to the youngest children. In that case she explained that she was actually Santa Claus’s wife—which may or may not have done anything to lessen their confusion. When challenged by kids who said they didn’t think Santa even had a wife, she was known to reply, “Well, he’s got one now.”
The following Christmas, however, the war was over. Germany had surrendered in May 1945. Japan had followed suit in August, signing a formal instrument of surrender in September.
The breakthroughs women achieved in other male-dominated occupations would be longer-lasting, but the brief era of female department store Santas had largely come to an end.
Daisy Belmore, perhaps the most famous of them all, had already returned to the Broadway stage. Her last major role would be in the original 1951 production of The Rose Tattoo by Tenness
Brother Fucks Sisters Best Friend
Sexy Skinny Naked Girls
Film D Horreur 2022 Streaming Vf