Darryl Brewster, age 9, of Huntsville, Alabama, for his question:
Why does Santa Claus wear red?
As the Great Day draws nigh, we wonder about special trimmings that come out of hiding. Well, this happens because Christmas is the happiest season of the year and the grownups do everything possible to make it merry. This is no time to decorate the world with dismal greys and dreary blacks. We need to perk up the scenery with bright happy colors. The most joyful color is red. No doubt this is one reason why old Santa chose it for his outfit.
The festive Christmas season comes in the middle of winter, when we expect the evergreen trees to be sprinkled with snow. The towering elms and delicate birches have only bare, brown twigs because they lost their leaves in the fall. In many places, there are no pretty flowers in the fields and gardens. The feathery birds are too cold to sing. The scenery seems much to drab to welcome the merry season and this has been a big problem for thousands of years.
Oh, yes, people had merry feasts at this time of year, long before it was set aside to honor the birth of the baby Jesus. And long, long ago, they found ways to make the whole world feel merry even in the middle of winter. They decorated their homes with furry green branches from the pine trees, with vines of glossy green ivy and prickly boughs from holly hushes.
In summer, green is a gentle, soothing color. In winter, those evergreen boughs reminded everybody that the summer greenery will return to the woods outdoors. This was a cheerful thought, just right for a merry feast. But there was something even better. The holly and some of the other green decorations had clusters of round red berries. And red just happens to be the most cheerful color in the world. It reminds us of warm fires and waving flags on parade, of round apples and dances that go with rollicking drums.
So, ages ago, people decided that red was just the right color to add a merry spark to the winter season. It also goes very well with the faithful evergreen trees that do not desert us in the fall. So long, long ago, red and green were chosen to be everybody's favorite colors for this season of the year.
Later, much later, this became the Christmas season and new customs were added to welcome the baby Jesus. But we kept the favorite old green and red decorations. Then a few hundred years ago, Santa arrived with sacks of toys for one and all. And wouldn't you know, that cheerful old character decked himself out in the most cheerful color. He trimmed his berry red suit with white fur to match the snow outdoors. Besides, this matched his fine white beard of which he was very proud, naturally.