Front cover of an edition of Santa's First Christmas.
Santa's First Christmas (ISBN 9780593524978) is a Christmas-themed children's fantasy picture book of forty pages written by the American author Mac Barnett and illustrated by the Canadian artist Sydney Smith. It was first published in 2024.
According to the book, Santa Claus never used to celebrate Christmas. Instead, he immediately began preparations for the following year's Christmas Eve on Christmas Day. Santa's elves and polar bear friend decided that was not right. They organized a Christmas celebration for him that became an annual tradition.
Plot[]
Santa Claus does not do anything special on Christmas Day. After his busy night on Christmas Eve, he treats himself to an extra thirty minutes in bed. When he gets up, he immediately starts work on preparations for next year's Christmas Eve. A passing polar bear learns about Santa Claus' lack of any kind of Christmas celebration from some of Santa's elves. They decide to organize one for him.
When Santa wakes up on Christmas morning, the elves bring him a breakfast of doughnuts in bed. They then say that they need to choose a Christmas tree. Santa selects an enormous spruce from the nearby forest, which they somehow manage to get inside Santa's home and decorate. Stockings for Santa and the elves are then hung by the fireplace and all of the North Pole is decorated with electric lights.
The elves bake cookies. They tell Santa that he is only allowed to have one because the rest are for "you know who". Santa starts to protest that he is "you know who", but the elves stop him with a stern look.
Santa and the elves settle by the fire. Some of the elves tell ghost stories. Santa reads A Visit from St. Nicholas and laughs at how accurate the poem's description of him is. The door suddenly bursts open. The polar bear comes in dressed as Santa Claus. He and the elves each give Santa a fishing rod. Santa says that he loves all of his gifts. The costumed polar bear also fills the elves' stockings with licorice, apples and rolled up pairs of socks.
Instead of taking their presents out of their stockings, the elves sit down to a huge Christmas dinner with Santa. They eat and sing carols throughout the night by candlelight. An emotional Santa says they should do the same thing every year, and so an annual tradition begins.
See also[]
- "Old Santeclaus with Much Delight" (1821)
- "A Letter from Santa Claus" (1875)
- "Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride" (1889)
- The Goblins' Christmas (1900)
- The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902)
- "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" (1904)
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1939)
- Father Christmas (1973)
- Father Christmas Goes on Holiday (1975)
- The Polar Express (1985)
- Winnie and Wilbur Meet Santa (2015)
- Santa's Husband (2017)