What Santa Looks Like

Haddon Sundblom was born on this day in 1899 in Muskegon, Michigan.

Sundblom was a commercial illustrator for Chicago's Stevens-Gross Agency. He was best known for his 35 years of illustrations of Santa Claus for Coca-Cola ads (beginning in 1931) that fundamentally sealed the American pop culture image of jolly old St. Nick as a big plump man -- rather than as an elf as depicted by Robert Walter Weir (c. 1837), Thomas Nast (c. 1862) and others. Sundblom is also allegedly responsible for the creation of the Quaker Oats Quaker and Aunt Jemima.

Sundblom died on March 10, 1976 in Chicago, Illinois.