Santa Claus Came to Town... Somewhere

It’s Cold Outside

I’ve had my holidays, and I’ve watched the stop motion tapes. It’s been relaxing, and perplexing. The 1970 Stop Motion special Santa Claus is Coming to Town is equal parts nostalgic and truly strange; and I’m going to use my website to do a deep dive on a few details of the movie, because that’s the reason for the season.

That’s right, I’m breaking a months-long hiatus by doing a dissection of a children’s movie!

For fun!

It Started with a Felony

If you haven’t watched it or haven’t seen it in a while, the movie starts with a puppet of Fred Astaire (named “Special Delivery” Kleuger). He works for an organization that labels it’s snow-mobiles “North Pole Mail.” However, he’s carrying several bags of postage from the US Post system. He kicks off the movie by opening a child’s letter to Santa. That’s a federal crime my dude (US CodeTitle 18 § 1702).

The frame of the entire movie is a charming dance number. The titles/credits roll with a nice montage of postage going to the main cast. Meanwhile, I wonder how many years the stop motion Fred would go to jail in stop motion jail.

Maybe Fred is ok doing this in whatever jurisdiction he works in (not necessarily the US Postal Service). But even if he is employed by the US, he might be allowed to do this. We can keep the magic alive and avoid a felony! If Fred meets these criteria, I think he’d be above board doing this:

1. He’s considered to be a “Customs officer”
2. His retelling takes place in 2002 (which is unlikely given how many letters are going to the North Pole, and the method of packaging on the large package he handles)

Why 2002? The US Congress voted in a bill that included extra provisions to let Customs officers open mail. So maybe there is still magic in this tale!

It All Happened in Sombertown

The geography of the main portion of this tale is what really blows my mind. I spent a week trying to find any semblance of reason for the location of Sombertown.

First, the name is made up: look up Sombertown and you won’t find a real city with that name. I’m not really upset that they made up the city name, but that means to find it we need to use the remaining clues.

Fred says,

In one of the northern countries there was a small city called Sombertown … which shivered in the shadows of the strange mountain of the whispering winds

And it’s obviously a German-speaking town as the mayor is referred to as the burgermeister, and addressed as “Herr burgermeister,” and the town guards wear Pickelhauben.

This puts us in an impossible position. The north of modern-day Germany, and what used to be Prussia is essentially flat. The opening shot of Sombertown is next to a huge mountain with a big forest.

So you might say: “Why not just go south towards the Alps, problem solved” And, sure that helps with the geography but now we’ve run into a problem of Ecology.

If it Barks Like the North Sea

Santa is said to have learned his laugh from seals. Which puts him in the north on the sea. But that’s a problem, because the seals come out of a river in the mountains.

This is nonsensical; show me a seal in the mountains of Germany and I’ll eat my words but this is probably the biggest unresolved plot hole in the movie.

You may also remember Topper, Santa’s penguin friend. He calls out that he should be in the South Pole, and then kinda just… moves on, and almost no one else comments on the fact that a penguin is just following this man around.

This movie is amazing.

If it Floats Like a Reindeer

Santa’s famous reindeer are also from near Sombertown, because Jessica gives them each a nibble of Winter’s magic feed corn (which casts permanent flying and is busted; if you’re playing D&D and magic feed corn exists and you’re a Druid, polymorph yourself or wild shape to eat it, flying is great). Looking at the geographic range of reindeer, there is simply no overlap with any part of Germany, Prussia or really anywhere that the rest of this story’s geographic clues make sense. Basically, the animals involved with this story make no sense, and we’ll have to ignore them.

Who’s Really in Charge?

“The first toymakers to the king,” is the title given to the Kringles and it’s a major plot point to why Kris Kringle is so generous and makes toys. The musical number mostly talks about the high standards of toys for royalty. But hidden in there is a clue! The crest of the king (and his portrait).

I’ll give what I think the blazon is, but it’s a storybook illustration lacking some details and breaking with heraldic tradition. Shocking I know.

Gules, an eagle displayed argent within a bordure argent

The arms bear a striking resemblance to the Polish coat of arms, except it’s missing its gold crown and arms. It also resembles the early County of Burgundy, but that makes even less sense since that’s all the way in France. The last match I found is the city of Arnsberg. Its arms were changed from red to blue in the 17th century.

So all 3 really don’t make sense individually, but they give us good clues. But now we have a few candidates for where this takes place:

• Gdańsk: if that’s the Polish crest in the book, then this city has a wall and was part of Prussia. It’s a bit of a stretch, because there’s not really any moutnains nearby. There is a hill, but the mountain of the whispering winds is shown to be pretty steep.
• Somewhere in the Sauerland: the crest of Arnsberg was very close to the crest in the storybook, but the architecture of the area isn’t very similar. It probably wouldn’t be Arnsberg itself, but anywhere near the Swiss / Austrian Alps near Munich might be a good fit.

Ok So When did This Even Happen?

There are a few clues that can narrow down when this took place, which might help us about Where this took place!

1. The Kringles have hot cocoa, which happened in the (late?) 17thcentury.
2. The Kringles know about Kangaroos. Since they know about Kangaroos, they know about Australia, so that puts us after 1780.
3. Kris knows about penguins and the North and South Pole. Penguins were encountered by the Portuguese during their explorations of the Southern Hemisphere. Antarctica was likely first sighted by Europeans in the 1840’s.
4. The Buergermeister gets “milk,” and “the daily paper” delivered to his doorstep. Daily papers in Germany started in 1660. Milk delivery apparently didn’t really start in earnest until around 1870, source here.
5. The Sombertown guards wear pickelhauben, which didn’t pick up until 1842. This also implies that the area is under the Prussian Kingdom, especially since the Burgermeister wears an eagle insignia at all times.
6. There’s an orange toy car confiscated by the Burgermeitser. This means it must be at least past the 1880’s. Most of the other toys are traditional designs, besides that Car
7. the North Pole is labelled, so it had to be at least after 1909 (thoughthat’s still under dispute).

SO given all these context clues we know that Kris Kringle flees the Sombertown area after 1909. That actually makes the coat of arms really confusing. By this time the “King,” would be Frederick III, or Wilhelm II, depending on how old Kris is by the time Tante Kringle retells the history of the Kringles. Given all the other context clues, and the fact that the Burgermeister wears lederhosen (in winter!), he’s probably Bavarian himself, so it’s more likely they’re in the Alps.

There’s a Revolution in Sombertown

Burgermeister decleares “there’ll be no more toymakers to the king!” in the resounding conclusion to his declaration of the law banning toys. This law is the impetus for Santa’s own rebellion. But this is a brazen abuse of power; if there’s a king of this land (and apparently there is), then the Burgermeister has no authority to declare that the king can’t have a toymaker.

It’s likely within his power to declare that Sombertown can’t have toys (maybe?), especially since he seems to have total control over the guard / police force. This may make sense since the Prussian Kingdom ended in 1918, so maybe this is a soft rebellion or this could mean that Santa first came to town after 1918, which would also mean that Santa grew up or finished growing up in the first World War, and the Winter Warlock also saw World War I.

Where Are We?

Historical implications of Santa witnessing the first World War, aside: There are still only 2 options given the timeframe restrictions and the geography.

I’ve gone through a bunch of towns and cities near the Alps,

• Bad Tölz: geographically sound and has a historic city wall… But no fountain.
• Oberstdorf no city wall that I can see, but it’s right up there in the Alps, and the city’s coat of arms is Red (with a horse, not a bird).

Other Cities I checked:

• Bamburg too far north, and by the time this story takes place, it’d have an obvious train.
• Gdańsk, which I mentioned for the Polish seal. Unfortunately, it’s far to large to be Sombertown, and by 1906, it had a working railway, so that basically rules it out entirely.

About the North Pole

Since Kris Kringle is an outlaw in Sombertown, he flees to the North Pole to set up his own rogue state in the inhospitable region, where he also builds a castle of stone. Maybe in this universe, the Rupes Nigra exists or something similar, but we’ll just accept that Kris can make a stone castle on the North Pole. We’ll also have to accept that he could just walk there. Walking to the North Pole is technically possible due to ice formation in the region, but expeditions to the polar regions were known to be dangerous. Santa must have used some of his magic to aid the group, or maybe his reindeer flew him most of the way.

Some Character Studies

The movie a trip. The “history,” of Santa Claus is fraught with discrepancies, but there are some interesting characters that I couldn’t fit into my geographic and historical analysis.

Burgermeister Meisterburger

He wears lederhosen (in the winter), so he’s probably Bavarian, which points more to Sombertown being in Bavaria or modern-day Hochsauerlandkreis which is part of North Rhine-Westphalia, just North of Bavaria.

His name is also something of a joke, but it’s a little strange that the Mayor of the town has such a dynastic grip, and controls such an outsized military. It’s said that the Meisterburgers were in charge of Sombertown historically, so maybe that family was one of the many counts or princedoms of the area. Obviously, no house Meisterburger exists in the real world.

The “King”

Maybe “The King” was Fredrick III, given the mutton chops. Those chops were apparently more of a defining feature of William I, who was monarch from 1871 - 1888. With Tante Kringle saying that their charge from the king came “years and years” ago, but by the time he was proper king of Prussia, he was greying, while in the storybook the King had dark brown or black hair. Tante Kringle could easily have seen the beginning and end of his reign.

If the Kringle “elves” (which are totally dwarves) have extended lifespans, and if Tante Kringle is also an elf, then she may have an extended lifespan and may be much older than Wilhelm I’s rule. Unfortunately, none of the monarchs from the House of Hohenzollern who would have been named “king” wore glasses as far as I can tell, so the whole story is either in a weird mirror dimension or a total work of fiction.

The Winter Warlock

Winter (if you please), is one of the most interesting characters - he’s certifiably magical and he’s called out as a warlock. He’s also stated to be evil, but besides monitoring a pass and claiming others can’t intrude on it while laying claim to the land, he doesn’t do anything. He arrests Santa, after warning him not to cross the pass, so maybe he’s Lawful Evil in D&D terms.

Let’s get his title out of the way: Winter calls himself a Warlock, which is conveniently a Dungeons and Dragons class. It’s convenient because now we can tell if he’s lying by looking at his abilities!

The Winter Warlock starts as a Warlock, but oddly he’s allied with treeants when he arrests Kris on his way back from his first journey in Sombertown. The one spell Winter casts is scrying, which is a Warlock spell. He also doesn’t really do any magic until he’s allied with Kris, which is on brand for Warlocks. In general, if a Warlock can avoid casting a spell with a spell slot, then they will.

It’d be nice to figure out who or what the Warlocks patron is, but we get very little in terms of where his original power came from. We may get a clue in that the treeants are willing to ally with him, so his patron might be a fey nature spirit, but that same patron is really picky on Winter’s alignment for some reason.

After he allows Kris through the pass and generally changes his alignment (from Lawful Evil? to uh Neutral Good?) he loses his powers. This really backs up the assessment of original class. By the end of the show he can cast Control Weather, which is an 8th level Druid, Wizard, or Cleric spell. I couldn’t find a Warlock path to get this spell so he must have de-leveled, which… isn’t a thing, but hey he did lose his powers.

In more detail, to cast the spell scrying a Warlock must be at least level 9 to get that 5th level spell slot. Druids get their first 8th level spell slot all the way up at 15, so unless he’s effectively level 24 (max level is 20) he lost levels when his original patron abandoned him.

His magic feed corn is also ridiculously powerful: it enchants a single reindeer with permanent fly. And he calls it “useless.” I really have to wonder what useful things he has access to.

Near the end of the story he gets some of his powers back, and he lights up the Christmas tree that Santa and Jessica get married under. I can’t quite pin down which spell it is but maybe his patron gave him a pity cast of prestidigitation one last time. It’s not clear what the state of his powers really are because soon after the light spell he’s imprisoned, he isn’t able to break out even though he would have Charm Person as a level 1 Druid or Warlock. Conceivably almost any level 1 D&D character can break out of a prison. Maybe not rangers, or fighters, but most other classes could eventually break out of prison.

Kris Kringle: Santa Claus

Santa himself is a Druid: he has animal friends, he can survive off the land (in the Artic), speak with animals and he can cast Scrying as taught by the Winter Warlock, which puts him around level 9 at least by that time. He can also jump really high, which is a Level 1 Druid spell, so it checks out. He also gets mail and learns information from the animals, which is classic “Speak with Animals” shenanigans.

His final move against the mayor of Sombertown is to take his party (in basic winter clothing mind you, and Jessica is wearing a dress), to the North Pole; which is wild. By this time people had been trying to do northern expeditions for centuries, and he waltzes up north in basic winter gear, no face protection, or gloves or even a good down coat and apparently in the middle of winter. Incredible.

Then he builds a rouge state and stone castle. But out of what? Druids get a 6th level Move Earth spell but, the problem with the North Pole is there is no stone, as a basic fact of how the North Pole is.. well constructed. I honestly have no idea how he does this. Maybe he conscripts a bunch of animals to help him.

Finally if he has 5th level spell slots, which he does if he can cast Scrying, then he can also cast polymorph (my favorite) and reincarnate - I’m not sure if he can live forever, but at level 18, Druids also get vastly expanded life. This guy is basically a winter god, and it’s wonderful.

Santa Claus Came to Town. And We’re Lucky He’s Chaotic Good

Kris is a mid-level druid who’s only goal is to give gifts. After, he’s done with Sombertown he’s got the ability to move faster than the speed of sound, and deliver gifts to literally everyone on the planet (by lore). If that isn’t level 18 druid stuff, I don’t know what is.

When Kris is imprisoned, he can cast Stone Shape, Call Lightning, and most importantly Shillelagh; he could have easily broken himself out but he values Topper’s life more than his freedom. Kris Kringle really is a kind and generous winter spirit - and we’re super lucky that he’s not an even more chaotic winter God. By the time he’s level 18, he doesn’t even need Winter - he can cast Control Weather, along with a whole host of other wild winter spells.

Santa Claus comes to town every year, and gives us gifts. It’s good that he doesn’t cast Earthquake, Fire Storm, or any of the other ridiculously powerful high-level Druid spells. You better watch out.