The 19th century Santa was often shown
wearing outfits of different colors:
purple, green and blue in addition to
red. This slowly faded out so that by the
beginning of the 20th century the
standard image of Santa Claus was a
man in a red suit trimmed with white.
The Coca-Cola company has often been
cited for cementing the image of Santa
with the colors red and white through a
series of popular advertisements in the
1940's depicting Saint Nick enjoying
their product (Coca-Cola's company
colors are red and white). However,
Santa was already well associated with
these colors by that time. American artist
Norman Rockwell had done a number of
paintings with Saint Nick wearing red
and white including A Drum for Tommy
which appeared on the cover of The
Country Gentleman in 1921. The truth is
that by the time the Coke ads came out,
Santa, in the public's mind, was already
wearing only the modern version of his
colors.