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Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry and things are absolutely going to get weird this week. This story.

The story we are talking about today is truly so bizarre. I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It's one that I think I would be so surprised if any of you have heard about this before because trying to find information on it was a wild goose chase. But things are good over here.

We've got our Bissom candle going. This is let me set the vibe. Bissom fur candle from Target going 10 bucks grab them while you can. They smell actually smell really good. We've got a peppermint mocha with an added shot half of the syrup and stuff, whatever. No whipped cream and we did it with oat milk. That's the way to do it. This is the last time recording in my apartment, which is so weird. The OG Cult compound where Cult Leader was born.

Who would have thought it's getting so cold feels like winter. Thank you also to everyone on Twitter and Instagram who have sent words of encouragement and or shared excitement over this move because let me tell you, moving is a bitch. It is a dark time no matter who you are. It is hard.

Every time I'm surprised, every time I've moved a lot of times in my life, but every time I'm like, how are there more boxes? How are there more things? It's just never ending, my god. But the end is in sight. I finally am starting to see the light. But this week's story, I just want to really start getting into it. It's so fascinating to me because I have no idea why I hadn't heard about it before, why nobody has talked about this. Well, maybe they have, but nobody that I listen to or watch or follow has ever talked about this story.

Nobody has ever sent it to me to my knowledge. And honestly, it came about kind of randomly. We know I like a theme over here. And with the holidays around the corner, I decided to start snooping around the web for any and all cult-related Christmas activity. And I feel like I really struck gold with today's story.

I was laughing to myself when I was working on my notes originally for this episode because I'm in this coffee shop, right? It's kind of a cool coffee shop like nine o'clock in the morning. There's people having meetings or working on spreadsheets. And I'm like, please don't look at my screen. That just says Santa was a cult leader and huge bold font. But I don't think anyone saw it. But anyway, I'm googling. I'm deep into the web. And I come across the name Mason Huntsman.

I'm also a cult M-N-A-S-O-N. The N is silent. And there's this little write-up about his story, which I'll get to, but long story short. This man, Mason, is credited as being one of the OG models for the picture of Santa that we all know today.

Little did we know the jolly Santa-esque man that we see on posters and Coca-Cola commercials had quite the sinister past. Now, this story is very historical. And at this point, we know what that means. It's just a whole lot of digging through newspaper archives and whatnot. But I'm trying to think, like, how do I want to do this? I think maybe we'll start with just some Santa stuff in general. A brief rundown on the image of Santa as we know him today.

And then we'll introduce Mason and talk about his history not only as a Santa model, but also as a cult leader. Sound good? You're in, I'm in. I really think you guys are going to like this one. This is from the public domain review.com.

Santa Claus has his roots in the informal Dutch name for St Nicholas, St. Nicholas, in abbreviation of St Nicholas. St Nicholas was a historic 4th century Greek saint from an area now in modern day Turkey, who had a reputation for secret gift giving, such as putting coins in the shoes left out for him.

He was also famous for presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with galleries so that they would not have to become prostitutes. Wow, Santa giving them pretty woman moment since the 4th century.

Another important tributary to the image of Santa Claus was the phenomenon of Father Christmas, also known as Old Father Christmas, Sir Christmas and Lord Christmas.

A traditional figure in English folklore and identified with the similarly bearded Old English God Woden, I think that's how you say it. It's W-O-D-E-N, maybe Voden.

He typically represented the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, but was not associated with either children or the bringing of gifts, from what I gather, the Americanized version of Santa Claus started around the end of the 18th century when the Dutch settled in New York.

Most sources cite a Christmas poem written by Clement Moore that he'd written for his children to be one of the strongest origins for Christmas in America, as we know it today.

It was originally titled a visit from Saint Nicholas, but eventually became known as the Knight Before Christmas, and you probably heard it, it's the one that was like,

it was like, it was the Knight Before Christmas and all through the house, yada yada yada. Now visually, Santa has been through several eras, but the OG pictures from like the mid 1800s show Santa Claus in Bishop Robes in a pointed hat with a straight beard.

However, in 1863, Harper's Weekly hired a 21-year-old kid, and this changed a lot. His name was Thomas Nast, and they hired him to draw Santa bringing gifts to the troops fighting in the Civil War at the time in America.

In this portrait, he depicted Santa as this jolly man, but with a bit of an uncle Sam Flair probably because of the purpose, you know, he was painting this for the troops, so he had Santa as this jolly guy, but then he's wearing a star-spangled jacket and striped pants.

It was a hit, I guess, because he became the go-to for Harper's yearly Christmas print and eventually began drawing Santa in the signature red clothing that we know today. I read somewhere else, I think it was on history.com, and they talked about how Santa originally wore different colors, like he had, like kind of like Picasso, he had a blue period where he wore a blue outfit, some old pictures of him, have him in a green outfit, but it's just weird to picture Santa in anything other than red.

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