The picture of a pot-bellied, bearded and well-ringing Father Christmas that we know more recently was an origin of Santa Claus. He was created by Thomas Nast, a North American cartoonist, in drawings he made for Harper's Weekly during a period of 20 years from 1863 onwards. He based the pictures on Clement Moore's poem, gradually developing Moore's small fat, elf-like creature into the Father Christmas now known to all.