Daily Quiz for February 4, 2009

Thomas Nast. Thomas Nast created memorable Christmas images for Harper’s Weekly during the American Civil War. Suffering from ?illustrator’s block’ in 1862 while trying to come up with an appropriate illustration, Thomas Nast was inspired after a conversation with his sister Bertha about Christmas traditions in their native Germany. Every year until his departure from Harper’s in 1886, Nast would create an elaborate Christmas drawing to delight children and adults alike. And in the early years of his Harper’s career, during the Civil War, Nast would standardize the basic image of Santa Claus that we relish to this day.