Santa Claus' wife made her most active appearance yet by Katharine Lee Bates in her poem "Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride" (1889). "Goody" is short for "Goodwife", i.e., "Mrs." 21st century In 2018, there was an increasing demand for holiday appearances of Mrs. Claus as a standalone character separate from Santa Claus. In popular media Since 1889, Mrs. Claus has been traditionally depicted in media as a fairly heavy-set, kindly, white-haired elderly female baking cookies or mending clothes somewhere in the background of the Santa Claus mythos. She sometimes assists in toy production and oversees Santa's elves. She is sometimes depicted in her youth to have had red hair. She is usually depicted wearing a fur dress of red or green. Her reappearance in popular media in the 1960s began with the children's book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas, by Phyllis McGinley. Today, Mrs. Claus is commonly seen in cartoons, on greeting cards, in knick-knacks such as Christmas tree ornaments, dolls, and salt and pepper shakers, in storybooks, in seasonal school plays and pageants, in parades, in a department store "Santa Lands" as a character adjacent to the throned Santa Claus, in television programs, and live-action and animated films that deal with Christmas and the world of Santa Claus. Her personality tends to be fairly consistent; she is usually seen as a calm, kind, and patient woman, often in contrast to Santa himself, who can be prone to acting too exuberant. In more recent films such as The Santa Clause series, Fred Claus, and The Christmas Chronicles series, Mrs. Claus is not always depicted according to the elderly white-haired stereotype, but sometimes appears to be younger than Santa. In the case of The Christmas Chronicles, this is true despite the fact that Goldie Hawn, known for maintaining her youthful blonde appearance, is actually six years older than Kurt Russell who plays Santa. Mrs. Claus departs even further from the stereotype in more recent films, such as the 2020 Mel Gibson film Fatman, where she is a black woman played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Literature Mrs. Claus has appeared as a secondary character in children's books about Santa Claus and as the main character in titles about herself. Mrs. Santa Claus, Militant (one-act play) by Bell Elliott Palmer, 1914 The Great Adventure of Mrs. Santa Claus by Sarah Addington and Gertrude A. Kay, 1923 The Story of Santa Claus