Candy Canes, Plaid and Gingerbread: The Stories Behind Classic Christmas Pajama Prints

The short answer

Most of the prints on christmas plaid pajamas and their neighbors have a longer story than the pajamas themselves, but the stories are not equally solid. Some can be traced to a dated page: a poem printed in a Troy, New York, newspaper in December 1823, a magazine drawing from 1863, a royal engraving from 1848, a Scottish law from 2008. Others are good tales that nobody has matched to a document, and the best known of those is the candy cane. This guide takes the eight prints families ask about most, says which part of each story is on record and which part is repeated folklore, and then shows a set from our own range that carries the print.

Print	What is on record	What is only a story	Choose it if
Plaid and buffalo check	A legal definition of tartan (Scotland, 2008); Woolrich dates its buffalo check shirt to 1850	That the pattern was named after a designer's buffalo herd	You want a print that still looks right in January
Gingerbread	A historian quoted by TIME on Elizabeth I's gingerbread figures	That Elizabeth I invented the gingerbread man	You bake with the kids in December
Reindeer	Eight named reindeer in a poem printed on December 23, 1823	Who wrote it, which is still argued over	You read "The Night Before Christmas" aloud
Santa	Thomas Nast's Santa drawings in Harper's Weekly from 1863	That one artist invented the red suit	Small children are the center of the day
Gnome	The Swedish tomte as a farm guardian; Viktor Rydberg's 1881 poem	Most of the "gnome rules" shared online	You like Scandinavian decor
Snowman	"Frosty the Snow Man" recorded in 1950, TV special in 1969	Exact dates for the oldest snowman pictures	You want to wear the set through winter
Christmas tree	The 1848 engraving of Victoria and Albert's tree at Windsor	Single-inventor claims for the decorated tree	You want the most classic look
Candy cane	Red stripes became common around 1900	The 1670 Cologne choirmaster story	You like red and white with a sweet theme

If you only want a starting point: a plaid-and-reindeer set covers two traditions at once, gingerbread on black is the strongest print in photos, and an all-over tree print is the safest choice if one person in the house dislikes anything cute. All three of the sets below are on one listing per print, where you choose each family member and size.

Plaid, Tartan and Buffalo Check: Where Christmas Plaid Pajamas Come From

In everyday American shopping, plaid means any pattern of crossing stripes. Scotland is more exact. Under the Scottish Register of Tartans Act 2008, as quoted by the official register, a tartan is "a design which is capable of being woven consisting of two or more alternating coloured stripes which combine vertically and horizontally to form a repeated chequered pattern." That register, run by National Records of Scotland, still accepts new designs from anyone who meets its criteria, so tartan is a living catalog and not only a set of clan heirlooms.

Buffalo check is the simplified American cousin. It uses two colors, usually red and black, in large blocks of equal size, which is why it reads clearly from across a room. The outdoor brand Woolrich says it introduced its Wool Buffalo Check Shirt in 1850 in Pennsylvania. On its own heritage page, Woolrich also gives the explanation for the name as a legend: that the designer owned a herd of buffalo. Since the company itself calls it a legend, so do we.

How to tell them apart on a pajama listing

• Tartan or Scottish-style plaid: several colors and stripe widths, with thin lines crossing thicker bands. It looks busy up close and calm from far away.
• Buffalo check: two colors, big even squares, no fine lines. It is the easiest plaid to pair with a printed top.
• Fair Isle: not a plaid at all. It is a knitted-look band pattern of small motifs such as snowflakes and stars, often sold next to plaid because it gives the same cabin feel.

Why does plaid show up at Christmas at all? Partly color: red, green and black are the colors of most holiday decor, and a check carries them without a single cartoon figure. That makes plaid a peacemaker in families where a teenager or a parent will not wear a Santa face. It also lasts past December, which matters if you want the set to earn its place in the drawer. We cover that cost-per-wear argument in winter pajamas you can wear after Christmas.

Plaid also turns up in a smaller way. Many of the family sets we read for this guide list "a pair of festive buffalo plaid socks" with each pajama set, pet sizes excepted, so even a reindeer or gingerbread print can arrive with a plaid accent. Check the listing for the print you want, because not every description mentions socks.

In our range, the clearest plaid choice is the red reindeer set above, which puts a reindeer on a solid red top and the check on the pants. Its listing offered adult sizes from S to 3XL, kids from 2Y to 12-13Y, babies from 3-6M to 12-18M, and both S(Pets) and L(Pets) when we read it. The pet piece is a bandana, not a full outfit. The print glows after it has been under a light, and the description recommends letting the fabric absorb light before wearing it in the dark.

Gingerbread Christmas Pajamas and the Elizabeth I Story

The shaped gingerbread figure is the part of gingerbread history that turned into a pajama print. The story you will see most often is that Queen Elizabeth I of England handed out gingerbread men made to look like her guests. National Geographic repeats it plainly. The most direct version we could find comes from historian Carole Levin, quoted by TIME: "She did do a banquet where she had gingerbread men made to represent foreign dignitaries and people in her court." That is a historian's account, not a surviving court menu or receipt, and we have not seen a primary document. So the honest version is: a respected historian says it happened, and it is widely repeated, but we cannot show you the original record.

Gingerbread houses have a better-dated cultural boost. National Geographic notes that the Brothers Grimm published "Hansel and Gretel" in 1812, and that food historians still argue whether the story made gingerbread houses popular in Germany or rode a trend already under way.

For a pajama buyer, the useful point is that gingerbread is a baking print, not a Santa print. It suits the weekend you make cookies as well as Christmas morning, and it does not tie the set to the 25th. In our own listings, gingerbread appeared on about three in ten of the sets added in 2026, as counted in our 2026 trends report, so it is the print where you have the most choice of colors and fabrics.

Shop the gingerbread christmas pajamas by base color first. The black gingerbread set at the top of this guide pairs cookies with candy canes on a collared top, and its adult sizes ran from XS to 4XL when we read it, one of the few prints in our range that reaches 4XL. Lighter options include a khaki set that, according to its description, mixes pancakes, candy canes and cookies, and a blue "Gingerbread & Milk" set with candy canes. If you are planning a photo, our gingerbread photo guide explains why the base color matters more than the cookie.

Why Reindeer Pull the Sleigh: The 1823 Poem Behind Reindeer Christmas Pajamas

The reindeer on your pajamas come from a newspaper. "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known by its first line, appeared anonymously on December 23, 1823, in the Sentinel in Troy, New York, according to the Academy of American Poets. It gave Santa "a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer," and named them: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen. Clement Clarke Moore claimed the poem years later, and Poets.org notes that many scholars credit the New York writer Henry Livingston instead. The authorship argument is unsettled. The date and the reindeer are not.

Notice who is missing from that list: Rudolph is not in the 1823 poem at all. The reindeer prints in our range are generic deer rather than any named character, and they fall into three styles:

• A single reindeer on the top, as on the pale green set below, which pairs a reindeer top with patterned pants and adds a drawstring waist and pockets on the adult pants, according to its listing.
• A reindeer that glows, as on the navy set below, which has a short-sleeve top and full-length pants. That makes it the one to consider for a house that runs warm.
• Reindeer inside a band pattern, as on the red and white Fair Isle set, where the animal is part of the knit-style design rather than a large graphic.

Reindeer are the print we suggest when a family wants something that reads as Christmas without a person or character on the chest. Browse all reindeer christmas pajamas and you will see that most of them come in red, navy or green, which makes it easy to put a dog in a matching bandana and still have a calm photo.

If you read the poem aloud on Christmas Eve, a reindeer set ties the two together neatly. How the new-pajamas-on-Christmas-Eve habit itself grew up is the subject of how matching Christmas pajamas became a tradition.

Santa Claus Prints: From an 1863 Magazine Drawing to Today's Santa Pajamas

Santa's look was assembled over decades, and two pieces of it are well dated. The first is the 1823 poem above, which made him small, round and sleigh-borne. The second is Thomas Nast, the cartoonist who drew Santa for Harper's Weekly starting in 1863. According to the American Battlefield Trust, his first Santa sat in a sleigh handing out presents in a Union Army camp, wearing "a star-covered coat and striped pants." His full-page "Merry Old Santa Claus" ran in 1881.

The red suit is where the popular story goes wrong. The same Battlefield Trust article points out that Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings were printed in black and white, so he cannot be credited with the color. It credits the printer Louis Prang with spreading a red-suited Santa through cards in the 1870s. Treat any claim that one artist or one company invented the red suit with caution.

On pajamas, Santa prints divide into three looks that suit different families:

Santa style	What it looks like	Works best for
All-over small Santas	Repeated sleighs or faces across top and pants	Families who want the theme without one big graphic
Santa with candy canes on a dark base	Darker green or navy ground, so stains and photos both behave	Homes with toddlers and cocoa
Large single graphic	One big Santa or a character in a Santa hat on the chest	Children under about 8 who want Santa to be obvious

Two of our santa pajamas cover the first two rows. The white set mixes reindeer and Santa with a red contrast trim; its listing offered adult sizes up to 3XL, kids to 12-13Y and both pet sizes when we read it, though 6-9M was out. The green fleece set uses Santa and candy canes on a deep green base and is 100% polyester fleece, according to its description. Its kids' sizes stop at 8-9Y, so it is a better fit for younger families. If you like an older, card-style Santa, see our note on vintage Santa pajamas. Character Santas, such as cartoon pups in Santa hats, are covered in our guide to character Christmas pajamas.

Gnomes, Tomte and Nisse: The Scandinavian Story Behind Gnome Christmas Pajamas

The bearded gnome with a hat over his eyes is newer to American Christmas decor than to Scandinavia. In Swedish folklore, The Local explains, the tomte "watched over a farmer's house and barn at night" and was pictured as a stern, small old man. The Farmers' Almanac describes the same farm spirit, often in a red cap, and the custom of leaving him a bowl of porridge with butter on Christmas Eve so the farm would prosper. Norway and Denmark call him the nisse.

The friendly Christmas version is easier to date. Viktor Rydberg published his poem "Tomten" in 1881, and the illustrator Jenny Nyström drew the figure. According to The Local, Rydberg asked her to make the tomte gentler than her first fierce version, with her own father as the model. The result, a red-hatted tomte with a sack of gifts, displaced the older Yule Goat as the figure who brought Swedish children their presents.

A lot of what circulates online about gnomes, such as rules about where to place them or what each hat color means, has no source we could find, so we leave it out.

Gnome prints suit a family that already decorates in a Scandinavian or farmhouse style, and they suit adults who find Santa too childlike. Our gnome christmas pajamas include two quite different takes, shown below:

• Gnome and plaid, red. A gnome-print top with red and black checked pants, according to its description, so it combines this section with the plaid one. When we read it, adult sizes ran from S to 2XL, kids from 2Y to 12-13Y and babies from 3-6M to 12-18M, with an L(Pets) bandana.
• Gnome print, white. Its title calls it a gnome print, and its description lists Santa, reindeer and elves among the designs, on a white base with a Henley-style collar and a drawstring waist with pockets on the adult pants. It reached 3XL in adult sizes and 12-13Y for kids, with baby sizes from 3-6M and both S(Pets) and L(Pets).

Both listings describe their kids' and babies' pieces as flame-resistant and include a pair of buffalo plaid socks with each pajama set, pet sizes excepted. Check each family member's size before you plan the photo.

Snowmen and Christmas Trees: Two Prints That Outlast December

The snowman

People have built snowmen for a very long time, but the dates are slippery. The author Bob Eckstein, who wrote a history of the snowman, told Fox Weather that the earliest image he found sat in the margins of a 14th-century book of hours, and he points to the "Miracle of 1511," when people across Brussels made snow figures, many of them political. Different interviews give different years for that manuscript, so we give the century rather than a date.

The modern, friendly snowman is much easier to pin down. PBS's American Experience reports that Gene Autry recorded "Frosty the Snow Man" in 1950, written by Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins, and that a 30-minute animated special followed in 1969. That special, PBS notes, is often credited with fixing the picture of a proper snowman in American minds.

For pajamas, the snowman's big advantage is that it is a winter print, not a Christmas Day print. A set covered in snowman christmas pajamas still looks right on a snow day in February. Our range has generic snowmen, such as a green set whose print mixes a Christmas tree, snow globe, snowman and polar bear according to its listing, and officially licensed Frosty the Snowman sets, such as a blue "Chill Out" print whose tops show snowmen in red and white striped scarves.

The Christmas tree

Decorated evergreens have German roots, and the moment the custom spread across the English-speaking world has a clear date. The Victoria and Albert Museum notes that in 1848 Prince Albert commissioned a portrait of the royal family around a decorated tree at Windsor, and that the wood engraving published in the Illustrated London News "helped popularise the German tradition in Great Britain."

Tree prints are the least controversial print in a mixed household. In our experience of family requests, a pattern of small trees draws the fewest objections from older kids and adults, and the print does not depend on a character a child may outgrow. Our Tree Pajamas range includes a dark green all-over tree print with a collared, button-front top, which offered adult sizes up to 4XL when we read it, and a white tree-and-car print that also reached 4XL.

Candy Canes: The Legend, and What Historians Can Actually Date

This is the print with the most famous story and the least evidence. The story goes that in 1670 the choirmaster of Cologne Cathedral handed sugar sticks to restless young singers and had them bent into shepherds' crooks. History.com tells the story and labels it a legend. No document from 1670 has been produced to support it, so we present it the same way: a legend.

What can be said is narrower. History.com reports that candy canes were white for a long time, and that around the turn of the 20th century red stripes and peppermint flavor became the most popular version. The religious meanings often attached to the stripes and the J shape are later interpretations. They may matter to your family, and that is a fine reason to choose the print, but they are not history.

On pajamas, candy canes rarely appear alone. In our range they share the print with gingerbread or Santa: the black gingerbread set at the top of this page, the blue gingerbread set with candy canes, the khaki cookie set and the green Santa fleece. If your child loves candy canes most, pick by which partner print the rest of the family will wear.

How to Pick a Christmas Pajama Print the Whole Family Will Wear

Knowing the stories is fun. Choosing the print is a family negotiation, and these questions settle it faster than scrolling. If you would rather answer a few questions and get a suggestion, try our Christmas pajama print quiz.

1. Who is the hardest person to please? Start with them. A reluctant teenager or partner usually accepts plaid, Fair Isle or an all-over tree print before a large Santa face.
2. When will you wear the set after the 25th? If the answer is "all winter," choose plaid, Fair Isle, snowman, reindeer or trees. Santa and "Merry Christmas" lettering look dated by mid-January.
3. Who needs the extreme sizes? Check the smallest and largest member before you fall for a print. A baby who needs 0-3M, a child in 12-13Y or an adult in 3XL or 4XL will rule out some listings.
4. Is the dog in the photo? Pet pieces in our range are bandanas. Some prints offer S(Pets) and L(Pets), some only L(Pets), and a few have none.
5. How warm is the house? Most sets are a polyester and spandex stretch knit. Fleece is warmer, and the navy reindeer set has a short-sleeve top.
6. Is it mainly for a photo? Dark bases such as black, navy and deep green separate people from a pale wall; white and cream sets need a darker background.

For children's sizes, most of the sets named in this guide describe their kids' and babies' pieces as flame-resistant or fire-resistant, which in the US is one of two allowed routes for children's sleepwear; the other is snug-fitting. Where a listing does not say, read the label on the size you receive, and follow the size chart rather than buying big.

Shop the look

For a family that wants one print from Thanksgiving to February: parents and kids in the red Fair Isle set, which lists sizes from 0-3M for the newest baby up to 12-13Y for older kids, with an L(Pets) bandana for the dog; or, for a lighter look, everyone in the blue gingerbread and candy cane set, which reached 3XL in adult sizes. Each print is one listing, so you choose each member and size on the same page.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between tartan and plaid? In Scotland, tartan has a legal definition: a woven design of two or more alternating colored stripes crossing to form a repeated check. In the US, plaid is the everyday word for checked patterns, and buffalo check is a two-color plaid with large even squares.

Did Queen Elizabeth I really invent gingerbread men? Historian Carole Levin told TIME that Elizabeth I had gingerbread figures made to represent foreign dignitaries and courtiers. We have not seen a primary record, so treat "invented" as a popular simplification.

Where do the names of Santa's reindeer come from? From "A Visit from St. Nicholas," first printed on December 23, 1823, in the Troy Sentinel in New York. Rudolph is not one of the eight named in that poem.

Is the candy cane story about Cologne Cathedral true? It is a legend. No document from 1670 has been shown to support it, and red-striped canes became common only around 1900.

What is a Christmas gnome? It grew out of the Scandinavian tomte or nisse, a farm guardian in folklore who was left porridge on Christmas Eve. The friendly red-capped version dates to Swedish artists and writers of the 1880s.

Which Christmas pajama print can you wear after Christmas? Plaid, Fair Isle, snowman, reindeer and tree prints work through winter. Santa faces and holiday lettering feel seasonal once December is over.

Do the plaid sets come with socks? Many of our family listings include a pair of buffalo plaid socks with each pajama set, but not with pet sizes. Check the listing for the print you choose, because not every description mentions socks.

Each print sells out one size at a time, so the smallest baby size or the largest adult size you need may go before the rest of the listing does. Pick the print first, then check every family member's size on that page before you order.

About this article

Written and fact-checked by the PatPat Editorial Team. How we research, source and review what we publish is set out on our editorial standards page.

Method. Product details, prints, materials and in-stock sizes were read from PatPat product pages in November 2026. PatPat is the seller of these pajamas, and we did not wear-test any garment. The history in each section comes from the sources below, which we opened and read in November 2026; where a story could not be traced to a dated record, we say so. The "choose it if" suggestions and the print questions are editorial judgment, not research findings.

Sources. Tartan definition: The Scottish Register of Tartans, FAQ. Buffalo check: Woolrich, The Birth of an Icon. Gingerbread: TIME, gingerbread men history; National Geographic, gingerbread. Reindeer poem: Academy of American Poets, A Visit from St. Nicholas. Santa: American Battlefield Trust, The Man Behind "Merry Old Santa Claus". Tomte: The Local Sweden; Farmers' Almanac, the Christmas gnome. Snowman: Fox Weather, the origin story of the modern snowman; PBS American Experience, Finding Frosty. Christmas tree: Victoria and Albert Museum, The magic of the tree. Candy cane: History.com, candy canes. Children's sleepwear routes: CPSC, Children's Sleepwear.

Last updated 7 November 2026 · Next review November 2027