Santa Clause at Christmas

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Christmas Eve
Santa Clause
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Santa Claus

St Nicholas, the bishop of a Turkish town called Myra in the early 300s, is the Christian inspiration for the figure of Santa Claus but he’s come a long way in the last 1600 years, and a lot of influences are distinctly non-Christian.
The original St Nicholas was famous for giving to the poor, a particular story being one where he gave money to three daughters to be their dowry so they could marry rather than live on the streets.

St Nicholas, might be described as busy as he is the patron saint of children, prisoners, archers, merchants, pawnbrokers, seamen, lawyers, pharmacists and prostitutes.

In Norse Mythology Odin, at Yuletide would lead the Great Hunt, it was traditional to leave feed for his great eight-legged horse Sleipnir and hence receive his blessing. This tradition survived the Christianisation of the Germanic states and became associated with St Nicholas. The tradition continued, putting out straw and then receiving sweets and candy in return.

This tradition was taken by the Dutch across to the Americas and New Amsterdam where it mutated into the hanging out of stockings at the fireplace – at which point it had become a rather one-sided affair, no longer were the mortals giving to the spiritual to receive a blessing, now they expected to be given something for nothing.
The "coming down the chimney" idea comes from another folktale where a monster was terrorising an area by slithering down the chimney into their homes and eating the children. A holy man managed to tame the beast and forced it to make amends by slithering down chimneys and giving gifts. There are a lot of slightly different versions to this but in one the monster is reformed and recruits goblins, imps and other small supernatural creatures to help him. Hence the Gift Giver and his Elves.

In Dutch "St Nicholas" was corrupted to "Sinterklaas" – hence Santa Claus.

It was the 1823 poem "A Visit from St Nicholas" (now known as "The Night before Christmas") that set the scene for the modern image, it named the eight reindeer and described Santa as "portly". His clothing did not settle into its current image overnight but red became popular from 1885. The modern image of Santa Claus was set in stone by the Coca-Cola company’s Christmas advertising although he’d been used by another company earlier, in 1915.