Where did the Santa mythos come from? Why is it generally agreed upon in western society that he’s a fat old man who lives in the North Pole at a workshop with elves and reindeer?
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Santa is an Americanized version of Saint Nicholas, derived from the Dutch version of the name Sinter Klaas. Saint Nicholas was a Roman monk that gave away his worldly possessions (possibly having inherited great wealth) by traveling the Turkish countryside and giving it to those who needed help. His story is almost as old as Jesus, having originated around 250 AD (possibly as late as 400ad). He was so well liked that he was still celebrated when the Catholic church was being reviled in the Protestant Reformation. Celebrating this real person is where we get almost all the Santa related stuff, even the weird stuff because although he was from what is now Turkey, our version of his legends came through the Netherlands and were brought here by the Dutch settling in the Midwest, so he got retroconned to being a bishop from the Netherlands.
The stylized American Santa Claus came from an artist, Thomas Nash, who submitted drawings to a magazine, Harper’s Weekly.
So Santa was real, Christian, and told badly over a thousand years, and almost all our Christmas traditions come from celebrating a bishop that dedicated his life to serving the poor, except for those that got tacked on during the stories journey through Europe.
Edit: Saint Nicholas’s feast day was December 6th, which got combined with the weird idea the Jesus must have been conceived and killed on the same day, December 25th is nine months after Easter, so OBVIOUSLY Jesus was born then. Winter Solstice, Light Festivals, and Saint Nicholas day got all rolled up into Christmas celebrations. When did they decide on December 25th? In the third century, right about when St Nicholas lived. It’s really unclear whether his giving became associated with Christmas, or whether Christmas is associated with giving because of him.
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