Why green and red are the definitive Christmas colors?
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It comes from the Celtic people who used to decorate with red and green holly – holly was supposed to keep things beautiful during the winter and signify the coming spring/new life. The first recorded representation of using the color scheme was in a 14th century church where the partitions were painted red and green around Christmas time.
But then, the guy who Coca-Cola hired to drew Santa took the red and ran with it. He’s actually the reason Santa is depicted the way he is (jolly, big man with red suit and white hair/beard). Before that, he was not as big and his attire varied in color.
Edit to add: some people are really mad that I was incorrect about Coca Cola pioneering the red color lol I went on a deep dive about Santa because I have nothing better to do today and the red color of the suit was cemented in this order:
-sometimes being portrayed in red or red accents in historic images -> Twas the Night Before Christmas poem in 1823 -> Nast took that depiction and solidified it after a few different iterations (including a miniature Santa) -> Coca Cola hired Sondblum and marketed the ever living shit out of this image and it stuck with pop culture.
Santa is an amalgamation of three different European mythological figures/saints and stemmed from winter feast traditions and originally was robed in white (with red accents), blue, green or tan, with red becoming more popular in 17-1800s.
If you want more facts and nuance, I suggest looking further than Wikipedia and doing a deep dive yourself. His ancient self from pre-Chrsitian eras is actually a neat and interesting figure.
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