Santa Claus

Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, Papá Noel (Weihnachtsmann in German, Noel Father in Spanish, Papai Noel Noel Father in Portuguese, or simply Santa) is a mythical character in North American, British, Brazilian, Dutch and Flemish, and other cultures who gives presents to children on Christmas Day.

He is a variant of a European folk tale based on the historical figure Saint Nicholas, a bishop from present-day Turkey, who supposedly gave presents to the poor, explaining the source of Christmas presents given to children on Christmas Day.

Father Christmas is a well loved figure in the UK, and is now interchangeable with Santa Claus, though the two had quite different origins. The term Santa is as widely used and understood by UK children as Father Christmas.

Conventionally Santa Claus is portrayed as a kindly, round-bellied, merry, bespectacled man in a red suit trimmed with white fur, with a long white beard. On Christmas Eve, he rides in his flying sleigh lifted by reindeer from house to house to give presents to children. To get inside the house, he comes down the chimney and lands in the fireplace. During the rest of the year he lives together with his wife Mrs. Claus and his elves who serve as his toy production staff. His home is usually given as either the North Pole in the US and Canada.

The modern Santa Claus is a composite character made up from the merging of two quite separate figures:

The first of these is Saint Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century bishop of Myra in Lycia, a province of Byzantine Anatolia that is now in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they wouldn’t have to become prostitutes. He was born at Patara, province of Lycia, Asia Minor. He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. In Europe he is still portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes.

The second character is Father Christmas, which remains the British name for Santa Claus. Father Christmas dates back at least as far as the 17th century in Britain, and pictures of him survive from that era, portraying him as a well-nourished bearded man dressed in a long, green, fur-lined robe. He typified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, and was reflected in the “Spirit of Christmas Present” in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

Portions of this article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Santa Claus”.