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Santa Claus: Saint Nicholas
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[T]he most influential figure in the shaping of today's generous as loving Santa Claus was a real man. St. Nicholas of Myra (now Turkey), a fourth century bishop. As a champion of children and the needy, he was legendary for his kindness and generosity.
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Notions of Santa Claus (... called Father Christmas, Pere Noel, Jultomten, Kriss Kringle, and many other names) are purportedly based on Bishop Nicolas of Smyrna, who lived during the fourth century in what is now Turkey, and who was later sainted. Legends of Saint Nicholas, especially those concerning his habits of secretive gift-giving and extraordinary generosity to children, eventually spread around the world. Many of these stories first came to America with the early Dutch settlers, who knew the great philanthropist as "Sinter Klaas."
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The name Santa Claus evolved from Nick's Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas (Dutch for Saint Nicholas). In 1804, John Pintard, a member of the New York Historical Society, distributed woodcuts of St. Nicholas at the society's annual meeting. The background of the engraving contains now-familiar Santa images including stockings filled with toys and fruit hung over a fireplace. In 1809, Washington Irving helped to popularize the Sinter Klaas stories when he referred to St. Nicholas as the patron saint of New York in his book, The History of New York. As his prominence grew, Sinter Klaas was described as everything from a "rascal" with a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, and yellow stockings to a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a "huge pair of Flemish trunk hose."
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Santa Claus (... known as Father Christmas, in some countries as Saint Nicholas) is thought by some to be a folk myth explaining the source of Christmas presents given to children on Christmas Day. Conventionally, he 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 sleigh (pulled by reindeer) from house to house to give presents to children alike. During the rest of the year, he lives at the North Pole together with his elves. One of Santa Claus' reindeer, Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer, has been immortalized in a song which is frequently played at Christmas.
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In his book Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus, writer Jeremy Seal describes how the commercialization of the Santa Claus legend began in the 1800s. "In the 1820s he began to acquire the recognizable trappings: reindeer, sleigh, bells," said Seal in an interview.[35] "They are simply the actual bearings in the world from which he emerged. At that time, sleighs were how you got about Manhattan."
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For the Dutch it is quite clear where the term Santa Claus comes from. It is just a degeneration of the Dutch word "Sinterklaas". Sinterklaas, or St. Nicholas, is a Dutch festivity for children. St. Nicholas is an exclusively Dutch thing, the Germans do know about it from a historical perspective but Holland is the only place where it is really celebrated still. For small children St. Nicholas eve is more important than Christmas (yes the Dutch celebrate Christmas eve with Santa as well, but it is more for the older children and grownups). On the evening of each 5'th of December St. Nicholas celebrates his Birthday, which is actually on the 6'th, by bringing presents to every child which has been nice (so in practice to all children).
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Saint Nicholas