Who is Santa?
Monday, December 25th, 2006
On the 6th of December a guy who looked a lot like Santa came to my home. He was adamant that he was not Santa, he was Nikolaus! I thought St. Nick was Santa!!!
A bit worried that I was missing something. I had a wee look on Wikipedia.
Santa
Santa Claus is the (mis-)pronunciation of St. Nikolaus brought to America by Dutch imigrants.
St. Nicholaus
is the common name for Bishop of Myra, who had a reputation for secret gift-giving.
Father Christmas
The earliest recorded personification of Christmas appears to be Ben Jonson’s creation in Christmas his Masque dating from December 1616… The character continued to appear over the next 250 years, appearing as Sir Christmas, Lord Christmas, or Father Christmas, the latter becoming the most common.
In the Victorian era the two terms Santa Claus and Father Christmas were merged as
Santa arived from America.
Christ Kind
Originally invented by Martin Luther, explicitly to discourage the figure of St. Nicholas, it was adopted in Catholic areas during the 19th century, while it began to be gradually replaced by the secular Weihnachtsmann (“Father Christmas”) in Protestant regions.
Kris Kringle
An American (mis-)pronunciation of Christkindl or Christkindel, the German Christmas gift-bringer
There are even more or them running around under such names as Grandfather Frost, Basil of Caesarea, etc…
For some more info to Christmas Worldwide have a look on Wikipedia
via Wikipedia
