The present red-robed figure of Father Christmas is a combination of three traditions: Christian, Pagan and commercial. The latest addition to the Father Christmas legend came as recently as 1939 with “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer”.

On the Christian side, Father Christmas is S Nicholas, an old man who was Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor in the fourth century. Although he was bad-tempered, he was kind-hearted and became the patron saint of children. Up to the nineteenth century, pictures showed S Nicholas distributing gifts to children wearing not a Santa Claus outfit but bishop’s vestments.

The Pagan Father Christmas was a more sinister figure, connected in southern Europe with the god Saturn and with fertility rites. There were also Nordic legends of a mysterious personality who appeared in midwinter. The Lapps had the “Yule Swain”, an 11 foot high giant who rode around on a goat on the days before Christmas.

The present stereotype of Santa Claus, a jolly gentleman with a white beard, red robe and sledge with reindeer, was a nineteenth-century American invention, the definitive pictures being drawn by the commercial artist Thomas Nast (1840-1902 AD). Around Nast’s Santa Claus gathered a sub-Christian theology that he was a universal spirit of love and goodwill. The New York Sun printed every Christmas for half a century the seme reply to a little girl who had written in to ask if Santa Claus really existed.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. I and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.

According to European customs, especially in France, the Netherlands and Hungary, S Nicholas had distributed gifts to good children on his feast day, 8 December. Accompanying him on his rounds was an assistant with a birch rod. Children who had been naughty during the year got a whipping instead of presents. The new Santa Claus was transferred to Christmas Eve, and gave presents to all children, good and bad. A quite separate tradition of Christmas gifts was that of masters rewarding their servants and other people of inferior status. The recipients carried around “boxes” into which employers were expected to drop coins. So, 26 December was called “boxing day”.