The figure of Santa Claus, central to the Christmas tradition, is a modern creation from early last century by Coca-Cola's marketing department, depicted as a jolly, roly-poly old man in a red suit trimmed in white, with big black boots, spectacles, and a long white beard. This character was loosely based on the English Father Christmas and the German Kris Kringle, blending over time with the early Catholic Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas was a churchman renowned for distributing wealth to the needy in his community, often by throwing sacks of coins through open windows and down chimneys. However, no such figure akin to Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas appears in the gospel narratives of Jesus Christ's birth.

Santa Claus blends the fourth-century Saint Nicholas with old Germanic and Scandinavian traditions that likely have roots in Odin worship, and his eight reindeer probably derive from Odin's eight-footed horse, Sleipnir. Santa's modern appearance stems from a Coca-Cola advertising campaign in the 1930s.

The Catholic Church attributes the practice of gift-giving to an early bishop, Nicholas, who died in AD 345 and was later canonized. Nicholas, a senior bishop, convened the Council of Nicaea in 325. Centuries later, sailors who revered him moved his bones from Turkey to Italy, where he replaced a favor-granting deity known as the Grandmother, who filled children's stockings with gifts. In his honor, followers exchanged gifts on the anniversary of his death, December 6. His cult spread to German and Celtic pagans, many of whom worshipped Woden, a figure with a long, white beard who rode a horse through the heavens each fall. Through syncretism, Nicholas and Woden merged, resulting in Nicholas adopting a beard, riding a flying horse, wearing winter attire, and traveling in the last month of the year instead of fall. As Catholicism spread in Northern Europe, it absorbed the Nicholas cult and shifted the gift-giving tradition to December 25. In 1809, Washington Irving satirically wrote of Saint Nicolas as Santa Claus, using his Dutch name. Later, Clement Moore's poem, The Night Before Christmas, expanded on this, adding gift-giving, a chimney descent, a sleigh, and eight reindeer. Thomas Nast, a Bavarian cartoonist, further shaped the modern image of Santa Claus with over 2,000 illustrations for Harper's Weekly, depicting him with a North Pole home and a workshop of toy-making elves. In 1931, the Coca-Cola Corporation finalized this image with a marketing campaign featuring a chubby Santa in a bright red outfit, modeled by artist Haddon Sundblom. Santa Claus emerged as a blend of Christian figure, pagan elements, and commercial icon.