Santa Claus, the real central character of Christmas, is a blend of several figures. His modern form, a roly-poly old man in a red suit trimmed in white, with big black boots, spectacles, a long white beard, and a ho-ho-ho, came from Coca-Cola's marketing department early in the last century. He was based loosely on the English Father Christmas and the German Kris Kringle. That figure in turn has merged with the early Catholic Saint Nicholas, a churchman known for spreading the wealth to needy members of his community, sometimes throwing sacks of coins through open windows and down chimneys. No biblical basis exists for such a character. He may stand in the modern Christmas crèche, but no one like him appears in the gospel narratives of Jesus' birth. He is one more example of the pagan and unbiblical elements that have been attached to a celebration of Christ on a day that is not His birthday, a celebration that continues because human nature deceives itself into practicing what is enjoyable, whatever its origins.

Santa Claus blends the fourth-century Saint Nicolas with old Germanic and Scandinavian traditions that probably have their roots in Odin worship. His eight reindeer likely derive from Odin's eight-footed horse, Sleipnir. Rudolph, the ninth reindeer, was added in 1939 through Robert L. May's poem written for the Montgomery Ward department store chain, and Santa's modern look came from a Coca-Cola advertising campaign in the 1930s. Like Christmas trees, yule logs, mistletoe, and twinkling lights, Santa has no biblical foundation and hails from paganism, so the Christmas holiday is a mixture of pagan custom and a supposedly Christian observance.

Santa Claus is a product of syncretism, not of Christian worship. The Catholic Church says gift-giving began with Bishop Nicholas, who died in AD 345 and was made a saint in the 1800s. About 750 years later, sailors who idolized him moved his bones from Turkey to Italy, where he supplanted a favor-granting deity called the Grandmother, who filled children's stockings with gifts. His followers exchanged gifts on the anniversary of his death, December 6, and his cult spread to the German and Celtic pagans, many of whom worshipped Woden, a long-bearded god who rode a horse through the heavens each fall. Nicholas and Woden were combined, so Nicholas gained a beard, a flying horse, and winter clothes, and his trip moved to the end of the year. As Catholicism evangelized Northern Europe, it absorbed the cult and moved gift-giving to December 25. Washington Irving satirically wrote of "Santa Claus" in 1809, and Clement Moore's poem added the chimney, sleigh, and reindeer. Thomas Nast supplied the North Pole, workshop, and elves, and a 1931 Coca-Cola campaign completed the figure. Santa is a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol. Like the rest of Christmas, he is a fabrication that cannot make the unclean clean, and nothing about him is righteous.