The creation of Father Christmas

Folklore, religion, and revelry have combined over the centuries to create the festive figure so central to our celebrations today

- ETTIENEIL-GALLACHER

It’s fitting that our image of Father Christmas is of a portly old cove bursting out at the seams, because he is in fact two figures squeezed into one vast festive red onesie. Until the late 19th century, Father Christmas and Santa Claus were quite separate ideas. For while Father Christmas was borne of the English allegorical personification of the festive season of Sir Christëmas, which first appeared in a 15th-century carol, he was predated by several centuries by the European Christian figure of St Nicholas – or Sinterklaas, as the Dutch called him.

The cult of St Nicholas developed in Europe after his relics were brought to Italy in 1087. But St Nicholas himself was very different to his cosy descendent; far from being a rotund, genial old softie, he was a slim, adamantine polemicist from Patara in Asia Minor in modern-day Turkey, who as Bishop of Myra was imprisoned in Constantinople for his faith, under the Great Persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, only to be released by Constantine.