A figure that immediately comes to mind when thinking about Christmas, Santa Claus is certainly that. That pot-bellied white-bearded grandfather on Christmas night visits to the children to bring them the gifts they want.
But the figure of Santa Claus is more recent than one might think.
In many cultures, there are popular figures of goblins, ghosts or old people, at some point this year, go to reward or punish, depending on how the children behaved during the year.
One of these people in northern Europe, it was St. Nicholas.
Saint Nicholas (270-310 AD), bishop of the Asian city of Myra (in modern Turkey), is remembered in Christian tradition as an old man, very fair, the patron saint of children. As befitting the history of the saint, Saint Nicholas became involved to help a man and his three daughters suddenly disgraced. Not knowing where to get the dowry to marry off three young men, it is said that a father would have thought of prostitutes. St. Nicholas then decided to intervene to help the man desperate to providential gift of three bags of money introduced for three consecutive nights by the fireplace (and here is the myth of the fireplace!), In the house where the three young men were sleeping, thus saving them from a terrible fate. In ancient times, the day of her feast, celebrated Jan. 6 (the day of his death), the good children received gifts, and was said to take them to the saint himself. This tradition is very popular in Northern Europe, and took off in Holland, where the name of the saint became Sinter Klaas.
With the emigration of many Dutch in the New World, the feast gradually spread across the United States, becoming the party of Santa Claus.
Santa Claus lost many of the harsh treatment of St. Nicholas, and became a good man, dressed as a bishop handing out gifts during the night of December 24, January 6 and no more.
In 1823, then, an American writer, Clement C. Moore, decided to collect all the legends and traditions linked to the figure of Santa Claus in a book "A Visit from St. Nicholaus', which outlines the person of Santa as an elf curious passing through fireplaces and arriving in homes thanks to his sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer.
This book, which had a huge global reach, greatly influenced the image of Santa Claus had children, but also help spread the belief in Europe.
The real origin of Santa Claus, as we know, however, is still back, and is due to American cartoonist Thomas Nast, who in 1860 illustrated a cartoon in an American newspaper, drawing Santa Claus as a man (and no longer an elf), dressed in a red suit trimmed with white fur and his pants kept by a big black leather belt, who lives at the North Pole. This image really liked the Coca Cola Company, who decided to use it for its advertising campaigns around the world. In doing so, Coca Cola contributed greatly to spreading the image of Santa Claus as we know from childhood: the nice old man, with rosy cheeks, the belly, the boots blacks and the long white beard.
Over time it spread the idea that Santa Christmas could grant the wishes of children, bringing them what they wanted most, thanks to the letters they have written.
In 1974, three Canadian post office employees in Montreal, having noted the great mass of letters that arrived every year for Santa Claus, they decided to respond to hundreds of children, giving rise to the actual Mail from Santa Claus.
The following year they received more letters, and then more and more, so that in 1983, Canada Post has launched a special mail service only for Santa Claus.
here's the address "official" Santa Claus where gnomes always busy preparing gifts for good children are also able to provide an answer to all the letters
Santa Claus
Post Office, SF 96930 Rovaniemi, Finland
To stay on the subject here is a well known song that talks about Santa Claus:
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