Father Christmas and Santa Claus are today regarded as the same entity – a jolly, present-giving legend of Christmas – but they evolved from separate traditions.
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In England, the personification of Christmas began to emerge in the 16th century to extol the joys of food and drink in the Yuletide period. In 1616, playwright Ben Johnson's Christmas, His Masque included the bearded figure of 'Christmas' as a figure to counter Puritan attempts to curb festive excess and the figure of 'Old' or 'Father' Christmas became a source of resistance when Parliament, triumphant in the Civil War, banned Christmas in 1647.
With the Restoration in 1660 and in the following 200 years, Father Christmas became established in British popular culture, but more as a spirit of adult fun rather than the avuncular figure beloved by children.
Who was St Nicholas?
For that, we need to turn to St Nicholas, a 4th-century Greek saint from Myra, now in modern Turkey. Legend has it that Nicholas would help those in dire straits including, in one story, a man so poor he was about to sell his daughters into slavery. To save them, the saint threw gold bags down the family's chimney and they landed in the girls' stockingsthat were drying by the fire.
By the Middle Ages, the legend of St Nicholas' generosity had spread across Europe and taken particular hold in the Netherlands, where St Nicholas Markets sprang up and gift-giving took place on St Nicholas' Day (6 December).
St Nicholas/Sinterklaus was depicted wearing red bishop's robes. When Dutch settlers founded New Amsterdam (later New York) in the 17th century, they found consolation in nostalgia about their homeland and especially the kindly Sinterklaus. From this beginning in what would become New York, the modern image of Santa/Father Christmas emerged and developed like a painting, with different artists adding layers and elements over time.
Why is Father Christmas red?
However, it was not the Coca-Cola company that created the final image, as popular myth suggests. The famous advertising campaign featuring Santa Claus only appeared in the 1930s. As early as 1809, writer Washington Irving was retelling the old Dutch stories in his History of New York, noting that Sinterklaus delivered presents from a flying wagon. A poem of 1821 gave 'Santa Claus' a red coat, sleigh and reindeer.
But it was American cartoonist Thomas Nast who cemented the recognisable festive figure of a cheerful, philanthropic cherub in his illustrations of 'Merry Old Santa Claus' from 1860s onwards. Ideas swiftly flowed back and forth across the Atlantic and the generous, kindly character of Santa Claus fitted neatly with Victorian values of family and charity and blended with the image of Father Christmas.
By the 1880s the two were virtually interchangeable and have remained so ever since.
