Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
Interestingly, in Switzerland, we saw them as two distinct, but kind of similar figures, when I was a kid. There was the guy from TV (TV was almost entirely dubbed American TV), who we knew as "The Christmas Man" (Weihnachtsmann). He has a flying sleigh, comes on Christmas and brings gifts. He lives at the north pole with a race of kobolds who build his gifts (they arent' elves. Clearly. Elves are entirely different. Elves fly. (I think my only context for elves at that point was Peter Pan, where the version of the book I had read to me translated "fairy" as "elf".)
Then there's Santa Claus (Samichlaus), who's a different, but similar figure. Dresses a lot alike, at least. He lives "nearby in the forest" (We could go visit his cottage! It was really magical!). He comes to your house on December the Sixth, reads you a list of what you did well and what you did wrong this year and then hands you a small bag of sweets. He doesn't have a flying sleigh, he walks with a donkey or horse who carries his bag of gifts. He also doesn't have elves, he has a single grim servant in a black cloak who always threatens to beat up or abduct "bad" kids, but never does.

I remember it taking me years to really figure out that they were supposed to be the same guy.
Actually they are not. In Belgium and the Netherlands we also have two figures. We have 'sinderklaas' (Saint Nicholas) who comes on december 6th with presents and then you have Santa Claus on Christmas (who is a lot less prevalent here).

Actually the way I've understood it is that Santa Claus is a hybridization of figures like Saint Nicholas and Grandfather Frost and some others. When immigrants moved to the US, they took their own figures with them and in the course of time a hybrid figure emerged, which is what we now know as Santa Claus.