Mind, all the Santa Claus, Saint Nicholaus, Sinterklaas (in name if not always as a character) are all variations of the original saint, St Nicholas who probably did not spell his name any way like that either.

THe resulting character combines probably a dozen aspects of folktraditions from various parts of (mostly I assume) Europe.

It is kinda curious to watch how some places recombine Santa into existing traditions that he in part originated from. I think the Dutch now have both a St Nicholas and Sinterklaas visiting in december just at different times?

In Finnish he is known as the "Christmas Ram" which makes no sense at all until you figure out that the modern Santa has effectively entirely replaced an older figure that IIRC is more akin to the Krampus except for retaining the old name.


I'm sure there are entire humanities departments devoted to the study of how culture travelled and changed this way.

And because I'm already randomly off track I'm gonna mention my favourite weird one, St Lucia's Day celebrated in the Swedish speaking world (it's not a big world) which really owes itself as a thing today more to early 1900s beauty pageants than anything else despite most today think it has ancient tradtions.