Have You Always Wondered?

A Brief History of Santa

Today is Christmas. The day for family, friends, and others to make their lives better. The main attraction for this popular holiday is the jolly old man himself St. Nick or Santa Claus. Where did the jolly old man come from, where is his supposed location, and then conclusion. As all of you should know the current Santa Claus originated in the States. The first ever time our current Santa has been written was in the 1820's but Santa wasn't the huge overweight old man, he was originally an elf, this is where the "Santa goes down chimneys" story came from, since Santa was an elf he could've fit in chimneys to enter houses. But when this tale was made Santa wasn't Santa, he was St. Nick. So that's where he came from in the States. But before that the characters that influenced Santa mostly came from Northern Europe mainly in Great Britain and Scandinavia. Since most of these areas can get extremely cold and dark between December 22- December 26 the people obviously made fictional characters to keep their mood up during such terrible weather. The main characters that influenced the making of Santa was St. Nick in the Netherlands which is similar to our Santa but St. Nick wears red Bishop clothing and gives presents to Dutch children during early December. In Dutch, St. Nick is called Sinterklaas. The other character is Father Christmas from the United Kingdom, but unlike Santa Claus or Sinterklaas, Father Christmas wears green clothing and doesn't give presents to the good boys and girls and instead focuses in feast and celebration. Father Christmas is most famous for his appearance in the Christmas story/Christmas movie(s), the Christmas Carol, as Father Christmas is the Ghost of Christmas Present, one of the characters that gives Scrooge a love for Christmas through fear or no fear. So when the UK made colonies in the North American east coast and many immigrants from other European nations and became a small population minority of the 13 Colonies of British America, and with those immigrants also comes their culture, so the Christmas culture combined so much that eventually the current Santa Claus was born. So what is St. Nick and Father Christmas doing now? Well St. Nick is still doing his job in the Netherlands not losing any popularity. But Father Christmas has almost completely disappeared from British culture as Santa replaced Father Christmas making a majority of Brits to forget Father Christmas' existence. So now an international dispute is between a handful of countries that claim that Santa Claus is in their nation. In the 1890's his home was officially in the magnetic north pole but now the location of the magnetic north pole is in the ocean off Canada's coast. Because of this, Canada claims that Santa lives somewhere in the territory of Nunavut between the current magnetic north pole location and Greenland. Afterwards, Canada gave Santa a post code and officiall Canadian citizenship. The U.S disagrees saying somewhere in the middle of Alaska not that far from a small town. Denmark claims that Santa is in Greenland, an autonomous Danish colony. Norway claims that Santa is in their northern islands. But believe me or not but Finland says Santa lives in their country, in an exact location, in the Arctic Circle, and if you go do this location there is Santa in his workshop with his elves or someone pretending to be Santa with his elf companions. Well now you know where the jolly old man comes from. Merry Christmas everybody.