St. Nicholas, Father Christmas and Santa Claus: Who’s Who

The short answer

They are three different figures who have blended over time. St. Nicholas was a real Christian bishop of the fourth century, remembered for secret generosity. Father Christmas began in England as a personification of the Christmas season itself: feasting, merriment and good cheer, not a gift-bringer. Santa Claus is an American creation of the 1800s that borrowed the saint’s name and gift-giving and dressed it in a new, jolly, fur-trimmed costume. In Britain, Father Christmas and Santa Claus later merged into the figure most people picture today.

• St. Nicholas: bishop’s mitre and vestments; a saint with a feast day, December 6.
• Father Christmas: an English symbol of the season, historically a bearded old man in a long fur-trimmed gown.
• Santa Claus: the American gift-bringer with a sleigh, reindeer and a red suit.

St. Nicholas: the bishop of Myra

Very little is firmly known about Nicholas beyond the fact that he was bishop of Myra, a city in Lycia in Asia Minor (in today’s Turkey), in the fourth century. Franciscan Media gives his traditional dates as 270 to 343. His feast day is December 6, the traditional date of his death, kept by Catholic and Orthodox churches for more than a thousand years.

His best-known legend tells of a poor man who could not afford dowries for his three daughters. Nicholas secretly left a bag of gold at the family’s window on three occasions so that the daughters could marry. That story of anonymous giving is the root of the gift-giving that later attached to his feast. He is honored as a patron of children, sailors and travelers, among others.

In the Netherlands he became Sinterklaas, who arrives around December 6 with gifts. Dutch settlers most likely carried that tradition to the Hudson River valley, which is where the next chapter begins.

Father Christmas: England’s spirit of the season

According to English Heritage, the earliest evidence of a personified Christmas in England is a 15th-century carol featuring “Sir Christëmas,” who is not yet an old man or a father. By 1616 Ben Jonson’s Christmas, His Masque, performed at court, had a character calling himself “old Christmas.”

For centuries this figure stood for celebration rather than presents. When Puritan opposition to Christmas grew around the English Civil War, and Parliament banned Christmas in 1647, Father Christmas became a symbol for those who wanted the old festivities back. A 1658 pamphlet shows him as a white-bearded man in a fur-trimmed gown. Only in Victorian times, as Christmas turned toward family and children, did he become a bringer of gifts.

Santa Claus: made in America

In 1809 Washington Irving’s satirical history of New York pictured St. Nicholas as a pipe-smoking Dutch figure dropping gifts down chimneys. In 1823 the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” usually credited to Clement Clarke Moore, gave him a sleigh pulled by reindeer. From 1863 the cartoonist Thomas Nast drew a rotund, fur-trimmed Santa for Harper’s Weekly, and in 1879 placed him at the North Pole. The name itself drifted from the saint’s Dutch and German forms to “Santa Claus.”

English Heritage notes that Santa Claus likely first appeared in an English story in 1864, and by the 1880s he had almost completely merged with Father Christmas. That is why, in Britain today, the two names usually mean the same person.

How to tell them apart at a glance

• The mitre: a tall, pointed bishop’s hat means St. Nicholas.
• Bishop’s vestments: St. Nicholas again.
• A long, fur-trimmed gown and a white beard: the older English Father Christmas.
• Red suit, fur trim and a sack of presents: Santa Claus, or the merged modern Father Christmas.
• Horns, fur and chains: that’s Krampus, St. Nicholas’s frightening companion in Alpine folklore.

Where to meet all three

At the Yuletide Medieval Festival in Lakeside, St. Nicholas appears in his bishop’s mitre and red vestments, and Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, appears in red velvet and fur. Krampus turns up too. The festival runs December 5-6 and 12-13, 2026, at El Monte County Park. Times for character appearances aren’t published in advance, so ask at the Guest Services booth by the entrance when you arrive.

If you want more time with the saint, St. Nicholas of Myra presides over the St. Nicholas Day Feast alongside King Henry V: Saturdays at 6 pm and Sundays at noon, with seats limited to 100 per day. In 2026, St. Nicholas Day itself, December 6, falls on the first festival Sunday.

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