Top Ten Things You Didn't Know About Santa
Christmas Countdown time! Santa, St. Nicholas, Father Christmas. They're all the same? Think againFind out about this and nine other facts that you probably didn't know about Santa.
Source: Lots of research and I tell you what, I put a lot of effort into this list looking all over the internet for the best facts I could find. I don't just rush lists out there like the more popular users. No, I put effort into my lists. Quality over quantity as I say.
Before Santa, there were Father Christmas and St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas was the original conception of a "Santa"-like being. He was a real-life person renowned for his extreme generosity towards poor children.
Father Christmas was an English version of the concept who usually wore green, had a long beard, and wasn't fat like Santa. He came around in about 1435, before many other versions such as Kris Kringle, who evolved into today's Santa, no thanks to Coca Cola. Look further to see more on that.
St. Nicholas, the original idea for a Santa-like being, was a real person who lived in Turkey for most of his life. Did Santa ever live at the North Pole? You decide.
Even Rudolph. The thing is, these older reindeer which pull his sleigh all have their antlers still intact at this time. This means the reindeer must be female, as theirs fall off in summer instead of early December like the males. Santa, you've got some naming issues, my friend!
That man was St. Nicholas, and he was renowned for his extreme generosity towards a poor family by tossing a bag of gold through their window at night.
The Turkish version, St. Nicholas, wore red, and this was before Coca Cola. The design of Santa came from the British version known as Father Christmas, who wore green and was rather skinny compared to the fat American version of Santa. It was popularized, but the image wasn't exactly created by Coca Cola. Actually, the Santa design we have now was created by Thomas Nast back in 1860. This was quite a while before Coca Cola did their adverts on him.
Santa Claus must visit an estimated 842 million homes and travel 221 million miles to reach every child's home on Christmas Eve. This feat requires him to travel at a speed of 650 miles per second.
To get some perspective on this, the speed of sound is 340.29 meters per second. Santa and his reindeer are 567,150 times faster than the speed of sound, and this is just the lowest estimate.
The different time zones around the world would make it so that he doesn't do it all in 12 hours but at night in each time zone. But he would still need to travel pretty fast.
Some versions, like Father Christmas and the jolly fat man we all know now, had beards. But some versions, like the Dutch one, lacked a beard. Furthermore, the Dutch version was tall and slender on top of not having a beard.
Well, we don't know his net worth, but it would have to be a lot if he was to deliver all those presents to everybody every year. Just think about that. There are over seven billion people in the world. He must be pretty darn wealthy.
Iceland has, in place of Santa, the Yuletide lads: a group of mischievous characters who either pull pranks or, if they're feeling nice, give presents. One of them in particular, named Grýla, is an old woman who will kidnap children if they've been naughty. That's really more of a present for the parents than anything else.
The only bad thing about Iceland.