Although most Christians are really only comfortable with the story that Santa Claus was really ‘St. Nicholas’ (of Turkey), it seems obvious to me that the current mythology behind Santa Claus is at least in part a survival of the pagan Viking belief in Odin. This doesn’t fit well with Santa’s arrival near Christmas, and so, has been fairly well disguised over the years. Odin, the ‘AllFather’ of the Viking (Norse) pantheon would occasionally take human form and leave his comfortable abode in Asgard to mingle with men (and women) in Midgard (the land of men) often as a grey bearded old man. On the Jule (Yule) or the Winter Solstice which is the longest night of the year, he would ride his 8 legged horse Sleipnir across the sky in a great hunt. Children would leave their boots out filled with carrots and straw for Sleipnir to eat, and Odin would reward the children for their kindness by replacing the offerings with gifts or candy.

Odin on Sleipnir
From the 18th century Icelandic manuscript NKS 1867 4 now in the care of the Danish Royal Library.

The Dutch, who settled parts of North America early in this country’s history brought these traditions with them, and we still hang stockings, think of Santa as flying through the sky propelled by a multi-legged power-train, and Santa lives in a cold climate which is much more like the land of the Vikings than the relatively warmer land of Turkey. Also, he looks a heck of a lot more like descriptions of Odin than St. Nicholas (of whom images exist). Also, St. Nicholas was popular in Russia, not Northwestern Europe, though the Russ were Vikings! It’s more likely that aspects of Odin travelled *from* Viking lands *to* Russia to become associated with St. Nicholas than the other way around. These parallels to Odin have become for me more striking recently as I’ve been reading The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland, a fantastic translation of the greatest stories of Norse Mythology (largely taken from Snorri Sturlson’s original transcriptions in the 13th century), retold in modern english (with scholarly endnotes and discussion).