"Our present-day North American Santa Claus is a surprisingly recent incarnation of the Christmas gift-giver. In 1823, Clement C. Moore, a professor of classics and theology, published his famous poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas. Moore based much of his jolly old elf on the figure of Sinterklaas, the St. Nicholas of his Dutch-American neighbours.
But Moore was also a keen scholar of Norse and Teutonic mythology, and borrowed from Scandinavian legends elements of the jovial trickster who presided over northern midwinter festivals."
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