Contrary to what some believe, Santa Claus was not created by the Coca-Cola Company, but rather was a combination of many myths and legends, cultures and influences.

Snopes confirms that the myth is just that. However, in the spirit of the holiday we have provided a brief history of Jolly Old St Nick.

The American version of Santa Claus was brought to New York by 17th century Dutch settlers. They called him “Sinter Klaas.” The name “St. A Claus” appeared in the American press as early as 1773. But it was Washington Irving who, in 1809, first popularized Saint Nicholas with his History of New York, published under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. Irving described a Claus who rode horseback and arrived each “Eve of Saint Nicholas.” Fourteen years later Clement Clarke Moore penned The Night Before Christmas and gave solidity to the tale with names for reindeer, a distinctive laugh and winks, as well as the famous “lays his finger aside of his nose” (taken directly from Irving’s 1809 description).

As descriptive as their words were, no images adorned their pages, and so, Irving and Moore left the reader great latitude to interpret the likeness of father Christmas. Crafting Santa’s likeness would be the task of illustrator Thomas Nast, who from the 1860s through the 1880s illustrated the covers of the Harper’s Weekly Christmas issues, as pictured here. Adding such details as Santa’s North Pole workshop and his list of children naughty and nice, Nast depicted a rotund, human-sized Santa Claus, rather than the elf of Moore’s poem.

Then in 1931, Illustrator Haddon Sundblom created a series of Santa Claus ads for Coca-Cola. Sundblom’s Santa image would be an updated, slightly more modern version of the character created by Nast. The popular magazine and billboard ads help to establish Santa’s grandfatherly image and standardize his Coca-Cola inspired red and white attire as well as the red and green color scheme we now associate with Christmas. However, as we can see by this timeline, the legend of a Coca-Cola created Santa is far from true. Coca-Cola played a large part in crafting our view of Santa, yet different customs from all over the Northern Hemisphere have come together over the years to create the jolly white bearded man.

Oh, and his shiny, red-nosed reindeer friend Rudolph? He was invented in 1939 by an advertising writer for the Montgomery Ward Company.

Merry Christmas to all.