But St. Nicholas et al. did not start with Christianity - isn't the myth of 'Santa' an amalgam of all kinds of different pagan cultures and traditions? It seems

But St. Nicholas et al. did not start with Christianity - isn't the myth of 'Santa' an amalgam of all kinds of different pagan cultures and traditions? It seems like the whole 'Christmas' holiday is mostly an artifact of the church trying to tie together wide and diverse groups of people under their umbrella. I guess you could use a snowflake or a cornucopia or something as a generic 'winter holiday' thing, and people have been doing that for awhile; "Happy Holidays" usurped "Merry Christmas" decades ago. Or you could use a bevy of emojis representing the holiday's secular roots, but would it have been better if they added emojis for St. Nick's mythological companions like Belshnickel, Zwarte Pete, and Krampus next to the santa hat? Maybe if they really wanted to polish this essential feature for production use, they could have different emoji sets for different holidays and a modal to choose which one you wanted. I dunno, I feel so bad for people who haven't had the drive to do anything fun or playful beaten out of them yet. "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear."