> Santa Claus is one of several manifestations of a particular wintertime character, probably originating with the pagan, pre-Christian Germanic and Norse god O

> Santa Claus is one of several manifestations of a particular wintertime character, probably originating with the pagan, pre-Christian Germanic and Norse god Odin. No, 'Santa Slaus' is a distortion of st. nicholas, to which people may or may not have ascribed characteristics of previous 'wintertime characters', as attested to by the further examples of: Sinterklaas, Mikulás, which are both actually not distinct entities, but both 'St Nicholas' in their respective languages. One can make some anthropological case that these are 'manifestations', but in the case of 'Santa Klaus', the core 'identity' is still a 'nicholas figure' to which people may or may not have ascribed other attributes. Lineage and conceptual transactions are important here, esp. since this makes a less appealing narrative to spin, when one is trying to downplay the second-ranked feast day in the official state religion of an empire that viewed itself as the direct and legitimate successor of imperial christian rome. e.g: "It wasn’t really a festival exactly, but more of a somber religious holiday marked by fasting and long church services in Old Church Slavonic" This is what feast days (aka 'festivals') are in orthodoxy. Followed by a 'feast'. So yes, it was a festival, "exactly". Christmas was a major day of important significance in imperial russia, and Fr. Frost was directly promoted as a secular replacement for St. Nicholas, because soviet-style communists are militantly athiest and hostilly anti-religion. The very fact that this figure exists is a testimonial to the need to provide a 'foil' for the people to accept his removal, rather than just some casual 'cultural shift' to a different 'winter character manifestation'. As for people 'forgetting how to celebrate christmas' during soviet times, please recall (whether positively or negatively) that Mr. Putin's mother had him baptized in secret from his communist father and he makes pilgrimages to monasteries regularly. The current high place of the church in russian society did not just originate in some ideological vaccum, many never gave up in the face of overt and militant religious hostility.