‎'Tis the season for problems of reference

We in the English speaking world use Santa Claus, Father Christmas and Kris Kringle as three interchangeable names for the same non-existent person, responsible for teaching children not to trust their parents. Then we have Saint Nicolas, which is also often used synonymously with these, but sometimes also refers to an alleged historical figure who lacked the reindeer and sled, the penchant for cookies and milk, omniscience about whether we've been bad or good, the elf workshop at the North Pole, and pretty much all of the fun stuff.

What I find interesting about this is the question of how we could possibly determine that at least the first three of these names refer to the same person if that person doesn't exist. To compound this problem, consider the fact that in the Christmas traditions of Germany and some other places, the etymological equivalents of these names do not all refer to the same non-existent person, but to different non-existent people! There's Nikolaus (corresponding etymologically to either Saint Nicolas or its derivative Santa Claus) who delivers presents via a donkey on the night of the 5th/6th of December, often leaving chocolates or other small items in your shoes (not the most hygienic place to store chocolate in my opinion). He dresses in a very ostentatious red and has a white beard suspiciously like what English speakers associate with Santa Claus, but Nikolaus prefers a more saintly looking hat and carries a shepherd's staff.

Manneken Pis in Brussels irreverently
dressed as one or more people who don't exist

There is also the Christkind (corresponding etymologically to Kris Kringle), which literally translates as 'Christ Child', but instead of a jolly fat man, the Christkind is essentially a baby Jesus with wings, who brings gifts on the evening of the 24th of December when children aren't looking. What's more, he makes his delivery early enough to allow everyone to open their presents before going to bed on the 24th! Originally a protestant tradition, the Christkind was consciously established by Luther to compete with Nikolaus, who was a Catholic saint and therefore a heretical form of fun.

Then there's the Weihnachtsmann (literally the 'Christmas man'), but to explain his origins, a slight detour is required into evolutionary theory. When environmental conditions are favorable, numbers of a species will increase and spread out over a wider area. When conditions worsen again, these habitats can shrink leaving pockets of different sub-populations isolated from one another. Without any genetic mixing between these isolated sub-populations, they can come to diverge from each other over evolutionary time as have the distinct species of finches on the islands of the Galapagos. When environmental conditions allow members of these sub-populations to spread out again, the different variants can come into contact with their long-lost cousins and come to live alongside each other as distinct species.

Something like this appears to have happened with the tradition of Nikolaus, which spread far and wide, but mutated on distant shores to include the more efficient reindeer-based method of gift delivery, the remodeled hat and the other things. Presumably because of the cultural success of the American entertainment industry, this mutated form has migrated back to Germany where it exists alongside the original Nikolaus as a distinct species of Christmas man, the Weihnachtsmann, competing with the Christkind to deliver presents on the evening of the 24th.

These men of Christmas raise a number of interesting issues about the reference of names, which also frequently arise in religion. Do Christians, Muslims and Jews all worship the same god? The desire for peaceful coexistence might lead us to hope so, and we know that historically these religions all developed from the same Abrahamic tradition, but sharing a common tradition hasn't stopped Nikolaus and the Weihnachtsmann referring to different beings.