Today, everyone thinks of Father Christmas, or Santa Claus as a jolly, plump, red-suited gentleman, but this is really quite a recent idea.

Santa Claus has developed from the stories told about St Nicholas, a Christian bishop living in (what is now) Turkey in the fourth century AD.

St Nicholas had inherited a great deal of wealth and was known for giving it away to help the needy. After his death, the legend of St Nicholas spread. His name became Sint-Nicolaas in Dutch, or Sinter Klaas for short which then turned into Santa Claus.

The story of how St Nicholas put bags of gold into a stocking is probably where the custom of having a tangerine or satsuma at the bottom of your Christmas stocking came from. If people couldn’t afford gold, some golden fruit was a good replacement - and until the last 50 years oranges were quite unusual fruits and a special treat.

In January 1863, the magazine Harper’s Weekly published the first illustration of St Nicholas by Thomas Nast. In this he was wearing a ‘Stars and Stripes outfit.

Over the next 20 years, Thomas Nast continued to draw Santa every Christmas, and his works were very popular. This is when Santa really started to develop his big tummy and the style of red and white outfit he wears today.

Nast designed Santa’s look on some historical information about Santa and the poem ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’. During Victorian times St Nicholas was pictured wearing a range of colours, green, blue and brown fur, but he was also pictured in his Bishop’s red robes.

It was the introduction of Santa to Coca-Cola advertising that really fixed the idea that Father Christmas, as he became known, was a jolly gentleman with a white beard and wearing a red suit.

In 1995 they also introduced the ‘Coca-Cola Christmas truck’ in the ‘Holidays are coming’ TV adverts. The red truck, covered with lights and with the classic ‘Coke Santa’ on its sides is now a famous part of recent Christmas history.

The real Father Christmas will be visiting Ross in advance of the big day in a special Ross tradition that has been running for many years. Nowadays, many of the parents bringing their children to meet Father Christmas in the Market Place first met him when they were children. He will be in Ross on Saturday, December 16th.