Christmas is the most popular holiday in the United States. Surveys indicate that 8 in 10 Americans put up Christmas decorations, with Christmas trees, Christmas lights, nativity scenes and likenesses of Santa Klaus being among the most popular. That being the case, many people will be interested to know that scientists now believe they know what Saint Nicholas of Myra looked like.

Nicholas was a Catholic bishop who died on Dec. 6, a.d. 343. Not much is known about the historical Nicholas other than he was an attendee at the First Council of Nicaea, where he supposedly punched Dr. Arius in the face for denying the trinity. Tradition also states that Nicholas gave a poor father money to prevent his daughters from being sold into slavery. Medieval Catholics would pray to Nicholas and exchange gifts every December 6 in celebration of the Feast of Saint Nicholas.

Nicholas was buried in Myra, but a group of merchants moved his bones to the Italian city of Bari after the Seljuk Turks invaded. Using measurements of Nicholas’s skull, a team of scientists led by Cicero Moraes recently produced high-tech images of what they thought the bishop looked like. Moraes’s team concluded that Nicholas had a broad forehead, thin lips and a round nose. Other scientific teams have independently concluded that Nicholas likely suffered from chronic arthritis and a broken nose (a fact that lends some credence to the legends about his fistfight with Dr. Arius at the Council of Nicaea).

Now that science has uncovered some clues about historical Nicholas, many people are likely wondering why he is represented as a portly sprite who lives in the Arctic with an army of elves.

The average American is unaware that Nicholas had absolutely nothing to do with Christmas until centuries after his death. It was not until after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg that he became concerned about people praying to Saint Nicolas. Luther wanted to focus people’s attention on Christmas, so he promoted the Christ child, or Christkindl. Thus, Kris Kringle was born, a hybrid between Jesus and Nicholas who gave gifts on Christmas.

Many Dutch preferred Sint-Nicolaas to Kris Kringle, however, so it took time before people accepted the Christ child (Kris Kringle) and Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) as the same being. Meanwhile, the English had a completely different holiday sprite called Father Christmas, based on the god Odin.

Since the Anglo-Saxon people used to worship Odin, Thor, Balder, Loki and the other Norse gods, they merged many of their old Yuletide traditions with Christmas. One of these traditions concerned an event called the Wild Hunt, when Odin would mount his eight-legged horse Sleipnir and lead an army of gods, elves and dwarfs across the winter sky. The Anglo-Saxons left offerings to Odin at Yuletide.

These practices started to die out during the Middle Ages but were revived sometime after the Puritan-controlled government of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas in an attempt to rid England of decadence and popery during the English Civil War. Royalist pamphleteers opposed the Puritans by inventing Father Christmas as a symbol of “the good old days” of feasting and good cheer. They gave him strong Yuletide connotations. Father Christmas was associated with drinking, feasting, holly, mistletoe, wassailing and the Wild Hunt; but it had nothing to do with Nicholas of Myra.

It was the Americans who combined Father Christmas with Nicholas, commercialized the new figure to sell Coca-Cola and spread him around the world. The Santa Klaus merchandise being sold at Walmart is equal parts Trinitarian bishop, baby Jesus and Norse deity—a composite figure who gives gifts like Sinterklaas, observes Christmas like Kris Kringle, and lives in the Arctic like Odin All-Father.

So while Santa Klaus may be a popular folk figure, he has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, who was probably born in September considering that His cousin John the Baptist (who was 6 months older) was conceived shortly after the conclusion of the priestly division of Abijah (Luke 1:5).

The original Nicholas of Myra probably did not know when Jesus was born. A century before Nicholas’s birth, Hippolytus of Rome (a.d. 170-235) wrote that Jesus was born on the winter solstice (December 25 on the Julian calendar) because that day was nine months after he was conceived on the spring equinox (March 25 on the Julian calendar). Historians debate why Hippolytus thought Jesus was conceived on the Spring equinox. The cult of Sol Invictus (the unconquered sun) was growing in popularity in Rome, so Hippolytus was trying to synchronize the Son of God with the Roman sun god.

“Ancient Rome’s pagan holidays have been chained upon a heedless and deceived world,” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in Pagan Holidays—or God’s Holy Days—Which? “These include certain annual holidays—Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, as well as many more, every one a pagan day—everyone used to stimulate the sale of merchandise in the commercial markets. Upon honest investigation, the earnest seeker after truth learns that these days are all of heathen origin and pagan significance.”

This Christmas season, let’s take the new forensic images of Nicholas as an opportunity to study the true history of Christmas and its associated pagan customs. Linking Santa Klaus to a real-life bishop makes him seem Christian, but the real Kris Kringle represents the reborn sun god.

To learn more, read “The Hidden Dangers in Keeping Christmas,” by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.