Be forewarned, this is not the story your parents read to you about Santa Claus; it will contradict much of the myth and is definitely not suitable for young children. After researching this subject for more than twenty-five years; I've drawn starkly different conclusions about the true inspiration for the character. Rather than the jolly old fellow we’re familiar with, milquetoast and cartoonish; evidence suggests it is actually based on the conflated story of Kristof Kringle and his son Niklaus; real life pagans that lived many hundreds of years ago.
Contrary to the fantasy, Kristof’s life was more swashbuckling, even controversial; especially compared to the sugar coated and fictionalized version, the actual story conflicts with the modern legend. The adult nature of the tale may be off-putting to prudish readers; the truth, which goes against what we’ve been raised to believe, might be hard to accept. But despite the protagonist’s character flaws and the initial disappointment from the dismantled folklore; I would argue that the actual account is even more inspirational than the fairy-tale. The men ultimately overcame human weaknesses and against impossible odds demonstrated their better selves in a classic tale of redemption.
My quest to discover the true etiology was made more difficult by the scarcity of available documentation; few were produced and less survived, the ones that did are locked in a vault, hidden somewhere in the catacombs of the most powerful ecclesiastical institution in the world. Unsurprisingly, the countless requests for access to the archived materials were summarily dismissed; interestingly though, their existence was never denied. I expected the religious organizations to systematically renounce my conjectures; especially the accusations that they purposefully subverted the truth of the unsanctioned magic to fit their gospel.
I went to great lengths to unearth the truth; by fate and serendipity I found correspondences in the public record, that when cross referenced with the historical data and some independent accounts from well respected authors, allowed me to piece together enough proof to write this saga. Ironically, the most significant evidence was gathered from the genealogical databases which were provided by the same churches; I was able to access those records online, they were available to the public for a fee.
