When most people are asked who brings gifts for Christmas, their first thought will almost certainly be Santa Claus. But whether to distance themselves from or parody Santa-related Christmas cliches or to show how a Christmas-equivalent holiday plays out in an alien setting, writers may make up a completely new character who brings gifts for the biggest holiday of winter. It may be an Oddball Doppelgänger of Saint Nick, having a few similarities to him like white-trimmed red clothes and a magical sleigh pulled by reindeer or other creatures but otherwise being rather divergent from him. A Santabomination that is sufficiently eldritch as to barely resemble the standard Santa can also count. The original character might be an Alternate Species Counterpart of Santa Claus. Like the regular Santa, it's often left unclear if the character is real or not. The Parody Before Christmas is often used as well.
Santa's Christmas Elves may also be replaced in such situations. Such substitutes may include science fiction choices like robots or aliens to explain how all those toys get delivered, or mundane office workers in a Standard Office Setting to go along with a Commercialized Christmas.
Contrast with Subbing for Santa and Usurping Santa, when a character is explicitly taking the regular Santa's place. See also The Krampus for Santa's demonic counterpart, and Santabomination, where Santa (or his Expy) is an Eldritch Abomination. Not to be confused with Mistaken for Santa, when it's an ordinary person who just happens to look like him.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Chocotto Sister: The titular character is delivered to Haruma's apartment in the first episode by a hot chick riding a flying motorcycle and wearing a Santa hat, who claims she's Santa's messenger. Haruma is as baffled as the audience.
- Combattler V: The Campbellian aliens' true king is Deus. He is an old man who travels in a cart pulled by reindeer. Oddly, the most prominent Campbellian in the show, Garuda, is based on a figure from Hindu mythology.
- Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure has the Santanians, a race of aliens that fly on sleigh-shaped spaceships and deliver presents to other worlds because they like surprising people. The thief Blue Cat once employed Santanians to help her distribute her earnings to the poor.
Comic Books
- The Rick and Morty spin-off comics have Mr. Chimney of the Blumbus Dimension. He's a rotund, more-or-less humanoid figure with six legs and a Santa-like outfit who sees and knows everything, eats lost teenage boys, and isn't allowed within 100 feet of a school. Despite being so weird and creepy, he does save Morty from a family who were going to eat him as part of their Blumbus celebrations.
Comic Strips
- Peanuts: It's a major Running Gag that Linus believes in "the Great Pumpkin" who apparently rises up out of the "most sincere" pumpkin patch to deliver presents on Halloween.
Film
- Santa Buddies features an actual Santa, but also Santa Paws, a talking dog who delivers presents to puppies.
Literature
- In the first Artemis Fowl book, it's mentioned that the true origin of the Santa myth is not Sinterklaas, but a fairy king named San d'Klaas, who attempted to appease mankind by placing a time field over the Earth's surface and delivering presents to people while they slept. It didn't work, and he picked up the epithet "San the Deluded", but his story does give Artemis an idea for how to escape the time field the fairies have trapped him in.
- The Autobiography of Santa Claus: While Nicholas does do gift giving, throughout the years he gains helpers to dispense the gifts, which include King Arthur, Leonardo di Vinci, Theodore Roosevelt, and even Attila the Hun.
- Dilly The Dinosaur: Instead of Santa, a woolly mammoth named Dino Claus (possibly) delivers presents on Christmas Eve. He allegedly lives somewhere called the Great Swamp, and writes down the names of the kids who are too naughty to receive presents in his "Book of Bad Behaviour", which his parents exploit to try to get him to behave in "Dilly and the Book of Bad Behaviour".
- In Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, Arthur Denison visits a mountainous town whose inhabitants receive gifts on Midwinter Eve from the Boon Sloth
, a somewhat forgetful white-furred giant ground sloth.
- Discworld has the Hogfather, the hog-themed Discworld equivalent of Santa who went through considerable in-universe Disneyfication over the ages. Initially starting off in the distant past as a winter death-and-renewal deity placated by bonfires and ritual sacrifices, he later changed into a gift giver who brought people pork products (or bags of bloody bones to naughty children) and eventually toys and treats in the modern day. He still rides a crude wooden sledge carved with pagan symbols and pulled by wild boars, but popular culture now has him in a delicate sleigh pulled by cute domestic pigs (although they still have names like Gouger and Tusker).
Live-Action TV
- In the Doom Patrol (2019) episode "Immortimas Patrol", the mad goddess Immortus has forced the entire world to celebrate a holiday for her, Immortimas, in which people are encouraged to leave offerings of ham to entice her to join their festivities.
- Friends: In "The One With The Holiday Armadillo", Ross has custody of his young son Ben during the holidays. He wants to teach him about Hanukkah, especially since Ben doesn't celebrate it in his main home where he lives with his mother Carol and stepmother Susan, who were raised in Christian households and celebrate Christmas. On Christmas Eve, Ross tries to rent a Santa Suit, but since they're all out, Ross shows up as "the Holiday Armadillo," who delivers presents to all good children in the Southwest and Mexico.
- In the Maid Marian and Her Merry Men episode "The Big Baby", the Sheriff invents a holiday called Bloopy as an excuse to insist the peasants give King John gifts. The central figure is Father Bloopy, who the Sheriff explains in song:
He lives far away in Big Nose Land, with a hundred big-nosed boys,
Who hammer away with their noses all day, to make all the Bloopy toys.
And in his stable he has got sixteen hippopotumuses,
And he harnesses them to a silver sleigh, 'cos he doesn't like using buses.
Toys
- LEGO The Hobbit: The short film "Bard the Bowman The Beginning" shows the wizard Gandalf in a Santa hat sneaking into a young Bard's house and gifting him with his first bow and arrows.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing: Jingle is a black-nose reindeer dressed in a Santa Claus suit who comes to your town on Christmas Eve to give gifts to you and your animal neighbors for Toy Day. He's not actually an animal version of Santa since he mentions he works for Old Saint Nick several times. In some games, he will ask you to help him deliver the toys, provided that you dress up as Santa Claus himself.
- Dragalia Lost: "Dragonyule" has Saint Starfall as the Santa equivalent. However, Saint Starfall never actually appears in the game. Instead, various characters dress up as Saint Starfall and take on the role, as they end up responsible for giving gifts to the people of Grastea.
- In Final Fantasy XIV, there's the Starlight Celebration, with a snowy-bearded captain of a group of Ishgardian knights who led efforts to shelter thousands of orphaned children from the Coerthan winter in defiance of Ishgardian law. He snuck these children into the barracks in the jackets of the soldiers' scarlet uniforms. The children saved by this man grew up to pay this kindness forward, wearing similar uniforms to distribute gifts to children on the coldest week of the year. The captain and his knights have since been mythologized as the Saint of Nymeia and "the Saint's little helpers", bringing presents to children and ferrying their hopes and prayers to Nymeia, goddess of the stars and fate.
- Pokémon: Delibird, first introduced in Pokémon Gold and Silver, is an Ice/Flying type that resembles a red-and-white rockhopper penguin that fills in the traditional job of the Western Santa Claus by delivering presents to good children and coal to bad children. It keeps the presents in its tail, which looks like Santa's bag, and it can fly to deliver these presents (despite, you know, being a penguin). In the games, Delibird is something of a Joke Character, but in the anime and Pokémon Adventures? Not so much. And that's not even getting into its Bad Santa Future Badass counterpart Iron Bundle from the Paldea region.
- In contrast to previous games which had the actual Santa, The Sims 4 instead has "Father Winter" who shows up during "Winterfest", and wears blue with an ushanka rather than red with a bobble-cap. Multiple "Father Winters" exist, with the first to appear always being named Clement Frost.
- World of Warcraft has Greatfather Winter, who presides over the Feast of Winter Veil. The Alliance version is a dwarf, the Horde version an orc, both bearded and with Santa-esque outfits.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner has the "Dethemberween Thnikkaman", a variant of the Thnikkaman (himself a Paper-Thin Disguise alter ego of Bubs) associated with Decemberween. He borrows people's hedge clippers (which in Homestar's case is tucked under his pillow like teeth left for the Tooth Fairy), puts blank cassettes and discs in their slippers, gives people discount travel packages, and flies around in a battered van.
Web Original
- A couple of SCP Foundation Christmas Stories, The 12 Days of Site-87's Christmas and Happy Howlidays, imply that Dr. Wondertainment either is Santa Claus or is filling in for him for the Foundation specifically.
Western Animation
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "Holly Jolly Jimmy", Hugh decided to create a "Pule", Portmanteau of "pie" and "Yule" after Jimmy seemingly killed Santa. The new symbol was a pie-delivering duck who brought good pies to good children and mince pies to bad children. Good thing that Status Quo Is God.
- The Amazing World of Gumball: The episode "The Lie" has Gumball making up a holiday to combat the January blues called Sluzzle Tag, a knockoff of Christmas involving a Santa-esque figure known as Sluzzle Dude who comes up through people's toilets to deliver presents. Gumball's description of him is a guy with a big beard, sneakers, and a leather jacket who drives a magic van pulled by Dobermans and has an affinity for Grindcore music.
- The Chowder holiday episode, "Hey, Hey, It's Knishmas!" has Knish Krinkle, a large, caterpillar-like creature in a festive-print body stocking with a humanoid face and blue beard. He gives gifts to people based on how much he likes the "schmingerbread" house they built for him, but, if he doesn't like it, he'll fly into a rage and smash it.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: Instead of celebrating Santa Claus, neighborhood Funny Foreigner Rolf still follows traditions from the Old Country, where the fat bearded witch Yeshmiyek takes the role of both Santa and Krampus—she rewards good children with gifts of meat and cheese, and she boils naughty children in her cooking pot.
- Futurama: Robot Santa Claus was built by MomCorp and was supposed to fly around the world and deliver presents. Due to a glitch in his judgement circuits, however, his standards are impossibly high and he instead flies around every Xmas Eve killing anyone he comes across for being "too naughty". He spends most of the year preparing weapons in his death fortress on Neptune, alongside the enslaved Neptunians that stand in as his elves.
- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a Halloween themed Animated Adaptation of the Peanuts comic strip. Linus believes that on October 31st, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the nicest pumpkin patch, and delivers toys to all the faithful children that believe in him. Linus actually camps out in the town's best pumpkin patch, and Charlie Brown's sister Sally keeps him company. Not because she believes the mythos as much as she's fixated on Linus himself.
- My Little Pony: Best Gift Ever has Aurora, Bori, and Alice (The Gift Givers) who for all intents and purposes, are Equestria's version of Santa Claus. They're reindeer who can run through the air, they oversee and specialize around gift-giving, and they live in a cottage in the extreme north of the world — they're essentially Santa if he was his reindeer instead.
- The Ren & Stimpy Show has the Great Shaven Yak. He comes on "Yak Shaving Day" to deliver presents (shaving scum, mostly) to people who hang dirty diapers from the walls, fill their dad's boots with coleslaw, and leave a pot of shaving cream next to the bathroom sink.
- Rolie Polie Olie has Klanky Klaus. Like everyone else in this show, he is a robot, and he delivers presents during Jingle-Jangle Day. Rather than the North Pole, he lives on another planet called Chillsville.
- Shrek the Halls: In Donkey's "Night Before Christmas" parody, Santa is made of waffles, in Puss's, he's a Latin cat like himself who's distracted by his own hat, and in Shrek's, he's a gross ogre named Ogre Claus. Only Gingy depicts an actual Santa in his poem.
- There's Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, in South Park, the embodiment of the spirit of Christmas, who brings the gift of good cheer and the Christmas spirit.
