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Narrative
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alt title(s): Father Christmas 
The Jolly Old Elf of Joy and Giving and Product Placement.
Hayate (young): Mr. Santa Claus, why do you never bring presents to me?
Santa Claus: That's because your family is poor.
The mascot of Christmas, developed as an amalgam of the story of St. Nicholas and various other seasonal folk heroes, with many aspects provided by the classic poem A Visit From St. Nicholas (popularly known by its first line, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas), and others popularized by a 1930s advertising campaign for Coca-Cola. The Santa Claus myth is based largely on the Dutch holiday of "Sinterklaas" (a hastily pronounced "St. Nicholas", who comes down the chimney on the 5th of December) and the imagery of the Saint in question carried over to his North Pole incarnation. Note that in several countries in Europe, Sinterklaas and Santa Claus are considered two entirely different characters, each with their own elaborate holiday.
Santa Claus is universally envisioned as a festively overweight old man with a long silver beard, who wears a red suit with white trim and a matching cap, black boots and a vast black belt worn across his belly. He lives at the North Pole (or in Lapland, or somewhere else depending on where you live) in a large workshop staffed by elves (diminutive commercial-friendly elves, not tall proud Tolkien-type elves), which produces toys year round, and every Christmas Eve he sets out in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer named Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen (with an option on a ninth, in the form of Rudolph), and delivers the toys to the children of the world, entering their houses by the chimney, filling their stockings, partaking of whatever food and drink the family left out for him, then leaving how he came in.
Officially, Santa only delivers present to children who have been good and coal to those have been bad, (the idea being that they can burn the coal in their furnaces and avoid freezing over the winter, letting them try again next year). In even older traditions, he carried a bag of switches for whipping the naughty children. In the Netherlands, Sinterklaas is famously accompanied in his work by a servant named Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), which tends to cause headaches with foreigners unfamiliar with the tradition and quite aware of the Unfortunate Implications he represents. (Note that in the Dutch tradition, there is no racist connotation whatsoever to dressing up as a jolly blackface servant and threatening to beat people up. Seriously.) Zwarte Piet himself is a softening of an even earlier tradition in which Saint Nicholas used the services of an enslaved devil. Many other cultures that still look to Santa Claus as an actual saint still include this devil or imagine Santa Claus as doing battle with the devil on Christmas Eve, leading to even more strange reactions from foreigners who wonder what Satan himself is doing in, say, a children's Christmas film.
The traditional explanation for Santa's ability to achieve his annual deliveries is that he is a magical being. However, modern stories dealing with Santa give him access to a combination of magic and supertechnology; some versions even do away with the magic altogether (for example, the Christmas ep of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has his supertech being used by the villains to commit tons of felonies). In addition, modern depictions of Santa's home have his workshop being a fully mechanized factory run by the elves.
Also, for humorous effect he is often portrayed as a cold-hearted tyrant, running his workshop with an iron fist while the elves are a disgruntled workforce. The most vicious recent skewering was at the hands of Futurama, which introduced a futuristic robot-Santa who judged the entire world as naughty except Zoidberg and hunted down the worst offenders every Christmas. Running a close second is the revelation by Anya in Buffy The Vampire Slayer that not only did Santa Claus exist, he was in fact a bloodthirsty demon - perhaps inspired by the devil present in older stories of him.
It has been a long, long time since the character was played straight. Even in strict children's fare, there is always some kind of wry twist on the material: in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for example, Santa Claus muses that he hasn't been to Narnia for many, many years, and proceeds to hand out lethal weaponry such as bows, arrows, and swords to three of the prepubescent protagonists. A major exception is the recent film The Polar Express (although, in all fairness, he's portrayed as less jolly than Santa usually is).
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has also been a small movement to explain how Santa came to be, and continues to be. The most prominent backstory for the modern Santa (meaning, not derived from various folklore), comes from L. Frank Baum's (of The Wizard Of Oz fame) novel, the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. This story gives Santa a bit of the Lord Of The Rings treatment, as there's plenty of strife and battles between the good fairies that raised Santa, and their enemies, a group of rock-monsters. This story has been made into at least 2 animated films, and continues to be one of the most popular backstories for Santa over 100 years after its first publication. Speaking of Tolkien, he too made his own spin on Santa Claus in the Letters From Father Christmas.
Santa Claus is a popular character in Christmas Specials; the most well-known are the stop-motion films by Rankin-Bass.
Santa Claus as a character is widespread even in countries that aren't Christian, like Japan and China. In Japan, he's called not surprisingly "Santa Kurasu" and in China he's called "Old Man of Christmas".
Oh, and he once got choked out by Deadpool with a string of barbed wire.
For some other examples of Santa in use, see the Christmas Special entry, Mall Santa, Bad Santa and Bad Ass Santa.
A final note: the name "Santa Claus" comes from a Dutch variation of the name "St. Nicholas", "Sinterklaas". It is not, despite what fundamentalist Moral Guardians like to claim, an anagram of Satan. Well, it is, but that's decidedly unintentional. And his last name is spelled C-L-A-U-S, not C-L-A-U-S-E; the latter is part of a sentence or part of a legal contract. This was the basis for a famous Marx Brothers joke ("There ain't no sanity clause!") The title of the movie The Santa Clause was an intentional pun on this.
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