Father Christmas

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Father Christmas (plural Father Christmases or Fathers Christmas)

1. (folklore) A mythical figure said to bring presents to people (especially children) at Christmas time.

   Synonyms: Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Saint Claus, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Santa

   • 1939, Nicholas Blake [pseudonym; Cecil Day-Lewis], The Smiler with the Knife, Harper & Row, page 199:

     The five Father Christmases walked slowly on, oblivious alike of the children who gaped at them and the man-hunt that was taking place under their noses.

   • 2003, Piers Letcher, Eccentric France: The Bradt Guide to Mad, Magical and Marvellous France, Bradt Travel Guides; The Globe Pequot Press, →ISBN, page 207:

     At the beginning of the 1990s, therefore, Bardo moved to the current establishment, and was finally able to house his Father Christmases in the style they deserve.

   • 2007, Duncan Watts, Pressure Groups (Politics Study Guides), Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, page 122:

     At Christmas, also in 2004, members processed as Fathers Christmas, employing the slogan ‘Put the fathers back into Christmas’.

   • 2007, Dirk De Bock; Wim Van Dooren; Dirk Janssens; Lieven Verschaffel, The Illusion of Linearity: From Analysis to Improvement, Springer, →ISBN, page 103:

     After the confrontation with the fictitious peer’s solution process, namely actually drawing rectangles around the Fathers Christmas’ irregular shapes, in Phase 4, another nine of the remaining 22 students (five 12–13- and four 15–16-year olds) exchanged their initial linear answer for the correct nonlinear one.

   • 2011, Clare Hemmings, “Crossings”, in Kathy Davis and Mary Evans, editors, Transatlantic Conversations: Feminism as Travelling Theory, Routledge, published 2016, →ISBN, part I (Becoming a Feminist in a Transatlantic Context), page 29:

     I was paid £1.92 an hour to wear a pink tutu and entertain the children waiting to see the two Father Christmases (one on either side of the grotto) as the increasingly irate families inched their way past the hour wait markers.

   • 2020, Tom A. Jerman, Santa Claus Worldwide: A History of St. Nicholas and Other Holiday Gift-Bringers, McFarland & Company, →ISBN, pages 166–167:

     In 1836, English artist Robert Seymour illustrated Thomas K. Hervey’s Book of Christmas with a couple of boozy, wild-haired Fathers Christmas that set the tone for the next fifty years in which the London newspapers were more likely to emphasize the good father’s drinking than anything else.