Santa wasn’t always so. St. Nicholas of Myra, was originally known for rescuing women from prostitution.  Legend says he dropped gold into the stockings of three women who, having no dowries, were about to be sold into prostitution. It’s also said that he brought back to life men butchered, or kidnapped. From this, he became a Patron saint of women, children, prostitutes, protector of the oppressed and in extremis. Later, he became the patron saint of the poor, and St. Nicholas’ feast became a day for alms and redistribution.
Over the years, however, Santa acquired other significant functions. During the Dutch slave trade, he became Sinterklaas, taking on the trappings of a slave trader, kidnapping young children with a black henchman (Zwarte Piet) and sleigh drawn by eight black slaves. In the 19^th Century, he took on the now recognizable traits as a shill for corporate consumption, eventually co-opted by Coca-Cola (which immortalized his trademark red & white colors), and before becoming the Patron Saint and canonical myth of Capitalism.
One way of understanding this myth is through critical theory.
When the contradictions in our lives, our reality are so intolerable that we cannot humanly justify them and remain sane, we resort to a set of stories in order to obscure, absolve, and make bearable this state of affairs.
Think of this as similar to a dream, which expresses the contradictions and tensions in our lives, even as it covers them up symbolically through displacement, compression, and distortion.
Or as a disease symptom: a way of expressing a deep distress or imbalance. The symptom expresses the condition, palliating it, while signaling a deeper pathology at stake.
This collective defense mechanism is referred to as ideology, and it manifests as a series of narratives and myths that maintain our worldview—with our sense of self at the center– while keeping us asleep and unaware as to what’s really happening, from seeing what is unacceptable.

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