Christmas characters

How it works

A Christmas character is a person, animal, or spirit that the holiday keeps using. Some come from the Christian nativity: Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus, shepherds, angels, and the Magi. Some come from winter gift-bringers: Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Santa Claus, and Mrs Claus. Some come from stories that the season adopted: elves in a workshop, reindeer at a sleigh, a snowman who walks, a miser who wakes up kind.

The civil date is still 25 December. The characters do not move it. They give the day a cast so a child can point at a figure on a tree or in a book and say who it is. A holiday page about those figures is a who’s-who, not a claim that every household uses every name. A nativity-only house and a Santa-only house are both keeping Christmas. They are not required to merge the mantel.

Names travel. Santa Claus is the usual North American gift-bringer. Father Christmas is the usual British name for a similar figure. Saint Nicholas is the bishop whose feast is 6 December in many calendars, and whose legend fed the later gift-bringer. You can treat them as one costume or as three histories. The shop window often treats them as one red coat.

The old household names

On a tree or a windowsill the stock company is small. Santa or Father Christmas. A reindeer. An angel. A shepherd. A snowman. An elf. A nutcracker soldier. Those shapes are how a house says “December” without a paragraph. You do not need the full set. One figure on a mantel is already a character.

The eight reindeer who pull the sleigh in the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, and Blixem in that first printing; later copies commonly use Donner and Blitzen. Rudolph is a later named ninth, from Robert L. May’s 1939 booklet, with a song by Johnny Marks that followed. If a child only knows Rudolph, the older eight still exist in the poem.

Nativity: Mary, Joseph, the child, shepherds, angels, the Magi. Gift-bringers: Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Mrs Claus. Workshop and sleigh: elves, the reindeer of the 1823 poem, Rudolph from 1939.

Adopted story figures: Ebenezer Scrooge, the Grinch, Frosty, the Nutcracker. Elves as Santa’s helpers are a later popular picture, not a requirement of the feast. If your tree has none, you have not missed a rule. If your tree has a dozen, you have chosen a workshop theme. The character is a helper in a story about making toys. It is not a fourth Magus.

Characters from books, ballet, and film

Ebenezer Scrooge is the miser in Charles Dickens’s 1843 story A Christmas Carol. The three spirits who visit him are characters too, as are Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Households quote “Bah, humbug” without staging the whole book. That is still the same cast.

The Grinch is the creature who tries to stop Christmas in Dr. Seuss’s 1957 book How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Frosty is the snowman in the 1950 song “Frosty the Snowman.” The Nutcracker is the figure from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale and from Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet, which many cities stage in December. None of those works is the public holiday. They are stories the holiday keeps on the shelf because they are already about this week of the year.

Santa can share a mantel with the shepherds. The shelf is not a theology exam. When you pick a film or a picture book, read the names on the back. A “Christmas character” search should not send you to a random winter mascot from another feast. If the figure only appears because there is snow, it is a winter character. If the figure is there because it is 25 December in the story, it belongs on this list. Use the ones your household already greets by name. The rest can stay in the book until someone asks who they are.