Every December close to Christmas, millions of children and grown-ups around the world ask the same great big question over and over again about one person:
IS SANTA REAL, OR IS SANTA FAKE?!
It’s a fair question. After all, adults claim he’s very old, lives in the freezing cold, and visits millions of homes in just one night by way of nine flying reindeer.
So, we sent out our crack team of Santa Detectives to find out the answer once and for all. Here’s what they discovered.
Is Santa Real?
We sent our Santa Detectives on a top-secret mission to find out the truth.
The Real St. Nicholas
Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Long before the red suit and the sleigh, there was a man named Nicholas.
Tradition says he was born in Patara, in what is now Turkey, and became a bishop in the nearby town of Myra about 1,700 years ago.
Stories tell of Nicholas secretly leaving gifts for people in need, sometimes at night so nobody would know who had helped. After he died, he became St. Nicholas, and people remembered his kindness for hundreds of years.
In the Netherlands, he became Sinterklaas, and that Dutch name slowly turned into Santa Claus.
Why Does Santa Wear Red?
Photo: L. R. Bronk / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Over the years, artists showed him in green, blue, brown and even fur, like the Santa in the 1872 photo above.
In 1863, an artist called Thomas Nast started drawing Santa for a magazine in the United States, and his pictures helped create the jolly, bearded Santa we know today.
You’ll often hear that Coca-Cola made Santa red. Not quite! Coca-Cola’s famous Santa paintings by Haddon Sundblom first appeared in 1931 and helped make the red suit famous, but Santa was already wearing red before then.
How Many Reindeer Does Santa Have?
Photo: Natalia_Kollegova / Pixabay
Nine, if you count Rudolph!
The first eight come from the famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (better known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”), first published in 1823. Rudolph joined the team in a story first published in 1939.
Fun fact: Female reindeer grow antlers too! In fact, they often keep them longer into winter than males. But antlers alone can’t tell us exactly who’s pulling Santa’s sleigh.
Want to see real reindeer? Watch them live right now:
LIVEWatch live →Where Does Santa Live?
Image: EarthLive.TV
At the North Pole, of course!
But here’s something surprising: there’s no land at the North Pole. It sits in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, where thick sea ice floats on top of deep water. Santa certainly picked an unusual neighborhood. Nobody knows exactly where his workshop is hidden, and that’s probably just how he likes it.
Photo: Tom Corser / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
If you want to visit Santa, head to Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, Finland, right on the Arctic Circle. You can meet Santa there all year round, and even watch the village live:
LIVEWatch live →Want more Christmas places like this? Santa Claus Village is #1 in our countdown of 23 Magical Live Christmas Cams Around the World.
While you’re in Lapland, look up! It’s one of the best places on Earth to see the Northern Lights.
Tracking Santa: In 1955, a child trying to call Santa accidentally reached a US military command center instead. Colonel Harry Shoup played along and told the child where Santa was. It started a tradition, and today NORAD still tracks Santa every Christmas Eve.
You can also follow our live countdown at the top of this page which, when Santa takes off, will also turn into a live Santa tracker.
Photo: EarthLive.TV
How Does Santa Do It All in One Night?
It does sound impossible. So our Santa Detectives did some math.
For our challenge, we imagined Santa making about 109 million stops. He flies west, following the night across the time zones. That gives him about 32 hours to deliver everything.
That works out to roughly 946 homes every second. Tricky, but if anyone can do it, it’s Santa.
Want more mind-blowing space math? Try our Moon trip calculator.
And how does he fit down the chimney?
So, Is Santa Real or Fake?
Santa’s story began with a real man, St. Nicholas. His adventures have delighted families for hundreds of years. And every Christmas Eve, millions of people around the world follow his journey.
Our verdict? The magic of Santa is very real!
While you wait for the big night, watch the sky over Rovaniemi, Santa’s hometown:
LIVEWatch live →Explore more landscape cams and the Live Webcam Map. Have a magical Christmas!
Take Me AnywhereSources 10
- St. Nicholas Center - Is St. Nicholas a real person?
- St. Nicholas Center - What about Santa?
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Thomas Nast, Santa Claus
- The Coca-Cola Company - Haddon Sundblom and the Coca-Cola Santas
- William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan - 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
- MPR News (2011) - Scrapbook tells how Rudolph went down in history
- University of Alaska Fairbanks Reindeer Research Program - About reindeer
- NOAA NESDIS - Five things you didn't know about the North Pole
- Santa Claus Village - About us
- NORAD - NORAD Tracks Santa
Editor's note
St. Nicholas was a real person, but many of the stories about his life come from tradition rather than written records from his time. Our Santa math is a playful model using assumed figures (about 109 million stops and a 32-hour delivery window), not official data.
How we researched this article
We used museum and library collections for the history of Santa's look and the 1823 poem, a university reindeer research program for the reindeer facts, NOAA for the North Pole, and NORAD and Santa Claus Village for tracking and visiting Santa.
