The actual saint was not, in fact, famous for making dispirited public appearances at shopping malls. Rather, he was known for throwing purses of gold into a man's home in the cover of night so that the man wouldn't have to sell his daughters into prostitution. Continue Reading Below Advertisement So, back then Christmas wasn't "get a new Xbox day." It was, "you don't have to become a filthy whore day." While it could be argued that this basically makes Nicholas the anti-pimp, we prefer to think of him as the Bible's answer to Travis Bickle. Later, Martin Luther invented his own Christmas symbol, Kristkindl, as part of his rejection of all things Catholic. What he came up with is by far the gayest of all Christmas symbols, as Kristkindl is portrayed as a "blond, radiant veiled child figure with golden wings, wearing a flowing white robe and a sparkling jeweled crown, and carrying a small Christmas tree or wand." Continue Reading Below Advertisement This is why you sometimes hear Santa referred to as "Kris Kringle." Not surprisingly, most of the world has rejected his weird-ass version and over the years we've cobbled together our own Santa Claus: part Saint Nikolas, part Sinterklaas and part Norse god Odin. By the 19th century American writers were describing Santa as wearing a red sash with a skin-tight red suit with white spotted fur at the fringes. He was basically all those other figures with a little Freddie Mercury thrown in. Writers at the time were still calling Santa an "elf," including Clement Clark Moore in his famous poem The Night Before Christmas. Perhaps the image of a dwarf-sized intruder seemed less threatening than a Chris Farley-sized version, but we're pretty sure we'd be more likely to piss our pants if an overly jolly costumed dwarf magically appeared and started hopping around our living room floor. The little person might just end up with a bullet in the head. Not that there's anything wrong with frolicking little people with a propensity for wearing elf garb, of course. Except that there totally is.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Some of you are disappointed that we explained Santa without mentioning that the modern image of him was invented for a Coca-Cola ad, as the Internet has probably told you. That's because it isn't true. Come on, guys. Not everything in the Western World is based on some crass marketing campaign. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, however, is. This signature character in Christmas folklore, with his own song and movies and a mountain of yearly merchandise, was slapped together by the Montgomery Ward marketing team for a coloring book they were giving out. Prior to inventing Rudolph, they used to just buy the books and hand them out each Christmas, but in 1939 they figured it'd be cheaper to have one of their guys draw one up in his spare time. It's not like toddlers are great at detecting quality in these things. So copywriter Robert L. May wrote it up, and created what turned out to be a marketing bonanza ... of which he didn't get paid a penny. A few years later the company actually let May have the rights to Rudolph, which was either an act of amazing corporate generosity or else they just assumed the Rudolph fad was over. After that, May's brother-in-law wrote up the song that you've no doubt heard every Christmas since you were born. It became a huge hit and the Rudolph marketing empire was born, along with a permanent addition to the Santa legend. That's right; Europe brought their real-life saints, Norse gods and rich cultural traditions to the table, and America slapped on a promotion from a department store. Who knows, maybe 300 years from now Santa's sleigh will be towed by Energizer Bunnies, long after society has forgotten what an "Energizer" is. And, maybe Santa will sport a cheap cardboard crown and a creepy frozen grin.

Making out under the mistletoe First of all, we'd love to know who actually puts up mistletoe in the first place. Everybody knows about it, but does anybody actually do it? We only see it in sitcoms and the occasional Hall and Oates Christmas video, but we're 99 percent sure no one actually uses it in the 21st century. Nevertheless, people who have enough sickening Christmas spirit to purchase the plant, then find a nail, then grab a chair, then remember they forgot to get the hammer, go retrieve the hammer from the freakin' garage, and then hang the mistletoe, might be less likely to do so if they knew the origins of the plant. The word "mistletoe" may be derived from the old German "mist," for dung, and "tang," for branch. That's right, the shit stick. As in, "let's go kiss under the shit stick, baby." So how did people ever make the connection between the shit stick plant and romance? It goes back to the pagan belief that the white, sticky goo from the berries was the semen of the gods. There was also a Norse tradition that if two warriors should meet under some mistletoe in the forest (it's a parasite that grows on tree branches) that they would lay down their arms and declare peace for the day. History does not indicate if this included sweaty, Norse man-kissing so we're forced to assume it did. Both the Celts and the Druids used the plant as in ceremonial rituals, and as antidotes to poison, which was unfortunate, since mistletoe is, in fact, poisonous. But, it was the English who finally made mistletoe part of the holiday tradition. They used to cut a sprig of it from the previous year's holiday greens, then hang it in the house in some sort of voodoo attempt to ward off lightning and evil spirits. Somehow all of that ridiculousness combined to create the "girl has to kiss you" tradition as it exists today (again, mostly on sitcoms). The invaluable American addition to the tradition is, of course, the drunken male placing the mistletoe over his crotch. Again, give it another couple centuries and that'll be the standard.