Father Christmas (I'm English).
I was wondering why it was Santa in Scotland, and thought it was maybe that there was no Father Christmas tradition in Scotland, so when Santa Claus became popular in the US, Scotland took on Santa without saying 'hey, that's Father Christmas' like the English did.
I guessed that the reason there was no FC tradition in Scotland was that FC's pagan roots were English, but the Wikipedia entry for Father Christmas throws more light on it:
"The symbolic personification of Christmas as a merry old figure begins in the early 17th century, in the context of resistance to Puritan criticism of observation of the Christmas feast. He is "old" because of the antiquity of the feast itself, which its defenders saw as a good old Christian custom that should be kept. Allegory was popular at the time, and so "old Christmas" was given a voice to protest his exclusion, along with the form of a rambunctious, jolly old man."
- I'm presuming this wouldn't have been the case in more Puritan Scotland.
Interesting that FC was used as a PR figure back then! (ironic, given that people complain Santa is used as a marketing tool...)
Anybody know more about it? There's also "Bodach na Nollaig," in Scottish Gaelic, which seems closer to FC but is apparently relatively new?
(Wikipedia has it as 'Daidain na Nollaig,' but that seems to be wrong, although it appears in endless lists, presumably all lifted from Wikipedia! The Irish is Daidi na Nollag, though.)