Santa Claus

Descendants of colonizers still residing in these regions likewise continue the practices of their ancestors.[17].
. Christians in Africa and Middle East who celebrate Christmas generally ascribe to the gift-giver traditions passed down to them by Europeans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
. People in East Asia, particularly countries that have adopted Western cultures, also celebrate Christmas and the gift-giver traditions passed down to them from the West. This means that the PS3 will not be able to use PS1 and PS2 memory cards; however, the Memory Stick will be able to store save games for both PS1 and PS2 games, unlike the PS2's memory card. Santa Claus in Latin America is generally referred to with different names from country to country. [18] Instead it was announced that the PS3 will only use the Sony Memory Stick to save games via MagicGate.

Throughout Europe and North America, Santa Claus is generally known as such, but in some countries the gift-giver's name, attributes, date of arrival, and even identity varies. For example, memory cards for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 will not work on the PlayStation 3 hardware. See also: Christmas worldwide. The PS3 will not be backward-compatible with some of the hardware peripherals of the PS2. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. However, with the powers of [a machine like] the PS3, some parts can be handled by hardware, and some parts by software.". Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. There are things that will be required by hardware.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. There are times when games pass through our tests, but are written in ways that make us say, 'What in the world is this code?!' We need to support backward compatibility towards those kinds of games as well, so trying to create compatibility by software alone is difficult. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. For example, there are cases where their games run, but not according to the console's specifications. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quantillion joules of energy per second each. "Third-party developers sometimes do things that are unimaginable. 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates a lot of air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. In a recent interview Ken Kutaragi stated that backward compatibility will be achieved through a combination of hardware and software.

This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, by another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). Compatibility with PS2 online games and games designed for the hard drive have not been elaborated upon. Even granding that the flying reindeer can pull 10 times that normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them - Santa would need 360,000 of them. It still is not known how Sony has achieved this (although Sony had developed a single-chip PS2 CPU/GPU solution, used in newer revisions of the "slim" PS2). On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. The PlayStation 3 will be compatible "on the chip" with PlayStation 2 and PlayStation games, without emulation. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. [17].

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. The Blu-Ray region code will be different from DVD region code. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. Blu-Ray movies played on the PS3 will use a region code. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - 3000 times the speed of sound. Sony's decision to stop region coding means consumers will be able to purchase PS3 games from anywhere in the world, which may turn out to be significantly cheaper than purchasing them exclusively from their home territory, or importing the system from Japan on launch. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we're now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. According to Ephraim, “If you look at the fact that [the PlayStation 3] will support high-definition TV, which will be a global standard, there’s a good likelihood that it will be global region, as for example we’ve done with the PSP [PlayStation Portable].”.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house. The PS3’s support for HDTV standards was cited as one of the key reasons the company has stopped the practice of region coding. This works out to 967.7 visits per second. Unlike its predecessors, the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2, the PS3 is tipped to allow gaming and movie playback from downloads or discs bought in any part of the world, rather than being limited to playing discs only from a specific region. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and rotation of the Earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). PlayStation 3 games are unlikely to be region coded, according to Sony’s Australian managing director, Michael Ephraim. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. [16].

However, since Santa does not visit children of the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total (or 378 million according to the population reference bureau). However, the March 2006 issue of PSM magazine reports that Sony intends to launch an online service with the PS3 designed to compete with Microsoft's Xbox Live. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. It also means that there will be different user interfaces for each game depending on the developer. While these viewpoints do not represent the majority of Christians, their comments have drawn the attention of critics such as the fictional Landover Baptist Church, whose website satirizes and parodies this viewpoint.[16]. While this will give games publishers greater freedom in terms of what they are able to offer online, some say it may make it more difficult for Sony to control the quality of the online experience. Some parents worry that their children might think that if they were deceived by their parents about Santa Claus, parents might also be deceiving them about the existence of God. Instead, online services for PS3 games will be decentralized and left up to individual game publishers.

Some parents are uncomfortable about "lying" to their children about the existence of Santa. In an issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine, Sony denied rumors that it would be implementing a centralized online service similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Live. One prominent religious group that refuses to celebrate Santa Claus or Christmas for similar reasons are the Jehovah's Witnesses, but several denominations of Christians have varying concerns about Santa Claus.[15] Some Christians would prefer that the focus of the Christmas season be placed on the actual birth of Jesus. Sony has stated that the online service for the PlayStation 3 will use the same non-unified architecture as that of the PlayStation 2. Paul Nedergaard, a clergyman in Copenhagen, Denmark, drew the ire of Danish citizens in 1958 when he declared Santa to be a "pagan goblin" after Santa's image was used on fundraising materials for a Danish welfare organization [Clar, 337]. The games are as follows: Fatal Inertia(Koei), Mahjong Taikai(Koei), Ni-Oh(Koei), Shin Ten Makai VI(Idea Factory) Vampire's Rain(AQ Interactive), Sonic the Hedgehog(Sega), Unnamed RPG(Success), Hitsuji Mura(Success). 1].[14] Rev. But as always, this could be subject to change (although anymore being added on is hopeful at best).

Following the Restoration of the monarchy and Puritans were out of power in England, the ban on Christmas was satirized in works such as Josiah King's The Examination and Tryal of Old Father Christmas; Together with his Clearing by the Jury (1686) [Nissenbaum, chap. Unfortunately, the total is 8. Following the English Civil War, under Oliver Cromwell's government Christmas was banned. In a recent issue of Famitsu (Date of edit 29/01/06), A list of available games for the PS3 for 2006 have been released. Such a condemnation of Santa Claus is not a twentieth century phenomenon, but originated among some Protestant groups of the 16th century and was prevalent among the Puritans of 17th century England and America who banned the holiday as either pagan or Roman Catholic. Sony is providing developers with Linux toolchains where SN Systems will provide more customer-oriented Linux tools at an additional cost. As such, a small number of primarily fundamentalist Christian churches dislike the secular focus on Santa Claus and the materialist focus that present-giving gives to the holiday. In addition, Sony recently purchased SN Systems, a former provider of Microsoft Windows based development tools for a variety of console platforms including the PlayStation 2, GameCube, PSP and Nintendo DS to create additional Linux development tools.

Despite Santa Claus's mixed Christian roots, he has become a secular representation of Christmas. The list of standards they are reported to be considering includes:. Both were inspired by the Tales from the Crypt comic book.[13]. Sublicensed technologies includes:. All Through the House," part of the Tales from the Crypt (1972) movie and later remade as episode 1.2 and directed by Robert Zemeckis for the HBO series of the same name. The list of open standards includes:. Other darker impostors have appeared in slasher films such as the Silent Night, Deadly Night series of the 1980s, Santa Claws (1996), and in the short ". The PlayStation 3, unlike the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, is based on publicly-available application programming interfaces.

After the mostly well-meaning but clueless Halloween citizens capture Santa, they try to take over Christmas with disastrous results; the real Santa is almost eaten by the Oogie Boogie Man. Sony has selected several technologies and arranged several sublicensing agreements to create the software development kit for developers. [12] Tim Burton's stop-action animated musical film The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) depicts Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, wanting to become Santa Claus after an accidental visit to Christmas Town. However, Epic stated in response that they are working to release the PC version first and that the PS3 version has no priority for release over the PC version. Another recent devious mall Santa was played by Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa (2003), a film which gained normally family-friendly Disney "bad press". In the January issue of the same publication, it was stated that Epic Games is working hard to get Unreal Tournament 2007 ready for the proposed launch in Spring 2006. Gillen's performance lends credence to the theory that the mall Santa is not quite genuine. In the November issue of PSM Magazine, SCEA Chief Operating Officer Jack Tretton mentioned both Lair and Warhawk as launch titles, although Sony would not expand further on his comments.

Played by Jeff Gillen, Santa is depicted as a larger-than-life figure who terrifies, rather than amuses, children. At this time, only three games have been mentioned as PS3 launch titles: Lair from Factor 5, Warhawk from Incognito Entertainment, and Unreal Tournament 2007 from Epic Games. Another less-than-friendly impostor appears in A Christmas Story (1983) as a disgruntled mall Santa at Higbee's Department Store (a real store in downtown Cleveland, Ohio) in the fictional town of Holman, Indiana. One of the most, if not the most anticipated PS3 game up to this point is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which had its first trailer shown at the Tokyo Game Show 2005 event. This animated feature was made into a live-action movie in 2000, directed by Ron Howard and starring Jim Carrey as the Grinch. Controversial games developers Rockstar North have also hinted that they are planning the provisionally named Grand Theft Auto 4, primarily for the PS3. Seuss's children's book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, where the Grinch attempts to rob the Whos in Whoville of their Christmas, but has a change of heart. Since they aren't working on a remake then this will most likely be Final Fantasy XIII.

Arguably the most notorious impostor appears in the 1966 cartoon based on Dr. Square Enix is however listed for a Final Fantasy game along with 70 other Japanese developers during TGS 2005. In this film, a bogus Santa steals all the Christmas presents and amateur detective Octavius (played by Herbert Yost) tries to recover them. Also shown at E3 was a video of Final Fantasy VII 's opening sequence remade in PlayStation 3 graphics, at the time recent to the show, Square Enix stated no plans for a remake. Probably one of the first films featuring a fake Santa Claus is the 1914 silent film The Adventure of the Wrong Santa Claus written by Frederic Arnold Kummer. In the E3 2005 Press Conference, Sony showed some pre-rendered and some real-time videos of games in development with the codenames Eyedentify, Vision Gran Turismo and MotorStorm. Several films have been created which explore the consequences should an impostor Santa take over. Some anticipated ones include Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Killzone PS3, Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4, Shin Megami Tensei, Armored Core 4 , Unreal Tournament 2007 and Tekken 6.

The system is disrupted when the reigning Santa is murdered by his son, Damian, who then uses the position to attack the competing holidays of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Most developers have already announced games for the PS3. In The Hebrew Hammer (2003), the role of Santa Claus is traditionally passed down from father to son. The actual number in development, though undeniably fewer, should still be very high. She too is reluctant to take on the role. As of October 2005, there are already over 150 PS3 games announced by multiple developers and publishers, like SCEA, Electronic Arts, Konami, Namco, Capcom, Square Enix and many others. In Call Me Claus (2001) Lucy Cullins (Whoopi Goldberg) is an African American woman destined to become the next Santa Claus. According to DevStation Conference, the PS3 will use the Cross Media Bar already used in the PlayStation Portable and PSX devices.

A recent and unique television special also draws upon the succession theme. Sony has appealed this decision and will be able to sell its products while the case is under appeal. Clause"). Sony lost, and has been required to pay considerable royalties to Immersion and suspend the sale of the controllers, including all PlayStation and PlayStation 2 console packages containing them. This film spawned a sequel in 2002, The Santa Clause 2 in which he must find a wife (the "Mrs. While Microsoft settled out of court, Sony continued to defend the case. Reluctant at first, he falls in love with his newfound role. In March 2005, Sony and Microsoft were sued by force-feedback company Immersion for patent infringement for the use of vibration functions in their controllers.

After he puts on Santa's robes, he becomes subject to the "Santa clause" (like a contract) in which he is required to become the next Santa. Also possibly complicating the controller design is Sony's ongoing legal battle with Immersion Corporation of San Jose. In The Santa Clause (1994), Tim Allen plays Scott Calvin who accidentally causes Santa Claus to fall off the roof of his house. Their downplays concerning a rumor suggesting Sony would unveil a revamped PS3 controller at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2006 were sound, as the controller was not shown in any form during the event. In Ernest Saves Christmas (1988), Ernest (Jim Varney) aids Santa Claus/Seth Applegate (Douglas Seale) convince Joe Curruthers (Oliver Clark) to become the next Santa. Though Sony itself had previously admitted at this past E3 that the controller design for their PlayStation 3 console was not finalized, GameSpot believes any purported changes will not be substantial. It is also suggestive of Santa's miraculous ability to live for many years, but not indefinitely. The PS3's specifications, and E3 display units, don't support DualShock controller ports.

There is an elaborate sequence depicting the death of the previous office-holder (extremely advanced in age), and the selection of the new Santa Claus, which visually evokes the Papacy and also the divine/supernatural nature of the office/selection process. The number of ports to support such backward compatibility would most likely be limited to one, although this is also an unconfirmed rumour. The film's prologue features a generous old man who assumes Santa-like duties in his home village, and strongly suggests Santa's saintly origins. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the PS3 may in fact support the older DualShock 2 controllers, however, this is thought to be true due to the PlayStation 3 striving to attain backwards compatibility. The feature film Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) starring David Huddleston as Santa Claus and British actress Judy Cornwell as his wife Anya shows how Santa and his wife are adopted by elves (including elves played by Dudley Moore and Burgess Meredith) in order to deliver their toys all over the world. [12]. One genre of movies suggest that Santa Claus is not historically a single individual but a succession of individuals. Some people pointed that the controller bears a similar resemblance to the old Alps Interactive 3rd party controller which was originally made for the PlayStation.

The latest film to depict Santa Claus in such a manner is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), in which Father Christmas (James Cosmo) supplies the Pevensie children with the weapons and tools they need to battle the White Witch (Tilda Swinton). ^[11] In an interview with Edge, SCEE's Chris Deering echoed these statements by describing the E3 controller as "just a design study". (John Lithgow).[11] He is a hero in Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas held captive to Oogie Boogie. According to the Japanese video game publication Famitsu, Sony Computer Entertainment chief technical officer Masayuki Chatani said that the controller design is a "prototype, so there could be some small adjustments.". Z. However, some suggest that the controller, while a little un-traditional in contrast to the DualShock and DualShock 2 controllers, might provide adequate comfort for extended hours of play. Santa Claus: The Movie also contains a subplot in which Santa Claus rescues Joe (Christian Fitzpatrick) from his best friend Cornelia's (Carrie Kei Heim]) evil uncle B. The design of the controller has been likened to a boomerang or a banana by many observers (or even less flattering likenesses).

The Night They Saved Christmas (1984) starring Art Carney as Santa likewise chronicles how Santa Claus and Claudia Baldwin (Jaclyn Smith), the wife of an oil explorer, have to save the North Pole from explosions while her husband is searching for oil in the Arctic. SCEI's press release indicates that controller connectivity to the PlayStation 3 can be provided via:. In the Cold War-era film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) where Santa Claus is captured by Martians and brought to Mars and ultimately foils a plot to destroy him. Finally, whether the PS3's advantage in floating-point performance will be readily apparent in games depends entirely on whether developers are able to effectively make use of the system's unique architecture. In this movie Santa allies with Merlin the magician to battle the Devil who is attempting to trap Santa. Floating point calculations are very important for graphics, multimedia, and game physics, but considerably less important for other tasks like artificial intelligence. Some less-than-serious films feature Santa Claus as a superhero-type figure, such as the 1959 film titled Santa Claus produced in Mexico with José Elías Moreno as Santa Claus. It should also be noted that floating-point performance is a single-dimensional metric for comparing computers, and that many other considerations (including integer performance, memory size and bandwidth, etc.) determine the "overall" performance of a computer system.

The Polar Express (2004), based on the children's book of the same name, also deals with issues and questions of belief as a magical train conducted by Tom Hanks transports a doubting boy to the North Pole to visit Santa Claus.[10]. The floating-point capacity of the PS3 will significantly exceed that of the XBox 360, although it should be noted that Microsoft's console, due to its 3 symmetric fully featured processor cores (which are very similar to the Cell's PPE), may fare better on dynamically branching code, like that used for artificial intelligence. The newspaper editor tells her that indeed there is a Santa: "He lives, and he lives forever." Francis Pharcellus Church was the real-life editor and is played by Charles Bronson in the film. It should be noted that this figure is an estimate based on ideal, 100% efficient operation of the processor. The television special Yes Virginia There Is A Santa Claus (1991) follows the true story of a young girl, Virginia O'Hanlon, who writes a letter to the editor of the New York Sun in 1897 after her friends tell her there is no Santa. The seven SPEs in the PS3, in addition to the VMX unit in the PPE, would yield a total combined single-precision floating point performance of 218 GFLOPS (the same figure quoted by Sony). This film was remade in 1994 and stars Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle and Mara Wilson as Susan Walker. According to an in-depth report compiled by IBM, the theoretical peak performance of a single SPE is 25.6 GFLOPS.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) starring Natalie Wood as Susan Walker revolves around the disbelief of young Susan whose mother (Maureen O'Hara) employs a kind old man (Edmund Gwenn, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) to play Santa Claus at Macy's; he later convinces Susan that he really is Santa. Additionally, programmers may find it difficult, initially, to optimize their game engines to make the best use of the highly parallel architectures of both systems, further reducing real-world performance. She doubts because Santa has never visited her family because of their poverty. Inevitably, real-world performance for both systems will be lower. One of the first films of this nature was titled A Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus (1907) and involves a well-to-do boy trying to convince his poorer friend that Santa Claus is real. The performance statistics given for the PS3 and XBox 360 in Sony's presentation were based on the theoretical maximum performance of the systems. Another genre of Santa films seek to dispel doubts about his existence. It was unclear how these numbers were exactly calculated, possibly based on addition of the floating point capabilities of the processing units in the Cell CPU and those of the RSX GPU.

Interestingly enough, none of these films focus on Santa Claus's saintly origins. The figures are likely rounded estimations. Frank Baum 's 1902 children's book of the same name, in which Santa is reared by mythical, magical creatures and is granted immortality by them. In their official press release, the same statistic regarding the PS3 as a whole was reported to be over 2.1 TFLOPS. Two stop motion animation television specials addressed this issue: Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970) by Rankin/Bass with Mickey Rooney as the voice of Kris reveals how Santa delivered toys to children despite the fact that Burgermeister Meisterburger had forbidden children to play with them and The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985), based on L. The presentation shows that one PS3 Cell CPU alone is capable of 218 GFLOPS, compared to the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU's 115 GFLOPS. They explain how reindeer fly, where elves come from, and other questions children have generally asked about Santa. In a slide show at their E3 conference, Sony presented the "CPU floating point capability" of the PlayStation 3's Cell CPU, and compared it to other CPUs.

Some films about Santa Claus seek to explore his origins. This gives the RSX an effective 48GB/s when sending data to/from GPU and RAM. Later films about Santa vary, but can be divided into the following themes. Since the RSX is connected to the XDR DRAM and GDDR3 RAM similar to a Turbo Cached GPU it can access both memory locations at the exact same time. A year later another movie titled Santa Claus was produced with sound on De Forest Phonofilm.[9] Over the years various actors have donned the red suit (aside from those discussed below), including Monty Woolley in Life Begins at Eight-thirty (1942), Alberto Rabagliati in The Christmas That Almost Wasn't (1966), Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places (1983), Jan Rubes in One Magic Christmas (1985), David Huddleston in Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), Jonathan Taylor Thomas in I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998), and Ed Asner in Elf (2003). Nvidia 7800 GTX 512 MB was released a couple of months after this statement so it's believed to be a comparison between the RSX and the 7800 GTX 256 MB not the 7800 GTX 512 MB which is 30% faster. Kleinschmidt filmed partly in northern Alaska and features Santa in his workshop, visiting his Eskimo neighbors, and tending his reindeer. An Nvidia spokesperson was quoted in "Playstation Magazine" that the RSX shares a lot of inner workings with Nvidia 7800 which is based on G70 architecture.

A twenty-nine minute 1925 silent film production entitled Santa Claus by explorer/documentarian Frank E. Clockspeed does not however indicate the performance of the GPU as ATI X1800 is also 20% faster than Nvidia 7800 but has similiar game performance. Griffith titled A Trap for Santa Claus shows children setting a trap to capture Santa Claus as he descends down the chimney, but instead capture their father who abandoned them and their mother but tries to burglarize the house after he discovers she inherited a fortune. This places the clockspeed for both the 7800 GTX 512 and the RSX at approximately 28% faster than the 256 MB 7800 GTX. W. Since the G70 is also capable of carrying out 136 shader operations per clock, the RSX is expected to feature the same number of parallel pixel and vertex shader pipelines as the G70 (NVidia's top-of-the-line GeForce 7800 GTX 512 currently contains 24 pixel and 8 vertex pipelines), and clocked similarly to Nvidia's highest end PC GPU based on G70 (with speculation that the RSX chip will be reworked using the new G71 architecture topping 650-700 MHz) (again, the 7800 GTX 512 is clocked at 550 MHz, which is equivalent to the 550 MHz announced for the RSX). A 1909 film by D. Nvidia has stated that the RSX will have a lot in common with the G70 architecture used in NVidia's GeForce 7 Series GPUs which were introduced in June of 2005.

The scene closes with the children waking up and running to the fireplace just too late to catch him by the legs. NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated during Sony's pre-show press conference at E3 2005 that the RSX will be more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards combined. He distributes the presents and mysteriously causes the appearance of a Christmas tree laden with gifts. Custom "RSX" or "Reality Synthesizer" design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony:. He goes down the chimney and suddenly appears in the children's room through the fireplace. The 8th SPE is there for redundancy: if one of the other 7 are defective the 8th SPE will activate and stand in for the defective part. Santa Claus suddenly appears on the roof, just outside the children's bedroom window, and proceeds to enter the chimney, taking with him his bag of presents and a little hand sled for one of the children. Only 7, however, are active.

The mother tucks the children snugly in bed and leaves the room. 3.2 GHz Cell processor with 8 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). Santa Claus' Visit in 1900 featured a scene with two little children kneeling at the feet of their mother and saying their prayers. ^[8]. After walking backward and surveying his work, he suddenly darts at the fireplace and disappears up the chimney. According to a press release by Sony at the May 16, 2005 E3 Conference, the specifications of the PlayStation 3 are as follows. He then fills the stockings that were previously hung on the mantle by the children. Please see the section entitled overall floating-point capability for more details on this.

In this picture Santa Claus enters the room from the fireplace and proceeds to trim the tree. Real-world performance for both systems will naturally be less, and the specifications of the PS3 may undergo major changes before the system is launched. A year later, a film directed by George Albert Smith in 1899 titled Santa Claus (or The Visit from Santa Claus in the United Kingdom) was created. These comparisons are based on estimates of theoretical maximum performance. Another film called Santa Claus and the Children was made in 1898. The amount of completely programmable floating point capacity afforded by the Cell microprocessor is higher than the Xbox 360's CPU, while the floating-point performance of the two systems' GPUs, which are designed specifically for graphics rendering tasks, are somewhat closer to parity. In 1897, in a short film called Santa Claus Filling Stockings, Santa Claus is simply filling stockings from his pack of toys. This comparison is based on the theoretical combined floating point capacity of the Cell microprocessor and the RSX GPU in the PS3 compared to the combined capacity of the Xenon CPU and Xenos GPU in the Xbox 360.

Early films of Santa revolve around similar simple plots of Santa's Christmas eve visit to children. A simple comparison of the system architectures appears to indicate that the floating point capability of the PS3 is estimated to be greater than that of the Xbox 360. Nick abound and apparently constitute their own sub-genre of the Christmas film genre. The current nature of pricing in the video game industry is to sell the hardware at a loss, at least initially, and then recoup the losses from game sales and developer licensing. Motion pictures of St. Although manufacturing costs for Blu-Ray and the cell are unknown, it is safe to say like most new systems, they will lose money from the first year. Probably the only other place where Santa Claus makes as many appearances as in the malls is on the big screen. This means that buyers should be able to purchase a PlayStation 3 at a lower price than its actual manufacturing cost.

Most young children seem to already understand this, as the "real" Santa would be extremely busy around Christmas time. $494) to make, not including labor, and they expect Sony to sell the Playstation 3 for less than its manufacturing cost. If and when a shop or party Santa is discovered to be an imposter by an observant youngster, a common way out is to simply admit that he is not the real Santa, but helping him at this time of year. Merrill Lynch Japan estimates the PS3 manufacturing costs at 54,000 yen (U.S. Essayist David Sedaris is known for the satirical diary he kept while working as an elf in the Macy's display, which he later published. An Inquirer article details internal Sony development: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28879. In America the most notable of these is the Santa at the flagship Macy's store in New York City - he arrives at the store by sleigh in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the last float, and his court takes over a large portion of one floor in the store. It is likely that standalone players will be released prior to PS3.

The area set up for this purpose is festively decorated, usually with a large throne, and is called variously "Santa's Grotto", "Santa's Workshop" or a similar term. Sony Blu-Ray standalone players are to be released early summer^[7]. His function is either to promote the store's image by distributing small gifts to children, or to provide a seasonal experience to children by having them sit on his knee (a practice now under review by some organisations in Britain [7], and Switzerland [8]), state what they wish to get, and often have a photograph taken. Sony office press releases indicate a 2006^[6] launch. He is played by an actor, usually helped by other actors (often mall employees or contractors) dressed as elves or other creatures of folklore. 12,500 for the Super Famicom). Santa Claus is also a costumed character who appears at Christmas time in department stores or shopping malls, or at parties. In the same magazine, Ken Kutaragi was interviewed, and expressed little concern over the PS3's possibly high launch price, believing that customers would be willing to pay extra for a superior product, as they had in the past for the original PlayStation (¥39,800 vs.

More popular, well-known songs about Santa Claus (mostly sung by children) include:. In contrast Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, says the PS3 will not be expensive and that it will be competitively priced against the Xbox 360.^[5]. As early as 1853, Louis Antoine Jullien composed an orchestral piece titled Santa Claus which premiered to mixed reviews in New York that year [Horowitz, 213]. So we're going to have to do our best [in containing the price]". Over the years, Santa Claus has inspired several songs and even orchestral works. "But we're aiming for consumers throughout the world. Many of these websites also include e-mail addresses, a modern version of the postal service letter writing, in which children can send Santa Claus e-mail. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to," said Kutaragi to a mostly Japanese crowd.

Many other websites are available year-round that are devoted to Santa Claus and keeping tabs on his activities in his workshop. The system's retail price is not known.^[3][4] Sony Computer Entertainment president and "father of the PlayStation" Ken Kutaragi points out "It'll be expensive" and "I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. Many local television stations in the United States and Canada likewise track Santa Claus in their own metropolitan areas through the stations' meteorologists. A functional version of the console was not at E3 or the Tokyo Game Show in September 2005, although some demonstrations were held on devkits and videos of soon-to-be released games created to run on systems with the same specs as the PS3 were presented, such as Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 3. This tracking can now be done by children via the Internet and NORAD's website. The PS3 was officially unveiled on May 16, 2005 by Sony during the E3 conference, where the console was first shown to the public. In 1958, Canada and the United States jointly created the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) and together tracked Santa Claus for children of North America that year and ever since.[6]. .

Harry Shoup, received the first call for Santa and responded by telling children that there were signs on the radar that Santa was indeed heading south from North Pole. At the moment, little more is known in public about the PS3 apart from its hardware specifications and reports that it will be based on open APIs for game development. The Director of Operations, Col. Sony has announced that the PS3 will be backward compatible with earlier PS1 and PS2 games. The number was mistyped and children called the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) on Christmas Eve instead. Specifically, Sony representatives have informed video game store clerks to expect a North American shipment in Summer 2006, more narrowly defined as "somewhere between June and September." It is the successor to the PlayStation 2 and will mainly compete against the Nintendo Revolution and Xbox 360. In 1955, a Sears Roebuck store in Colorado Springs, Colorado, gave children a number to call a "Santa hotline". The PlayStation 3 is slated for release this year^[2].

Some people have created websites designed to allow children and other interested parties to "track" Santa Claus on Christmas Eve via radar; while in transit, Santa Claus is sometimes escorted by Air Force fighter jets [5]. The PlayStation 3 (PS3) (Japanese: プレイステーション3) is Sony's Seventh generation era video game console in the market-leading PlayStation series. His address is this: Santa Claus, Santa Claus Village, FIN-96930 Arctic Circle, Finland. ^[15]. The Finnish Santa Claus lives in Korvatunturi but Santa's Official Post Office is situated in Rovaniemi at the Arctic circle. IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol. Children from Great Britain, Poland and Japan are the busiest writers. Kynogon's Kynapse 4.0 (PDF) "large scale A.I.".

He gets over 600,000 letters every year from over 150 countries. that aims to produce high-quality virtual foliage in real time. Through the years Santa Claus of Finland has received over eight million letters. SpeedTree RT, a programming package produced by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. In Britain it is tradition to burn the Christmas letters on the fire so that they would be magically transported by the wind to the North Pole however this tradition is dying out in modern times with few people having true open fires in their homes. Cg, Nvidia's C-like shading language. (This postal code, in which zeroes are used for the letter "O" is consistent with the alternating letter-number format of all Canadian postal codes.) Sometimes children's charities answer letters in poorer communities or from children's hospitals in order to give them presents that they would not otherwise receive. Alias Systems Corporation's 3D graphics programs [14].

His address is: Santa Claus, North Pole, Canada, H0H 0H0 [4] (see also: Ho ho ho). Pixelux's Game Asset Synthesis Technology [13], a toolkit for advanced procedural synthesis. Canada Post has a special postal code for letters to Santa Claus, and since 1982 over 13,000 Canadian postal workers have volunteered to write responses. Havok's physics and animation engines. Many postal services allow children to send letters to Santa Claus pleading their good behavior and requesting gifts; these letters may be answered by postal workers or other volunteers. Epic's Unreal engine 3.0 framework. Girls also request gifts for other people on a more frequent basis [Otnes, Kim, and Kim, 20-21]. Ageia's PhysX SDK, NovodeX.

Girls generally write more polite, longer (although they do not request more), and express more expressions of the nature of Christmas in their letters than in letters written by boys. OpenVG, for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics. Interestingly, some social scientists have found that boys and girls write different types of letters. OpenMAX, a collection of fast, cross-platform tools for general "media acceleration," such as matrix calculations. These letters normally contain a wishlist of toys and assertions of good behavior. OpenGL ES 2.0, the embedded version of the popular OpenGL graphics API. Writing letters to Santa Claus has been a Christmas tradition for children for many years. COLLADA, an open, XML-based file format for 3D models.

Naughty children were once told that they would be left a roe (a bundle of sticks) instead of sweets, but this practice has been discontinued. The Ability to Have 7 Controllers at Once. The next morning they will find the hay and carrot replaced by a gift; often, this is a marzipan figurine. Parental Controls. Children following the Dutch custom for sinterklaas will "put out their shoe" — that is, leave hay and a carrot for his horse in a shoe before going to bed — sometimes weeks before the sinterklaas avond. Hub/Home Ethernet Gaming Network. British, Australian and American children also leave out a carrot for Santa's reindeer, and were traditionally told that if they are not good all year round, that they will receive a lump of coal in their stockings, although this practice is now considered archaic. Simultaneous World Wide Web access and gameplay.

In the United States and Canada, the tradition is to leave Santa a glass of milk and cookies; in Britain and Australia, he is sometimes given sherry and mince pies instead. MP3 and ATRAC download and playback. Several rituals have developed around the Santa Claus figure that are normally performed by children hoping to receive gifts from him. Digital photograph display (JPEG). Reindeer are also associated with the shaman, and like Santa Claus, many people believed that the shaman could fly.[3]. EyeToy virtual object manipulation. Furthermore, the mushrooms were associated with reindeer who were known to eat them and become intoxicated. EyeToy voice command recognition.

The mushrooms were often hung (to dry) in front of the fireplace, much like the stockings of modern-day Christmas. EyeToy interactive reality game. This type of mushroom is brightly colored red and white, like Santa Claus, though the relevance of this is questionable. High-definition IP video conferencing. Apparently, during the midwinter festival (holiday season) in Siberia (near the North Pole), the shaman would enter a yurt (home) through the shangrak (chimney), bringing with him a sack of fly agaric mushrooms (presents) to give to the inhabitants. Two simultaneous High-definition television streams for use on a title screen for a HD Blu-ray Movie. American mycologist Jonathan Ott suggests that many of the modern features attributed to Santa Claus may somehow be derived from those of the Kamchatkan or Siberian shaman. The ability for the PlayStation Portable to connect to the PlayStation 3 as a video-enabled controller.

Other additions to early ideas of Santa include Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the ninth and lead reindeer immortalized in a Gene Autry song, written by a Montgomery Ward copywriter. Bluetooth 2.0 (up to 7 controllers). Santa Claus continues to inspire writers and artists, such as in author Seabury Quinn's 1948 novel Roads. USB 2.0 (wired). Many television commercials depict this as a sort of humorous business, with Santa's elves acting as a sometimes mischievously disgruntled workforce, cracking jokes and pulling pranks on their boss. TCP/IP networking (wired ethernet). 2; Belk, 87-100]. Integrated for mesh networking and connectivity with the PlayStation Portable.

Claus as managers [see Nissenbaum, chap. 802.11g Wi-Fi. That shift was reflected in the modern depiction of Santa's residence—now often humorously portrayed as a fully mechanized production facility, equipped with the latest manufacturing technology, and overseen by the elves with Santa and Mrs. USB 2.0 (four front and two rear ports). By the end of the century, the reality of mass mechanized production became more fully accepted by the Western public. Bluetooth 2.0. Eventually, the idea emerged that he had numerous elves responsible for making the toys, but the toys were still handmade by each individual elf working in the traditional manner. IEEE 802.11g Wi-Fi.

In some images of the early 20th century, Santa was depicted as personally making his toys by hand in a small workshop like a craftsman. Three Gigabit Ethernet ports (Sony has indicated that because of cost reduction there is a possibility that the PlayStation 3 may act only as an accessory interface and hub and perhaps not as a router, as originally planned.)^[10]. Some suspect that the depiction of Santa at the North Pole reflected popular opinion about industry at the time. 32 cm (L) x 24 cm (W) x 8 cm (H)^[9].
. SD/MMC slot. Volunteers dressed as Santa Claus typically became part of fundraising drives to aid needy families at Christmas time. CompactFlash Type I and II slot.

The image of Santa Claus as a benevolent character became reinforced with its association with charity and philanthropy, particularly organizations such as the Salvation Army. Memory Stick standard/Duo and standard/mini slots. [2]. Optional but not required for most games. Nevertheless, Santa Claus and Coca-Cola have been closely associated. Detachable 2.5" hard drive with Linux pre-installed. The popularity of the image spawned urban legends that Santa Claus was in fact invented by Coca-Cola. CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD.

Images of Santa Claus were further cemented through Haddon Sundblom's depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company's Christmas advertising. DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE, BD-RW. Another popularization came in 1902 in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, LPCM (DSP functionality handled by the Cell processor). In 1863, a picture of Santa illustrated by Nast appeared in Harper's Weekly (it is believed the inspiration for his image came from the Pelznickle). Multiple analog outputs (Composite, S-Video, Component video).

Still, one of the first artists to capture Santa Claus' image as we know him today was Thomas Nast, an American cartoonist of the 19th century. S/PDIF optical output for digital audio. Santa Claus later appeared in various colored costumes as he gradually became amalgamated with the figure of Father Christmas, but red soon became popular after he appeared wearing such on an 1885 Christmas card. Two HDMI (Type A) outputs (Dual-screen HD outputs). In this poem Santa is established as a heavyset individual with eight reindeer (who are named for the first time). Supported screen sizes: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. The poem is ascribed to Clement Clarke Moore, although there is some question as to his authorship. 76.8 GB/s Cell FlexIO Bus (44.8 GB/s outbound, 32 GB/s inbound).

Nicholas" (better known today as "The Night Before Christmas") in the Troy, New York, Sentinel on December 23, 1823. 204.8 GB/s Cell EIB. Modern ideas of Santa Claus seemingly became canon after the publication of the poem "A Visit From St. 5 GB/s System Bus (Aggregated 2.5 GB/s upstream and downstream). Irving's book was a lampoon of the Dutch culture of New York, and much of this portrait is his joking invention. 35 GB/s GPU to CPU (Aggregated 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)). For example, in Washington Irving's History of New York, Sinterklaas was Americanized into "Santa Claus" but lost his bishop's apparel, and was at first pictured as a thick-bellied Dutch sailor with a pipe in a green winter coat. 22.4 GB/s GPU to GDDR-3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge).

In the British colonies of North America and later the United States, British and Dutch versions of the gift-giver merged further. 25.6 GB/s GPU to XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz. The same thing happened in Finland, but there the more human figure retained the Yule Goat name. 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz. By the end of the 19th century this tradition had also spread to Norway and Sweden (where the "nisse" is called Tomte), replacing the Yule Goat. 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM clocked at CPU die speed (3.2 GHz). In the 1840's, the farm gnome in Nordic folklore started to deliver the Christmas presents in Denmark, but was then called the "Julenisse", dressed in gray clothes and a red hat. 128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range imaging.

A straw goat is still a common Christmas decoration in Sweden, Norway and Finland. 33 billion dot products per second (51 billion dot products with CPU). As an example of the still surviving pagan imagery, in Nordic countries there was the Yule Goat (Swedish julbock, Norwegian "julebukk", Finnish joulupukki), a somewhat startling figure with horns which delivered the presents on Christmas Eve. 74.8 billion shader operations per second (100 billion with CPU). In other countries, the figure of Saint Nicholas was also blended with local folklore. 136 shader operations per clock. Since the giving of presents is Sinterklaas's job presents are traditionally not given at Christmas in the Netherlands, but commercialism is starting to tap into this market. Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines.

The more serious gifts may be reserved for the next morning. Full high definition output (up to 1080p) x 2 channels. The gifts themselves may be just an excuse for the wrapping, which can also be quite elaborate. 1.8 TFLOPS (trillion floating point operations per second). Presents given during this feast are often accompanied by poems, sometimes fairly basic, sometimes quite elaborate pieces of art that mock events in the past year relating to the recipient (who is thus at the receiving end in more than one sense). Clocked at 550 MHz. Sinterklaas arrives from Spain on a steamboat and is accompanied by 'Zwarte Piet'.

He rides a white horse over rooftops and his helpers climb down chimneys to deposit gifts (sometimes in children's shoes by the fireplace). The connection with the original bishop of Myra is still evident here. He wears a red miter (a liturgical headdress worn by bishops and abbots) with a 'golden' cross and carries a bishop's staff. Sinterklaas wears clothing similar to a bishop's.

Nick. He is also known there by the name of Sint Nicolaas which explains the use of the two fairly dissimilar names Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas or St. Nicholas. The name Santa Claus is derived from Sinterklaas, the Dutch name for the mythical character based on St.

He typified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, and was reflected in the "Ghost of Christmas Present" in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Father Christmas dates back at least as far as the 17th century in Britain, and pictures of him survive from that era, portraying him as a well-nourished bearded man dressed in a long, green, fur-lined robe. Pre-modern representations of the gift-giver from church history and folklore merged with the British character Father Christmas to create the character known to Britons and Americans as Santa Claus. The name originated from the fact that the person appeared to be a huge beast since he was covered from head to toe in furs.

Another form of the above tale in Germany is of the Pelznickel or Belsnickle ("Furry Nicholas") who visited naughty children in their sleep. Some tales depict Zwarte Piet beating bad children with a rod or even taking them to Spain (formerly ruled by the Moors) in a sack. In an alternate Dutch version, the saint is aided by Moorish slaves, commonly typified as Zwarte Piet ("Black Peter"). Yet other versions have the demon reform under the saint's orders, and go on to recruit other elves and imps into helping him, thus becoming Santa Claus.

Depending on the version, the saint either made the demon fulfil this task every year, or the demon was so disgusted by the act of good will that it chose to be sent back to Hell. The saint ordered him to go to each house and make amends, by delivering gifts to the children. Peter or Paul of Tarsus); the demon was trapped and forced to obey the saint's orders. The holy man sought out the demon, and tricked it with blessed or magical shackles (in some versions the same shackles that imprisoned Christ prior to the crucifixion, in other versions the shackles were those used to hold St.

The story states that the land was terrorized by a monster who at night would slither down the chimneys and slaughter children (disembowelling them or stuffing them up the flue, or keeping them in a sack to eat later). Another early folk tale, originating among the Germanic tribes, tells of a holy man (sometimes Saint Nicholas), and a demon (sometimes the Devil, Krampus, or a troll). (Other features, like the absence of one eye, are not found in Saint Nicholas.) This practice in turn came to America via the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam prior to the British seizure in the 17th century, and evolved into the hanging of socks or stockings at the fireplace. Odin's appearance was often similar to that of Saint Nicholas, being depicted as an old, mysterious man with a beard.

Children still place their straw filled shoes at the chimney every winter night, and Saint Nicholas (who, unlike Santa, is still riding a horse) rewards them with candy and gifts. This practice survived in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands after the adoption of Christianity and became associated with Saint Nicholas. 171-173]. 9, esp.

Odin would then reward those children for their kindness by replacing Sleipnir's food with gifts or candy [Siefker, chap. Children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw or sugar, near the chimney for Odin's flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Prior to the Germanic peoples' conversion to Christianity, Germanic folklore contained stories about the god Odin (Wodan), who would each year, at Yule, have a great hunting party accompanied by his fellow gods and the fallen warriors residing in his realm. Also, a few villages in West Flanders, Belgium, celebrate a near identical figure, Sint-Maarten (Saint Martin of Tours).[1].

In Greece, Saint Nicholas is sometimes substituted for Saint Basil (Vasilis in Greek), a 4th century AD bishop from Caesarea. Saint Nicholas became revered by many as the patron saint of seamen, merchants, archers, children, prostitutes, pharmacists, lawyers, pawnbrokers, prisoners, the city of Amsterdam and of Russia. Nicholas were transported to Bari in southern Italy by some enterprising Italian merchants; a basilica was constructed in 1087 to house them and the area became a pilgrimage site for the devout. The relics of St.

In Europe (more precisely the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Germany) he is still portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. He was born at Patara, province of Lycia, Asia Minor. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes.

The first of these is Saint Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century AD Christian bishop of Myra in Lycia, a province of Byzantine Anatolia, now in Turkey. The modern Santa Claus is thought to be a composite character made up from the merging of quite separate figures. Since most activities associated with Santa Claus are extraordinary, such as delivering presents to all of the believing children in one night, keeping track of where every believing child lives, how he squeezes down chimneys, how he enters homes without chimneys, how he delivers presents without tripping motion detectors if the Christmas tree is not in the same room as the fireplace, why he never dies, how he makes reindeer fly, and how he survives in the cold at the North Pole, "magic" is usually used to explain his actions.
. Sometimes Santa's home is in Caesarea when he is identified as Saint Basil.

His home is usually given as either the North Pole, in northern Canada, Korvatunturi in Finnish Lapland, Dalecarlia in Sweden, or Greenland, depending on the tradition and country. Some modern depictions of Santa (often in advertising and popular entertainment) will show the elves and Santa's workshop as more of a processing and distribution facility, ordering and receiving the toys from various toy manufacturers from across the world. Claus and his elves manufacturing toys. During the rest of the year he lives together with his wife Mrs.

To enter the house, Santa Claus comes down the chimney and exits through the fireplace. On Christmas Eve, he rides in his sleigh pulled by flying reindeer from house to house to give presents to children. Conventionally, Santa Claus is portrayed as a kindly, round-bellied, merry, bespectacled white man in a red coat trimmed with white fur (perhaps remotely derived from the episcopal vestments of the original Bishop Nicholas), with a long white beard and green or white gloves. Much of the iconography of Santa Claus could be seen to derive from Russian traditions of Ded Moroz, particularly transmitted into western European culture through his German folklore equivalent, Väterchen Frost.

He delivers presents to children and has a red coat, fur boots and long white beard. Depictions of Santa Claus also have a close relationship with the Russian character of Ded Moroz ("Grandfather Frost"). In many Eastern Orthodox traditions, Santa Claus visits children on New Year's Day and is identified with Saint Basil whose memory is celebrated on that day. He forms an important part of the Christmas tradition throughout the Western world and Japan and other parts of East Asia.

This inspired the mythical figure of Sinterklaas, the subject of a major celebration in the Netherlands and Belgium, Germany (where his alleged date of death, December 6, is celebrated the evening before on December 5), which in turn inspired both the myth and the name of Santa Claus (actually a mispronunciation of the Dutch word "Sinterklaas" by the English settlers of New Amsterdam (later renamed New York)). Santa is a variant of a European person folk tale based on the historical figure Saint Nicholas, a bishop from the region that is now present-day Turkey, who gave presents to the poor. . Father Christmas is also present instead of "Santa" in Italy ("Babbo Natale"), Brazil ("Papai Noel"), Czech_Republic ("Ježíšek"), Portugal ("Pai Natal"), Romania ("Moş Crăciun"), Germany ("Weihnachtsmann"), Ireland ("Daidí na Nollag"), France and French Canada ("Le Père Noël"), Spain and Mexico ("Papá Noel"), Afghanistan ("Baba Chaghaloo"), and South Africa.

Using 'Santa' in places that predominantly call him 'Father Christmas' is often viewed as an Americanism and is quite rare, although they are generally regarded as the same character. "Father Christmas" is similar in many ways, though the two have quite different origins. Father Christmas is a well-loved figure in many countries and predates the "Santa Claus" character. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus.

Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santy or simply Santa) is a folk hero in various cultures who distributes presents to children, traditionally on Christmas Eve. "Why Track Him?" at NORADsanta.org. ISBN 0609605631. New York: Crown Publishers, 2000.

Twenty Ads that Shook the World. Twitchell, James B. ISBN 0786402466. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996.

Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years. Siefker, Phyllis. ISBN 0060972610. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.

Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History. Shenkman, Richard. ISBN 0822216310. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1998.

The Santaland Diaries and Seasons Greetings: Two Plays. Sedaris, David. Nicholas of Myra" in the Catholic Encyclopedia at NewAdvent.org. "St.

ISBN 097488958X. 1948; facsimile reprint, Mohegan Lake, N.Y.: Red Jacket Press, 2005. Roads. Quinn, Seabury.

"Celluloid Santas" at Factmonster.com. Potter, Alicia. 309-317. 302 (October-December 1963), pp.

"The Japanese Popular Christmas: Coping with Modernity." American Journal of Folklore, 76, no. Plath, David W. ISBN 0961423498. Kennewick, Wash.: Natural Products Company, 1993.

Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History. Ott, Jonathan. 17-29. 1 (Summer 1994), pp.

"Yes, Virginia, There is a Gender Difference: Analyzing Children's Requests to Santa Claus." Journal of Popular Culture, 28, no. Otnes, Cele, Kyungseung Kim, and Young Chan Kim. ISBN 0649412239. Knopf, 1996.

New York: Alfred A. The Battle for Christmas. Nissenbaum, Stephen. December 23, 1823.

Nicholas." Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel. "A Visit from St. [Moore, Clement Clarke]. In the Ten Ages of Christmas at BBC.co.uk.

"The restrained restoration of Christmas". Lalumia, Christine. Full text available here. . London: Charles Brome, 1686.

The Examination and Tryal of Old Father Christmas; Together with his Clearing by the Jury . King, Josiah. September 21, 1897. "Is There a Santa Claus?" New York Sun.