Regarding the recent move by the Cathedral to make Santa black, Richard Spencer tweets:
“Clause has very little to do w/ St. Nicholas. He’s an avatar of Odin.”
Which is basically correct. Santa as we know him today is a composite of sorts, but his oldest (and truest?) form is that of Odin leading his ghostly yule procession through the sky. This older Odin meme is then later overlaid with Christian elements, such as St. Nicholas (who, by the way, is Greek, not Turkish — Turkey didn’t exist in the 4th century), and Sinterklaas stories of central and northern Europe, but many of the Germanic pagan elements still survive surrounding yule/Christmas, such as elves, yule logs, etc.
Interestingly, there’s a similar parallel with the character Gandalf of Lord of the Rings. Tolkien, a professor of Germanic languages, clearly modeled Gandalf after Odin — the “grey wanderer” known by many names — but this is overlaid with certain Christian elements, such as Gandalf sacrificing himself for the Fellowship and then later resurrected (although resurrection is not unknown in Germanic paganism, such as the promise of Balder’s resurrection).
Nonetheless, both Santa and Gandalf both suffer from one irredeemable sin in the eyes of the Cathedral: They’re white. Cathedral’s answer: Dump’em or darken’em.
Odin
Santa
Gandalf
Related:
Occam's Razor 
“Dump’em or darken’em” is the MO of most universities and schools today when revising older reading lists.
Santa comes pretty much straight from Thor- he’s Thor as an old man.
Not to nerd out about all this, but it’s clear that Santa derives from Odin, not Thor. Thor is one of Odin’s sons and is quite different from Odin and Santa.
Of course it’s not really about tolerance or any of that nonsense. They must know at some level that a black Santa is as stupid as a black King Arthur or a black Robin Hood.
It’s really a ‘dog in the manger’ motivation. They don’t want something for themselves; they just don’t want white people to have things for us.
But think of it this way. They’re obsessed with us. We live inside their heads.
Look at Synagogue’s use of COMPETENT black surgeons in hospital drama. There are more black medics there than in real life! #ConradMurray
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You are likely right about the connections to Odin – wisdom, grey wanderer. I have heard that the appearance of Gandalf was likely based on Professor James Murray, the main force behind the Oxford English Dictionary, under whom Tolkien had worked as a young man. The name “Gandalf” comes from the name of a dwarf in the Eddas, which of course Tolkien had studied in depth.
WP: “The name derives from the Old Norse words gandr (magic staff) and álfr (elf)”