Christmas folk heros come in many forms, and the legends about them change as their stories are told and retold through the years. Many characters have evolved from the original legend of the wandering gift-giver, St. Nicholas.
Swedish children receive their gifts on Christmas Eve from Jultomten, an elf who wears a red cap and has a long white beard. He, like Santa Claus, rides in a sleigh, but it is pulled by a goat rather than a team of reindeer. The children set out a bowl of porridge for the elf and hay and carrots for his goat in hopes he will leave them gifts in return.
Scandinavian children also believe that Jultomten has elves helping him make toys and that these elves spy on children all year long to find out if they have been good as well as to get ideas of what they might want for Christmas. In America, the gift giver is Santa Claus who lives with his elves at the North Pole. Santa has reindeer to pull a sleigh full of toys that are made by the elves working in his workshop.
In Clement Moore's Night Before Christmas, Santa himself is referred to as a "jolly old elf." In this poem, Santa Claus must be small enough to go down a chimney and does ride in a "miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer" which makes us wonder if perhaps the original Santa was really meant to be an elf.
