Santa Claus/WMG

This person is a Time Lord.
This one is a bit more justifiable than some of the other ones. It answers a couple of the key questions about Santa. First, how can he visit every house in the world in one night? He's a time traveler. How can he fit billions of gifts into his sleigh? The sleigh is his TARDIS. How does he fit down chimneys? I'm gonna go with some sort of sonic technology. Flying reindeer? Part of the TARDIS (his chameleon circuit is pretty sophisticated). Okay, I need to stop watching Doctor Who and reading the WMG pages.
 * Answers a couple questions, natch. This one explains EVERYTHING! Such as how he's been around for so long.

Santa is Chronos.
Santa Chronos uses his power of time control in order to stop time at exactly 12:00 midnight. Then he borrows Apollo's chariot and delivers presents over the course of several years.
 * Isn't Chronos too... wanna-rule-the-world-and-destroy-everyone to want to deliver presents?

He's the Doctor

 * Who says I'm not, red-bicycle-when-you-were-twelve?
 * And his sleigh is the TARDIS.
 * Jossed by the fact that The Doctor has met Santa (shown in A Christmas Carol). If we allow for the fact that the end of Rose could have been at any point in The Doctor's timestream (i.e. for Rose it was five seconds, for him it could have been a hundred years), he could have just gone back and peeped at what she got. Or, considering the piece of info that Jossed this WMG in the first place, asked Santa.

Santa is secretly a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
He's the primary agent of commercialization in Christmas. He locates his base of operations at the North Pole, where he can get cheap elf labor and evade taxes. It is unknown how he supplies his factories, and he has most of the children in the Western world begging him to visit their houses. This positively screams Villain With Good Publicity. In fact, he's probably an incarnation of Satan. Look at that name.

Santa Claus is Satan's good twin.
He's based off SAINT Nick. Nick is a name used on occasion for Satan. Therefore, Santa is Satan's good twin.

Santa deals in insider trading.
He has a lot of resources that come from nowhere, but no visible form of income. He obviously plays the stock market or invests in some other way. However, a depression functions as nothing more than a minor setback for him rather than wiping him out entirely (and individual corporations going under has no effect on his income), so it stands to reason that he is somehow able to anticipate a market crash and sell off all his assets before it happens. He does this by exploiting his ability to see how people act to get inside information on various corporations, and sells off his stock before they fail.

Santa is at war with Atnas.
Atnas is Santa's opposite, a righteous exponent of asceticism living at the South Pole. She has been attempting to combat the commercialization of the holiday season and restore the former multi-religious overtones of the winter solstice, with little success; her main plan is conspicuously failing to give anybody presents, which is not exactly a raging PR success, since nobody even notices. It is believed that she is currently training tap-dancing penguins to convert the masses.
 * Happy Feet?
 * You mean Xanta Klaus is real?

We are foils in Santa's purgatory.
In life, he was the epitome of greed, and is now forced to work it off through generosity. He has been at it for decades, either due to the sheer volume of avarice to counter, or simply because he hasn't worked any off yet. (I mean, have you gotten anything from him?)
 * Similarly, Cupid is working off lust by constructing healthy, loving relationships.
 * (To both the original guess and the first response) So we live in Jack's heaven?

Santa is a victim of Adaptation Decay.
The real St. Nicholas is renowned for his generosity and kindness to those less fortunate; one of his most famous miracles was to turn three brass balls into three sacks of gold to prevent a father from turning his daughters to prostitution to make ends meet. While the tales of his generosity and gift-giving survived, the meanings behind them grew twisted as the general human population grew to embrace material wealth above faith and morality, hence why most of his exploits other than his giving out gifts to people are no longer remembered. The elves, reindeer, North Pole workshop, etc. are just things thrown in by Corrupt Corporate Executives to make him more appealing to the materialistic populace, after they realized he is a salable commodity.
 * St. Nick was just one of the elements that went into making of the jolly old man we know today. In this troper's home country, for example, he began his existence as a rather fearsome goat-monster that went from house to house to scare bad children straight. From this he then evolved into a goat-headed man who would still scare bad children straight, but also gave small presents to good children. At this time no reindeer or elves were present - presumably when it was decided that he came from far north, the reindeer seemed like a good choice to pull his sleigh, and when the question of where the presents came from turned up, magical elves seemed like as good explanation as any. Before either of these things happened, he got mixed with the St. Nick stories of the sourthern, Catholic climate and lost first most, and then all of his animal features, switching them for white beard, and brown furcoat (later turned red). But he is still called Joulupukki - Yule Goat - in Finland, where this troper hails from.
 * I'm sorry, you lost me after "endlessly long tongue".
 * He may be a "Yule Goat" in Finland, but the creature you've described is also Krampus, the Austrian-Hungarian legend. He was a companion of St. Nicholas; St. Nicholas handed out gifts to good children, Krampus either 1) dragged naughty kids down to Hell, 2) beat them with a switch, or 3) just scared the ever-living crap out of them. Krampus is categorized as a type of incubus. Granted, Krampus is probably preferable over the Holland legend that St. Nicholas had six to eight black men following him around who were referred to as slaves until the 1950s.
 * In the Middle East, presents come from the Wise Men and their pack camel. After all, they're the ones who brought presents to Baby Jesus, starting the whole thing.

Santa is actually an evil warlord bent on conquering the world.
These two Dragon-Tails comics say it all.

There is not one Santa, but an army of clones
Santa is actually thousands clones, which explains how he can deliver toys worldwide at the same time. The original Santa (St Nicholas?) has been taken apart and each cell turned into a clone. Santa clones rest as Human Popsicles under the snow and are thawed on Christmas eve. Also, the elves are actually robots powered by coal. Excess coal is given away to those undeserving of presents.
 * Alternately, Santa has not been cloned, but is The Virus and controls adults every year at Christmas eve to make them give presents.
 * They're not clones. They're Santa's local Independent Business Owners, and they work in shopping malls. Each one has a separate sleigh.

Santa is trying to get his hands on a Death Note
He's the entity best suited to using it. To kill someone, he requires a name and a face. and as everyone knows, he sees you when you're sleeping. He's also prepared. He's making a list...
 * He already has.
 * And his immortality is because he knows how to use the life taken from the naughty.

Chiyo's Dad really is Santa
And by extension, everything he claimed about himself if true, he is actually paid by the government and flies at Mach 100.

Santa is a quantum particle.
He's in an improbably large number of different places at the same time, but actually looking for him collapses the wave function and he isn't there.

Santa really does give gifts to all the good children, but there are very few of them.
Christianity (for some value of Christianity) holds that there will be a total of 144000 good people during the 3000 years between the comings of Jesus. This works out to 48 born per year, and about 480 in the 5-15 range that receives presents. Since some of those good people were naughty as children and repented later, the number of good children is smaller. It isn't really that much of a burden to do the deliveries.

Santa is Jesus.
It would make sense of the weird transportation - if he can walk on water and transmute matter, flying reindeer should be trivial. He's already omniscient, so he does see you when you're sleeping, and the whole present thing is just his way of celebrating his own birthday.
 * So since giving other people presents on your birthday is a Hobbit custom...
 * Alternatively he's not Jesus himself, but in fact Saint Nicholas, given immortality and the ability to do miracles.
 * So............................................................................................ He's Santa Christ?

Santa is real, but not what he's cracked up to be.
Santa Claus is a factual entity, immortal and of unclear origin. However, there's very little proof of this to the modern world. Despite the promise of good presents for every girl and boy, that's unrealistic. Instead, he anonymously donates Christmas gifts to toy shelters. He gets the money to buy and produce the toys via various small hidden licensing fees most companies don't realize they're paying whenever they use his image every December. The actual amount taken from each company is small, but enough to distribute a sizable amount to giving a small number of needy children toys every year. Most of the other fantastic stuff such as flying around the world on reindeer or having an army of elves is embellishment since he got started.

Santa is a NINJA!!
Ninjas cannot be seen. Santa is never seen. Ninjas are quiet, lending itself to the stealthiness needed for present distribution. How quiet can a fat man going down a chimney be?
 * Confirmed

Santa used to be Satan.
Old Nick became Saint Nick after his Heel Face Turn. Before that, "Old Nick" was just Nick, no modifier.
 * Satan found that making children capitalists instead of atheists was way more evil.

Santa is a wizard from Harry Potter.
The thing that made me think of this is because he travels via chimney, which is similar to the Floo powder used in the Harry Potter books. Also, his ability to go to all those places in one night could be explained by use of a Time-Turner, and his flying reindeer could be a magical species that only wizards know about.
 * Reindeer? They are Thestrals with a glamour charm. They're not actually needed, though. The Floo Network connects all homes the night between the 24th and the 25th for this purpose. The presents? Appeasing for breaking and entering and doing Memory Charm checkups to maintain the Masquerade. Oh, and Santa? A squad of Aurors that excel at Stealth and Tracking.
 * And Santa's elves are clearly just regular house-elves.
 * Also, 19 years after defeating Voldemort (who misheard and thought the head auror was Satan), Harry is Santa.
 * Instead of reindeer, Harry rides his patronus, which is a stag.

Santa is an the slave of his elves.
Santa was once human (St. nick) but was kidnapped by elves. Elves, according to mythology are both good and evil at the same time and their wish is to kidnap human children a they can't reproduce. This is hard to do however as elves can't go about during the day and can't enter human dwellings.... But they can enter a home if they are invited or if the humans have something of theirs. This is how they manage to steal human children. The children invite Snta into the house, even give him offerings and Santa leaves a "gift" Santa can enter the house because he is a human (or was once) This means that the elves can enter your home whenever they like and steal your kids because they are invited and you have their stuff

Santa is actually Sauron.
Think about it. Sauron once claimed to be "Annatar, Lord of Gifts." Both Santa and "Annatar" are on good terms with the Elves, and both Santa and "Annatar" give you what you desire with no obvious strings attached.

On a related note, if Santa is indeed Sauron, this means Melkor has broken the Door of Night and revived his greatest followers, which means Dagor Dagorath is right around the corner.
 * He seems to be playing it slow, however, tempting the children of the Edain into darkness by playing upon their greed. Once he feels he's corrupted us by making us materialistic and selfish enough for his tastes, he'll use that to manipulate us back into his service (again, we seem to fall into his service depressingly easily) before striking at the now-extra-dimensional Valinor. Judging from our present culture, it'll only be another generation or two...

Santa is the head of Kringle, Inc.
The first Christoper Kringle began Kringle Incorporated over 4000 years ago (he had great foresight when it came to the stock market). Four millenia of business has allowed Kringle Inc. to become a super-conglomorate mega-corporation that doesn't actually produce toys; it's actually the owner of all other toy companies on Earth. However, in order to create the illusion of capitalism, generations upon generations of Kringle (all named Chris) have been forced to keep the head company a secret.

As for the elves they supposedly employ, they simply head all the toy companies Kringle Inc. controls (Hasbro, Bandai, Toynami, etc.), rotating shifts every few decades to create the illusion of death, take some time off, and create new personas for their next shift.


 * The Koch Family is in on it too. Holiday World, its amusement park near Evansville, Indiana, USA, is a front to raise money for Kringle, Inc.

Santa is TV Tropes.
Makes as much sense as anything else on WMG.

Every single Christian father works with Santa.
That's what my dad told me, anyway.
 * Also some hindu, shinto, pagan, and atheist parents, and most likely others that I don't recall enough about at the moment to confirm.

Santa is Odin and St. Nick fused together
Long ago there was a battle between the forces of good and evil. Odin and St. Nick teamed up to take them on, but proved ineffective separately. So they fused together, and Santa Claus was the result.
 * There's probably several other people in the Santa Collective, like the Krampus, the elf Tomte, the Yule Goat, and Father Christmas. Whether their minds unified totally creating a new person, or if they're all Sharing a Body is up for debate.

Santa is Satan
He is decieving the world with those presents, but in reality those cakes are lies.

Santa is The Flash
The red suit, and it explains how he gets around the world so fast.
 * Hinted at in an episode of Justice League, but it was done in a joking manner to keep the truth hidden.
 * The Flash has to eat a lot of food for his super fast metabolism, milk and cookies anyone?

Santa is white aligned, and quite into it
Santa came from one of the planes of the MGT universe and is applying the philosophy of the colour he is aligned with to this world. Problem is, he is quite in the extremes of the colour; White clearly values society over the individual, and as such Santa is trying to make us all single minded, giving us presents and promoting a belief in him. Meanwhile, White's worst traits are being authoritarian and dogmatic, to the point of xenophobia and ruthlessness; Santa perceives kids who don't conform to his image of "nice" (Black and Red in personality) as a cancer to his perfect society, and actively eliminates them in secret. With time, his constant culling with result in a peceful society...where no one has the smallest piece of individuality.

Possible alternative alignments are Green/White (sharing the extremism in favor of lack of individuality) and/or Red/White (the colour motiff probably lampshading this).

Santa currently works as a pimp.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
 * That explains why as more children believe in Santa, the number of ho's in the world are rising, since in fact Santa decided to experiment with adult culture and is currently selling ho's to adults.

Santa Claus delivers toys to every child on earth who lives in a Christmas-celebrating family, including the ones that believe an old woman or Jack Frost bring the gifts, whom he assists.
It's just that your parents (yours specifically) are horrible, horrible people who re-label some of the gifts and all of the coal you get from him, sell some to fund their bribing of other people to keep you in the dark, have your housekeeper brownie spend all his time on being an Orwellian Editor to eliminate any proof of Santa on the sites you visit, and have been keeping you in a dark, Santa-less world For the Evulz.

NORAD tracks Santa, and every year in December they set up a comm line with him.
Big Boss said so, it must be true!

Santa only lives Christmas Eves, and does not exprience days in between.
After he took up the mantle, he struck a deal with a cosmic supervisor. So instead of living hundreds of years after becoming Santa, he's lived a much more bearable hundreds of days, only existing on Christmas Eve and skipping the year in between.

Santa is a Green Lantern
He was originally green instead of Red, he just changed it to look friendlier. That's how the gifts are made so easily, of course his power ring can do more than just green things.

There is a Santa for every country.
Or at least, every country where Christmas is celebrated on a fairly large scale. If not, then the Santa from the neighboring country takes over. The guy at the North Pole? He's the head honcho, and takes care of most of the manufacturing and the special cases, orphans and other such people.

Santa funds himself via sponsorships.
Clearly, running his business must be quite expensive for Santa (maintaining his workshop at the North Pole, paying and housing all the elves, buying the raw materials for countless toys and letting them be delivered to the North Pole, tending the reindeers...), so who are his financial backers? The answer: Ever noticed how many brands use Santa as their spokesperson in their Christmas advertising? You may think, this is because he is a Public Domain Character, but no! They pay him for endorsing their products, just like they do this with other famous, although less supernatural people, like actors, athletes, ect. (Santa's main sponsor is of course the Coca Cola company, they having a fruitful business relationship with him for almost 80 years now.)

Santa is a Space Alien.
With reindeer powered by Ion Propulsion, as explained in excruciating detail by this video.

Santa is either not real or dead.
The only evidence I need is I stayed up all Christmas Eve and did not see one sign of him, bitches. And this can only mean he is now Zanta Claws.

Star of Bethlehem was the photic boom from the sleigh going faster than light.
150,000 B.C., there were only 100 Humans. Santa was Uncle Nick, in a red suit, creeping around the village. As the Human population grew, Santa had to use magic transport to complete his mission in time. Now, there are about 2,000 M children, Santa goes faster than c. Sonic boom happens when a plane goes faster than the speed of sound, therefore, when the sleigh exceded c, it left a photic boom

Santa is a pedophile.
These facts say it all:
 * He sees you when you're sleeping.
 * He knows when you're awake.
 * He gives gifts to "good" children, but punishes "bad" ones.

Santa is the Hive Mind of all parents of Christmas-celebrating families.
They only merge on Christmas Eve, natch.

Santa is Gabe Newell.
The figures are about right, and they're both pretty generous. Too bad Episode 3 is delayed once more.

Yes Virginia.
There is a Santa Claus.

Santa can deliver all his presents in one night because ...
... red wuns go fasta. Enforced by all the children who believe in him.

Old gods do new jobs.
]] Santa Claus is a god whose origins are based around the winter solstice and the return of the sun. He's taken up the job of delivering presents to good children on Christmas Eve because he needs the belief.

Santa is a vampire.
He comes only at night, he only enters your house in the one night when he is invited and he watches you when you sleep.