Quick, picture Santa Claus in your head right now.

What do you see?

Maybe a jolly fellow with a red coat and a big white beard.

Well, you're definitely not alone.

A common claim as that the Coco-Cola Company owns Santa Claus, or at the very least, he wears white and red because of Coke.

Obviously, Santa Claus existed well before Coke did.

But what if I told you that Coke was responsible for the modern day Santa?

The history of Santa Claus goes all the way back to Saint Nicholas, a monk from Patara - or modern-day Turkey - all the way back in 240 AD.

Saint Nicholas was known for giving away his wealth and helping the sick and the poor all over the country.

His popularity spread throughout Europe, even into the 18th and 19th century, where he inspired a number of gift-giving figures, including Christkind in Germany.

In England, Father Christmas filled stockings with presents.

In Sweden, Jultomten was a jolly elf who gave it presents from the back of a sleigh pulled by goats because that's not weird or anything.

And La Befana in Italy was a witch who came down the chimney and gave you, was it presents?

- Yeah. What else would she do?

I don't know, witches don't come down my chimney all the time, that's weird.

Santa Claus came to America after an article was written in a New York newspaper in 1774 about groups of Dutch families who had gathered for a feast known as the Feast of Sinter Klaas.

Of course, that translates to Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, as we know him today.

Around the 1820s is when stores started advertising specifically for Christmas, now featuring the newly popular Santa Claus.

Santa started showing up in shopping centers to bring in customers.

And in 1890, The Salvation Army started sending out guys dressed up as Santa Claus to solicit donations.

And that is where the iconic red buckets come from.

Fast forward to the Great Depression, and Coca-Cola was going through a rebrand.

With dwindling sales, especially in the winter months, Coke needed to expand their market.

At the time, Coke was still viewed as a pharmaceutical beverage.

When the drink was first invented, Coke was marketed as a brain and nerve tonic.

The original formula contained trace amounts of the coca leaf extract, also known as, you known, cocaine today.

Now, in 1903, they finally switched away from this.

And they moved over to something equally as nefarious, caffeine.

Actually, that's not as nefarious.

That's much, much better than cocaine.

Caffeine, cocaine.

In the '20s, Coke began using Santa Claus in advertisements.

But he was portrayed very differently than you might expect today.

There's no single unified version of Santa.

Sometimes he was tall, sometimes he was skinny, sometimes, for some reason, he had a crown with jewels on, and sometimes, he just looked like Danny DeVito.

In 1930, Coke released an ad featuring the all-new much more jolly version of Santa Claus enjoying the world's largest soda fountain in St. Louis, Missouri.

A year later, artist, Haddon Sundblom, was commissioned to paint Santa Claus enjoying a Coke.

And he wanted this version of Santa to be even more authentic.

To achieve this, he used a real-life model.

And no, it wasn't, like, a professional or anyone famous.

It was just his friend, a retired salesman named Lou Prentiss.

Sundblom was inspired by the poem, "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore, which is commonly known today as "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Twas, that's an underrated word, twas.

- T-was - T-was no, that sounds like a (bleep) rapper.

♪ T-was in the building, yo. ♪

And with this, modern Santa was invented.

I mean, obviously modern Santa always existed in the North Pole.

But you know, everyone figured out what he looks like because Coca-Cola paid a guy to paint him.

These ads were incredibly popular with the public.

And Sundblom continued to tweak Santa each year.

Since canvas what's expensive, he literally just painted over the original when he created the followup ad.

As you can see here, he gave Santa Claus a whip for the reindeer, as well as a signature hat.

And with that, we basically have Santa Claus as we know him today.

In 1942, Coca-Cola decided that there's no way that Santa Claus could deliver all those presents by himself, so, of course, he needed a sidekick.

And who better to call on than Sprite Boy?

Actually there's a lot of better things to call him than Sprite Boy.

- How 'bout any other thing?

Literally anything.

So Sprite Boy, interesting enough, actually wasn't based on the beverage, Sprite.

This was over, what, 18, 19 years before Sprite was invented.

Instead, he was known as a sprite, is in, like an elf, or something.

Thankfully, Sprite Boy was discontinued in 1958 when they realized that he was a horrible abomination and that, oh, oh.

Oh, this is unsettling.

Sundblom, as the father of modern Santa continued to make ads for Coca-Cola for 33 years.

Even after he retired, Coke continued to model Santa after Sundblom's design, as did the rest of the world.

His original paintings that are so popular, that they've been shown off in museums such as the Louvre.

And the originals reside at the World of Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta.

So the next time you see Santa Claus, give a big thanks to our friends over at Coke, who were, of course, awesome enough to sponsor this video.

- Whoa, whoa, one second. Coke isn't sponsoring this video.

- They're not? - No.

- What do you mean they're not?

I'm holding a Coke.

I've got the logo up here, I'm about to take a big drink of it.

No, no this video is not sponsored by Coke.

No, no, stop.

It's all going downhill.

This is delicious, though, I gotta admit.

Mm.

Ah, it's so refreshing.