Apart from being myths or legends partially based on real people that is.


Popular depictions of both are commercial creations.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/06/25/how-an-iconic-painting-jesus-white-man-was-distributed-around-world/

The “Head of Christ” has been called the “best-known American artwork of the 20th century.” The New York Times once labeled Sallman the “best-known artist” of the 20th century, although that few recognized his name.

“Sallman, who died in 1968, was a religious painter and illustrator whose most popular picture, ‘Head of Christ,’ achieved a mass popularity that makes Warhol’s soup can seem positively obscure,” William Grimes of the Times wrote in 1994.

The famed image began as a charcoal sketch for the first issue of the Covenant Companion, a youth magazine for a denomination known as the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant.

Sallman, who grew up in the denomination, which is now known as the Evangelical Covenant Church, was a Chicago-based commercial artist. Wanting to appeal to young adults, he gave his Jesus a “very similar feeling to an image of a school or professional photo of the time making it more accessible and familiar to the audience,” said Tai Lipan, gallery director at Indiana’s Anderson University, which has housed the Warner Sallman Collection since the 1980s.

Sallman painted a copy for the school but sold the original “Head of Christ” to the religious publisher Kriebel and Bates, and what Lipan calls a “Protestant icon” was born.




https://thisisnotadvertising.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/haddon-sundblom-for-coca-cola-the-man-who-painted-christmas/

In the 1920s, The Coca-Cola Company began to promote soft drink consumption for the winter holidays in U.S. magazines. The first Santa ads for Coke used a strict-looking Claus. In 1930, a Coca-Cola advertised with a painting by Fred Mizen, showing a department store Santa impersonator drinking a bottle of Coke amid a crowd of shoppers and their children.
Not long after, a magical transformation took place. Archie Lee, then the agency advertising executive for The Coca-Cola Company, wanted the next campaign to show a wholesome Santa as both realistic and symbolic. In 1931, the Company commissioned Haddon Sundblom, a Michigan-born illustrator and already a creative giant in the industry, to develop advertising images using Santa Claus. Sundblom envisioned this merry gentleman as an opposite of the meager look of department store Santa imitators from early 20th century America.


Sundblom’s Santa was very different from the other Santa artworks: he radiated warmth, reminded people of their favorite grandfather, a friendly man who lived life to the fullest, loved children, enjoyed a little honest mischief, and feasted on snacks left out for him each Christmas Eve . Coca-Cola’s Christmas campaign featuring this captivating Santa ran year after year.

Was Kevin Smith related to Joseph Smith?

https://manofactionfigures.com/products/buddy-christ-bobble-head

Interchangeable with both Jesus and Santa Claus:

He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

Of course, don't try and be a Mormo-god. That'll warp the mind.

Some never ever seem to grow out of childish behaviors.

Admitting you were wrong is the finest step.

I have auditioned for Santa many times, and I have the dark eyebrows despite everything else white, but with little success. Considering the Coke Santa is so famous I thought I'd be a shoe-in.
Maybe it's because I play him as a bitter old a-hole... :-)

“Every time you see white Jesus, you see white supremacy,” [Anthea Butler}... said recently on the Religion News Service video series “Becoming Less Racist: Lighting the Path to Anti-Racism.”

Sallman’s Jesus was “the Jesus you saw in all the black Baptist churches,” Butler told RNS in a follow-up interview.
But Sallman’s Jesus did not look like black Christians, according to the scholar. Instead, she said, that Jesus looked “like the people who were beating you up in the streets or setting dogs on you.”

That Jesus sent a message, Butler said.
“If Jesus is white and God is white,” she said, “then authority is white.”

The secret history of black Santas

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38231159

America's biggest shopping mall grabbed headlines this week by hiring its first African-American Father Christmas. But black Santas have been around for a lot longer than you might think - and even played a role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

"Everything that Santa represents has to be you. That's my honest belief. You can't have some grumpy old guy who doesn't love kids sitting there representing somebody who is joyful, somebody who is loving."

Kenny Green is a man who takes his job seriously.

He has been playing Santa Claus for the past five years and although the mall where he works, in a suburb of Washington DC, has hosted a black Santa for as long as anyone can remember, he says they are still "few and far between" in the rest of America.

African-American families come from as far afield as Delaware, 80 miles away, to visit his grotto, at the Shops at Iverson mall.

Which is why, he says, it was "huge" that the Mall of America - the country's biggest indoor shopping complex - decided to hire a black Santa for the first time this year.

Imaginary friends can be any race you want them to be.

    Dave, how did you finally work it out in terms of discovering the sex(es) of your imaginary friends?    

    I'm asking for a friend, of course...

No wonder women in the church are subservient. Their god has a BDSM fetish.

When I was old enough to learn that Santa was actually my dad, I figured maybe Satan and Jesus were also my dad.

Hahaha! Well said.

They both had beards