Anonymous
The contributor of this paper asks to be allowed to be anonymous out of --- he says --- diffidence. He was a used-car salesman for many years but has recently devoted himself to full-time studies in esoteric anthropology and occult archaeology. He describes himself as a very, very distant friend of Erich von Daniken's.
This is an exerpt from a longer essay in the book "Some Trust in Chariots" that nicely captures the essence of much of the scholarship surrounding the Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis.
And yet, as soon as the most obvious elements of his legend are mentioned - those elements which are known even to the smallest children in our civilization - it becomes clear that `Santa Claus' is nothing else than a folk memory of just such an inter-stellar visitor as Erich has described.
He is, to begin with, a technological wonder-worker. Popular account endows him with a workshop in which he, with the help of gnomes' (surely cybernetic devices of some kind) manufacture children's toys in incredible quantities. By the same popular account, his workshop is stationed at the North Pole. Consdering that the North Pole is up' on a map, and that the North Pole was to earlier Man the ultimate in remoteness, it is not the least fanciful to see the North Pole' as really being some sort of orbiting space vehicle.
As to the way Santa Claus is said to travel, it is plain that, in spite of the explanations given by the enemies of truth, we have a naive description of some sort of rocket. Santa's vehicle travels at unbelieveable speed. Even if some element of fantasy is allowed, and the number of his delivery stops is reduced, he must still be able to make a complete circuit of the earth, visiting every major population center, within the space of one night. The only workable explanation of the legennd is that there was once a visiting space man who regularly did this.
And not only is his speed significant. The vehicle which he is said to use is wheeless, and propelled by six exotic animals, one of which has a red nose, and all of which breathe a misty smoke. A small rocket propelled by a photon accelerator would give simple people just that impression!
Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, or Chris Cringle, for he has as many names as the various gods' who appeared to the people of the Nile Valley) makes his landings from his space-vehicle by way of chimneys. It does not take much imagination to realize that a chimney, except for its size and complexity and the material from which it is made, is exactly the same as the vast gantries which are nowadays used to support rockets at Cape Kennedy. Is it not easy to guess that primitive people, seeing such a gantry, would imagine it to be a chimney of some kind?
By a very ancient tradition, Santa beings his annual traveling at midnight, G.M.T., on December 24th. It so happens that that time and date correspond exactly to the Winter solstice in the latitude and longitude of Isfahan in the year 11,476 B.C. So we are able to give the exact time and date at which the original space-Santa made his first visit to Earth.
The dress which Santa is supposed to wear is not unlike the dress in which a space-traveler would have had to be clad. He wears red garments lined with some fur-like material, held in at the middle by a broad belt fastened by a huge shining buckle-like object. Over his head he wears a red helmet which ends in a mysteriously small white ball. His face is covered by a mask, which the ignorant have recorded as being like a very thick, white beard.
This is indeed a very mysterious stranger! He cannot be explained away as anything but a visitor from a distant place in space.