Must be like the smurfs!

He's god.
They are all dead!

I'm glad someone else thought of that idea of Meredith being the original St. Nicholas. If they REALLY wanted to give the origin of Santa the same kind of reverential treatment that defines the first Superman movie, that would have been the obvious thing to do, and that "Claus" represented a "changing of the guard" moment. It also would have at least given us a very tiny but not insignificant concession to the fact that Christmas existed before Santa because it was a religious holiday. That idea I'm sure more easily would have occurred to the Superman I team of Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz and not to the comedy oriented team of the Newmans.

I agree. He's probably the original Saint Nicholas.
Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Cried

Interesting. When I was a kid my whole family also thought he was the original Saint Nicholas.

Even though it says ancient elf I always thought of him as the original Saint Nicholas.
It was never stated but I thought his magic gradually aged him.
If You look at Santa, it looks like he gradually ages too. When he first goes to the North Pole there is some color in his hair and beard. By the time it's the 80s he's all white.

I initially thought he was supposed to be Father Time, but then the credits list him as "Ancient Elf" so

Maybe he was really old already when he became an elf, and the aging process was halted then but couldn't be reversed. I used to wonder what happened to him after that scene. He was obviously supposed to be really important to the elves, yet we never saw him again.