NEW DELHI, India -- It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas -- with trees lit like diamonds, wreaths covered in bows and, of course, the jolly fat man in the red suit popping up everywhere. Santa Claus is, without doubt, the secular Christmas icon. But it turns out we've got him all wrong.
Using the latest artificial intelligence technology, an updated face of the real Saint Nick has been revealed. Forget about chubby red cheeks and a curly white beard. Turns out the 4th-century bishop, from whom Santa Claus is derived, was a short swarthy man with dark brown eyes and a broken nose.
A 3D digital face of Saint Nicholas was first created in 2006 for a BBC documentary when the Vatican granted scientists access to X-rays and measurements taken from the saint's remains. However, that version, which was close to real-life proportions, lacked the natural details of human skin, eyes, and hair. But with exponential advances in technology, Image Foundry, the UK-partnered Indian company that specializes in computer-generated imagery (CGI) and created the 2006 image, updated their picture, revealing an even more realistic reconstruction of Saint Nick.
"The technology has come a long way. Today there are a lot of image editing tools using artificial intelligence for image and texture creation that help push the boundaries of human creativity forward," said Anand Kapoor, the co-founder and director of Image Foundry, the CGI company that produced the photo. "So we've revisited the image we created years ago, using cutting-edge facial reconstruction software. We're like a virtual plastic surgeon, breathing new life into Saint Nick!"
Kapoor's team used deep learning AI algorithms to create realistic textures and imperfections to the skin, eyes and hair. Basically, thousands of images of human faces were inputted into an algorithm, "teaching" the aesthetics of a human face. The algorithm returned random computer-generated images of human skin, eyes, and hair, which were then used in the 3D modeling program and image editing software to recreate a realistic digital face of Saint Nicholas.
After U.S. magazine Harper's Weekly first depicted an image of Santa in a red suit in the mid-19th century, the Coca-Cola Company blasted out an advertising campaign of Santa donning a red-and-white suit that conveniently echoed its own product's colors. © Reuters "He's not the saccharine sweet Santa we all love -- but the real Santa. He looks far from how you'd expect a saint to look, with his broken nose and heavy build," said Kapoor. "If he were around these days, he'd look more like a bouncer or a boxer -- domineering and daunting -- someone you really wouldn't want to mess with. We consciously revisited Saint Nicholas during this period as he's a symbol of hope and strength."
Saint Nicholas was born into an affluent Greek family in what is now part of Turkey. He is best known for secretly leaving gifts out for the poor, but also being a devout Christian who became a bishop. Records about his life include a story of him rescuing three girls, whose impoverished father was going to sell them into slavery until Nicholas secretly dropped sacks of gold coins into their house.
His generosity and devotion become legendary, with pilgrims visiting his enshrined bones for centuries. When the area fell to Muslim rule, a group of Italian merchants stole his bones in 1087, taking them to the southern Italian city of Bari, where new pilgrims flocked to pay obeisance. Thus his legend spread across Europe. The Dutch pronounce Saint Nicholas as Sinterklaas, which has since morphed into Santa Claus, who brings presents for good little boys and girls.
Dutch immigrants helped take the tradition to America, so that by 1822 the oft-quoted poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" immortalized him as a jolly driver of reindeer with cheeks "like roses, his nose like a cherry... and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly."
But it wasn't until the mid-19th century that Santa in a red suit began to appear thanks to drawings in the American magazine, Harper's Weekly. Then it was good old capitalism that propelled the image forward when the Coco-Cola Company blasted out an advertising campaign of Santa donning a red-and-white suit that conveniently echoed its own product's colors. Now the red-suited-Santa is iconic. Some would say he is more synonymous with Christmas than Christ, the birth of whom the holiday actually marks.
Being a pious Christian, this transition away from Jesus over to Santa would probably horrify the real Saint Nick. So perhaps a more realistic image of his own face -- which certainly challenges our modern notions of a facile "Father Christmas" -- might put a twinkle in the bishop's eye, if not make him laugh and his belly shake, like a "bowl full of jelly."
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