How Martin Luther shifted the gift-bringing from from Saint Nicholas Day to Christmas:

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Up until the Reformation children traditionally received gifts on St Nicholas’s Day, usually on condition that they had been well-behaved during the previous year.



When the Reformation began, however, this tradition ran into trouble, because one of the Reformers’ chief objections to Catholic practices was directed towards the veneration of the saints.



This was regarded as a possibly blasphemous distraction from Christianity’s sole concern with the Redemption offered to humanity by the divine Saviour, Jesus Christ.



Hence, apart from the iconoclastic devastation wrought by zealous followers of the Reformation on Europe’s religious artistic patrimony, at a more humble level, children were deprived of their gifts on the Feast of St Nicholas, which was now cancelled.

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And:

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But while the two other main Reformers, John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, remained firm in their rejection of Saints’ Feast Days, Martin Luther’s attitude seems to have been more nuanced.



Although he wasn’t keen on retaining the Feast of St Nicholas itself, there is evidence that Luther didn’t wish to abolish the idea of children receiving ‘Nicholas gifts’, to cite a term found in an account of his household expenses from the 1520s.

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And:

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As the Reformation took hold over large swathes of Europe and as even prohibitions on holding traditional St Nicholas Day processions were formally issued in areas under Reformed control, Luther saved the day, so to speak, by transferring the time of giving presents to Christmas and making the Christ-child, rather than St Nicholas, the ultimate giver.



This change appears to have taken place in stages, during and after Luther’s own lifetime.



Luther himself mentions on one occasion the ‘Christ-child’ along with ‘Nicholas’, as the gift-bringer.



On other occasions he refers to a mysterious figure, the ‘Holy Christ’ or the ‘Holy Christian’, as the giver of gifts.



Some have tentatively identified this symbolic figure with an angel-like personage associated with the nativity scene.



Whatever its ultimate identity, the Reformer’s guiding principle in introducing it was, of course, to present Christ as the bringer of all good things to humanity.



Gradually, however, the Christ-child moved firmly and finally centre stage as the one bringing gifts to children.



So ultimately both the giver (the child Jesus, rather than St Nicholas) and the date (Christmas, rather than December 6) changed and henceforth Christmas became inescapably associated with the giving of gifts.

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More about it: https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-...s-martin-luther

There is some irony in it all:

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By a kind of exquisite irony, traditionally Catholic areas of Germany (such as Bavaria and the Rhineland) eventually—though only from about the early twentieth century, some historians reckon—came to accept the child Jesus as the bringer of gifts at Christmas, whereas traditionally Protestant areas of Germany began at roughly the same time to accept Santa Claus (the ‘Weihnachtsmann’—literally, the ‘Christmas-man’) as the gift-bringer, even though Santa Claus, as mentioned earlier, derived from the Catholic ‘Saint Nicholas’.

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https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-...s-martin-luther

Anyway, we can praise Martin Luther for the invention of the Christ Child - the German Christkind or Christkindl.

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Irony aside, it appears fairly clear that Luther’s humanity, his desire not to deprive children of their gifts, has contributed to making Christmas the popular feast it now recognisably is.

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https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-...s-martin-luther

In short:

Martin Luther wanted to do away with Saint Nicholas - and so he invented the Christ Child - or Christkind.
But would did the German Catholics do?
The adopted the "Protestant" Christkind, while keeping Saint Nicholas as well.

And the Catholics adopted the Christkind so whole-heartedly, that the Protestants felt that the Christkind had become Catholic!
So the Gerrman Protestants deserted the Christkind and came up with some "Weihnachtsmann" or Father Christmas or Santa Claus.
And who is this Father Christmas or Santa Claus?
Some kind of worldly Saint Nicholas, but thinly disguised.

And now this Santa Claus rules worldwide!
What a come-back for Saint Nicholas!

Next month will be Saint Nicholas Day once again.