New Delhi, Dec. 24 -- What is Santa's secret? How did Santa become one of the world's most powerful brands? Not the cookies. Not the sleigh. Nor the flying reindeer with suspiciously high fuel efficiency. It's not even the free toys delivered with a logistical precision that would make Amazon sweat. Santa's real superpower is positioning.

But this wasn't always the case. For centuries, Santa was a walking, jingling, wildly inconsistent brand failure. Every country had its own prototype. Every illustrator had a different artistic conception.

You had Dutch bishops, British fatherly figures, American elves, Norse legends and the occasional bearded fellow who looked like he escaped from a forest cult. Sometimes stern, sometimes cuddly, some...