Alicornutopia

My pet theory is that a powerful wizard named Nicholas who can use as much time distortion as he wants without worrying about old age and who has unlimited finances goes around giving people presents on Christmas.

Yes, there is such a person in HP canon, and it would be reasonable for him to have started this around the time the Father Christmas figure first appeared, though not the original St. Nicholas.

No, this is not more plausible than highly-visible things like holidays or steam engines having some cultural contamination without the details.

Are you talking about Flamel?

Yes. He fits the Santa narrative well and explains why wizards might know about Christmas. It’s not very likely but it doesn’t break any of the rules of magic.

And then OWLs! Wow this is kind of exhausting! Not, like, nastily so, but still!

Heh.


Unrelatedly, I'm hoping this Elian person turns out to be an alt of Annatar.

Elian is run by Alicorn. I think he’s an alt of somebody, though, I just can’t place who.

But he's a minor character! It says so right there!!!

Oh, that's fine; so is Sauron. (Uh, don't tell him I said that.)

Elian is definitely giving off Worrisome Vibes tho.

I doubt it's anything more sketchy than "Timothy now has a rival for Future Ruler of the World", personally.

We can hope. I just hope it's not a male instantiation of Chelsea or anything.