Why is Father Christmas portrayed as wearing red and white?
ANSWER: The red coat is ‘new’. Most pictures of Father Christmas prior to around 1880 showed him wearing a green coat. The red and white outfit was just one of the ‘looks’ post-1880 and only became synonymous with Father Christmas after Coca Cola launched an advertising campaign during the 1930s portraying Santa drinking a bottle of coke, dressed in his red, fur-lined coat. Sales of Coca Cola were traditionally low during the winter months and this ad campaign not only boosted sales due to the ad’s appeal to kids but also Father Christmas’ red and white outfit became the accepted standard outfit. What we consider to be Santa’s ‘traditional’ outfit is, in fact, Coca Cola endorsed!
From here
It is amazing but true that the common, popular view of Santa that we all have today, along with all the crazy things around Santa like the sleigh, the reindeer and the chimney, all came largely from two publishing events that occurred in the 1800s and one advertising campaign in this century. Clement Moore wrote “The Night Before Christmas” in 1822 for his family. It was picked up by a newspaper, then reprinted in magazines and it spread like wildfire. Moore admitted authorship in 1838. If you read the poem you will find that he names the reindeer, invents the sleigh, comes up with the chimney and the bag of toys, etc. Nearly everyone in America has been able to recognize or recite this poem since the 1830s.
Then, between 1863 and 1886, Harper’s Weekly (a popular magazine of the time) ran a series of engravings by Thomas Nast. From these images come the concepts of Santa’s workshop, Santa reading letters, Santa checking his list and so on. Coca-Cola also played a role in the Santa image by running a set of paintings by Haddon Sundblom in its ads between 1931 to 1964.
The red and white suit came, actually, from the original Saint Nicholas. Those colors were the colors of the traditional bishop’s robes.
So, I guess it can be from Coca Cola or the bishops robes. I guess it will be a toss up from whomever created the questions.