“Santa. That’s a funny name for an elf that comes from the North Pole. What do they call you up there?”
“They call me MISTER Claus.”
Santa Anita.
Which is why Santa Claus can never retire. She loves playing the ponies; she just isn’t very good at it.
Looking at some financial agreements that get offered me, I think we can claim that Satan Clauses exist as well…
No it’s not, it’s Papa Noel.
What do we have left?
Well, I’ve got about a foot and a half.
It’s not like this is new and things evolved and you’re stuck in the old ways. A Christmas Story (1983), for example, refers to him almost exclusively as just “Santa”.
Without clicking your link, I’m guessing it’s the theme to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?
Santa’s wife is, as everyone should know, Mary Christmas. Duh.
It’s not Santa Claus; it’s “Saint Nicholas.” Santa Claus is a mispronunciation.
Heh. 
Yeah; and it’s Cher SARKISIAN.
Izzat right? I didn’t watch that as a kid (I think it became a cult favorite with a later generation, on home video). To be fair, though, isn’t the portrayal of “Santa” in that movie fairly negative/cynical? (I’ve only seen it once, about fifteen years ago.)
The page that links to has 25 hits for “Santa Claus” and one for just “Santa”. 
The mall Santa was intimidating. But I don’t think that movie’s an outlier in its disrespectful treatment of Mr. Claus.
Scroll up and you’ll see him being referred to Santa in other instances. Page 133 has three instances. It’s hardly new. That said, even the one proves my point.
It’s actually Saint Nicholas, the Wonder-Worker. Get it right, you heathens!
Oh, I guess I was never meaning to convey that I hadn’t ever heard of it being shortened to “Santa” when I was a kid. It was just that it was alternated with the full name “Santa Claus”, as you are describing. The way things have become now (based on what I see with the stuff my kids watch that’s been produced recently), “Claus” is never mentioned.
It would be like if Marvel Comics exclusively referred (even in titles) to Peter Parker’s alter ego as “Spidey” and Steve Rogers’s as “Cap”. Those nicknames were always around, but the full names were also frequently used. KWIM?
Huh. I never noticed that myself, nor do I remember alternating his full name with his informal shortened form as a kid. I think kids are pretty well aware that the full name is Santa Claus, but, when I was a kid, I remember writing “Dear Santa” letters, and not “Dear Santa Claus,” only putting Santa Claus’s full name on the envelope. I don’t get a “kids these days” sense with this particular issue. (Incidentally, it was similar in Polish. The full name is Swięty Mikołaj (“St. Nicholas”), but, at least in my family and my Polish friends, we just called him the familiar Mikołaj (“Nicholas”). Both “Santa” and “Mikołaj” sound friendlier to my ears than their full form counterparts.)