Red and green are the colors of Christmas. There are lots of theories as to why.

Red, for example may symbolize the blood of Christ, who lies at the heart of the holiday in a manger. Red is, in nearly all contexts, a color of passion, and it is the color of the blood-drop bead-berries on the prickly holly bush.

It is also the color of Santa’s suit, though the world didn’t know that for sure until the Coca-Cola Company dressed Saint Nick in its own signature red color in a long-running series of Christmas promotions that started in 1931 and ran continuously at Christmastime for more than 30 years. Prior to that, Santa Claus had been depicted variously as everything from the original Fourth Century Saint Nicholas, a red-robed and relatively lanky bishop from a province in ancient Turkey, to Clement Clarke Moore’s diminutive “right jolly old elf” (no suit color given) in “A Visit From St Nicholas” (1822). Thanks to the people at Coke, however, everyone now thinks of Santa Claus as a human-sized portly man dressed in Coca-Cola red.