In Finland, people often had criticized Coca-Cola (and
Americans in general) for replacing the "traditional" image of Santa
Claus. This is a sort of paradox...
Haddon "Sunny" Sundblom (1899-1976) was born in Chicago, but the
roots of the family were in Föglö, Ahvenanmaa (Åland),
Finland.
He founded an advertising agency in mid-1920s, and made ads for
companies like Ford. In 1931, he made the first ad for Coca-Cola,
and got the inspiration for the character by looking at the
mirror.
(Sources: Ilta-Sanomat 22 Dec 2000)
(A bit of an update: I told above people had been criticising that, not that it would actually be true. I'm well aware of the "urban legend" side of this, that's why I said it would lead to an interesting paradox...)