Someone told me that Santa Claus was invented by Coca-Cola. I investigated a bit and it seems that this is more an urban legend and it is not completely true.
“All this isn’t to say that Coca-Cola didn’t have anything to do with cementing that image of Santa Claus in the public consciousness. The Santa image may have been standardized before Coca-Cola adopted it for their advertisements, but Coca-Cola had a great deal to do with establishing Santa Claus as a ubiquitous Christmas figure in America …” (from snopes).
However I just checked some websites and we know how it is easy to put up a website saying anything. So I remain with this little doubt: did I spend my childhood “worshipping” a puppet created by Coca-Cola marketing?