The Lore Behind Starlight

[Enkidoh]

Well, like many other seasonal events in FFXIV, it actually originated meta wise in FFXI, where the vague lore of the Starlight Festival in Vana'diel from what I remember was the 'smilebringers' would bring presents to children, with the original 'Smilebringer' believed to have been a goblin, but like much of FFXI's story and lore, it was very vague and obtuse. As FFXIV 1.0's original development team featured the same original producer as FFXI (Hiromichi Tanaka), it made sense FFXIV shared the same events more or less, but with lore altered to better fit the new game's setting and story.

Also the Ishgardian connection to the holiday's origins in Eorzea doesn't quite make sense (the references to "cold"), given that Coerthas and Ishgard were actually rather temperate originally (i.e., during 1.0), and it was only due to the Seventh Calamity that caused the new ice age the region finds itself locked in, so I regard the 'holiday started by Ishgardian knights help orphans during the bitter winter' thing as just a retcon. But that's just my own theory either way.