An easier version and IMO more true to what's actually going on:

>>> bytes.fromhex('53414e544120414e442048495320574f524b53484f50')

b'SANTA AND HIS WORKSHOP'

>>> b'SANTA AND HIS WORKSHOP'.hex()

'53414e544120414e442048495320574f524b53484f50'

Thanks, nice. bytes.fromhex is really reading bytes from a hex string, so perhaps a better name should be bytes.fromhexstring, but since python names are short I understand the trade-off. Also, my first impression is that hex should be called bytes.tohexstring, but for those using python daily I understand the need of shorter names.