The fourth century pastor who inspired the tradition of
Santa Claus, may not have lived at the North Pole or traveled by reindeer and
sleigh but he certainly was a paradigm of graciousness, generosity, and
Christian charity. Nicholas of Myra’s great love and concern for children drew
him into a crusade that ultimately resulted in protective Imperial statutes
that remained in place in Byzantium for more than a thousand years.
Though little is known of his childhood, he was probably
born to wealthy parents at Patara in Lycia, a Roman province of Asia
Minor. As a young man noted for
his piety, judiciousness, and charity, he was chosen bishop of the then rundown
diocese of Myra. There he became
gained renown for his personal holiness, evangelistic zeal, and pastoral
compassion.
Early Byzantine histories reported that he suffered
imprisonment and made a famous profession of faith during the persecution of
Diocletian. He was also reputedly
present at the Council of Nicaea, where he forthrightly condemned there heresy
of Arianism—one story holds that he actually slapped the heretic Arius. But it was his love for and care of
children that gained him his greatest renown. Though much of what we know about his charitable work on behalf
of the poor, the despised, and the rejected has been distorted by legend and
lore over the centuries, it is evident that he was a particular champion of the
downtrodden, bestowing upon them gifts as tokens of the grace and mercy of the
Gospel.
One legend tells of how citizen of Patara lost his fortune,
and because he could not raise dowries for his three young daughters, he was
going to give them over to prostitution.
After hearing this, Nicholas took a small bag of gold and threw it
through the window of the man’s house on the eve of the feast of Christ’s
Nativity. The eldest girl was
married with it as her dowry. He
performed the same gracious service for each of the other girls on each of the
succeeding nights. The three
purses, portrayed in art with the saint, were thought to be the origin of the
pawnbroker’s symbol of three gold balls.
But they were also the inspiration for Christians to begin the habit of
gift giving during each of the twelve days of Christmas—from December 25 until
Epiphany on January 6.
In yet another legend, Nicholas saved several youngsters
from certain death when he pulled them from a deep vat of vinegar brine—again,
on the feast of the Nativity. Ever
afterward, Christians remembered the day by giving one another the gift of
large crisp pickles.
The popular cultural representation of St. Nicholas as
Father Christmas or Santa Claus, though drawing on a number of such legends,
was based primarily on a the Dutch custom of giving children presents—slipping
fruits, nuts, and little toys into shoes or stockings drying along the warm
hearthside—on his feast day, December 6.
Throughout the rest of Europe during the middle ages, that day was
marked by festively decorating homes and by a sumptuous feast that interrupted
the general fasting of Advent. And
in Scandanavia it was celebrated as a day of visitation, when the elders of all
the remote country churches would bundle themselves in their thick furs and
drive their sleighs laden with gift pastries through the snowy landscape to
every home within the parish.
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