Charlotte Bond
Author, Editor and Podcaster
Charlotte Bond
Author, Editor and Podcaster
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.
…
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.
With a little old driver, so lively and quick
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
…
As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.
From “A Visit from St Nicholas”
Curious, isn’t it, that nowhere in the famous poem attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, is the figure we identify as Father Christmas or Santa Claus actually referred to by either of those names? Instead, he is consistently named as “Saint Nicholas”.
So who was Saint Nicholas? And how did he become the Santa we know and love today? Today I’ll be focussing on the Saint himself, Nicholas of Myra. Next week, I’ll be looking at how Santa came to have all those trappings that we know and love - red suit, flying reindeer, and sleigh bells. I’ve listed below the books I used and if you find my posts at all interesting, I heartily recommend turning to these for further reading.
Myra (today known as Demre) was a port of the Mediterranean in Biblical times. A very good summary of Nicholas’ early life can be found in the “The Story of Santa Claus” that is if you can cope with Littlewood’s rather flowery prose where facts are consistently enlivened by the author’s imagination. Nicholas was born there in 280AD to a wealthy family. It is said that on his very first day, he stood up in the bath so that his mother could wash him better. It was also said that he fasted from the breast on a Wednesday and Friday. Only a few days old, and already he was the model of a good child that he would go on to represent. When he grew older, he eschewed normal childhood games to spend time at the local church instead and was soon made a bishop.
To further explain his position as the patron young children, there is a story about three young boys who went on a pilgrimage to see the saint. Their father gave them plenty of coin for the journey and sent them on their way. By ill fortune, they stopped at an inn run by a greedy innkeeper who murdered them in their beds, stole their gold, then cut their bodies up into little pieces which he hid in barrels of salt. Luckily, Saint Nicholas was informed of their fate by a divine dream and the next morning he went to the inn. He confronted the innkeeper then worked a miracle to join the boys’ bodies together again and bring them back to life.
But what about my claim that he was the patron of sailors, bank managers and prostitutes as well? There are other stories to illustrate this.
Nicholas was a local man who helped local people and, living in a port, those local people were mostly sailors. Miracles attributed to him include calming storms and saving ships. And the thing about sailors is that they travel and they gossip: so tales of Nicholas’ miracles travelled the Mediterranean, and it didn’t take long for him to become a favoured saint of sailors.
Perhaps the most famous story about Saint Nicholas not only gives us part of his origins as a gift-giver, but also explains why he was the patron of unwed girls and prostitutes, as well as bank managers. “In The Saint Who Would be Santa Claus”, English gives us the story in the words of Michael the Archimandrite. In Myra there was a wealthy man who fell upon very hard times. To save his three daughters from poverty, he tried to marry them off, but no one would take them without a dowry. So the father was facing the only option left: to turn his daughters into prostitutes in order to feed his family.
Nicholas heard of the poor man’s plight. By this time, his parents had died and had left him a vast amount of wealth. He wanted to use it to help the man but wished to do so anonymously so the man would thank God rather than him. So Nicholas went by the man’s house one night and threw in a bag of coins, enough to provide the eldest with a dowry. The man was overjoyed and married his eldest. Nicholas was so pleased to see the good fortunes and festivities that the wedding brought that he determined to do the same for the second daughter. Again, he walked past the house at night and threw in a bag of coins with the same result.
How the story ends depends on which version you read. In Michael’s version, the man realises that his benefactor must be human and anticipates that another purse will eventually be forthcoming for his third daughter. He therefore waits up for several nights and, when the purse flies through the window, he immediately rushes out to embrace Saint Nicholas and thank him for such generosity. Nicholas, as pious as ever, doesn’t want recognition for his gifts, and makes the man promise that he will never reveal who gave him the gold coins (although, presumably, someone must have blabbed for us to know the story today).
It was through such generosity that saved three young women from a terrible fate, that Nicholas became the patron saint for prostitutes and unmarried women. The same story also made him the patron saint of bank managers or rather, in older times, money lenders. Nicholas was seen not only as a man who was generous, but crucially one who was just as well.
However, the second possible ending of the story mighy give us a hint as to how Nicholas might have morphed into Santa Claus. When Nicholas visits the house to throw a third time, it is winter so the windows are shuttered. He has no choice but to throw the coins down the chimney instead.
You might think “viola! That’s where Santa Claus comes from!” However, Michael’s version, which is more contemporary with the saint’s life, makes no mention of this embellishment, making the second version seem like a retrospective amendment designed specifically to link the two figures. In fact, there are other ways in which the idea of a stocking by the fireplace has come to be associated with Christmas, but for that you’ll have to wait for the next blog post!
Nicholas died on 6 December 352AD, which is why 6 December is Saint Nicholas’ day. His early election to bishop helped give rise to the custom of having a boy bishop elected every in December to oversee the Christmas festivities: it’s no coincidence that the boy bishop is elected on Saint Nicholas’ day. But there were other influences at work too to bring about the rise of Santa Claus: pagan influences, historical customs and, as ever, the media, blended Saint Nicholas with other mythic figures from history to create the modern day Santa Claus. I’ll be covering those elements in my next blog post entitled: Santa Claus and magic mushrooms.
Bibliography
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