Virtue Magazine

It’s Superman!

Um, good try. Actually, the answer is Santa Claus. (Heard the name before?) Santa Claus was born around A.D. 270 in the Greek city of Patara on the southwestern coast of what is now Turkey. “Santa Claus” sound Greek to you? Nor I. The truth is “Santa Claus” is only the name a certain “St. Nicholas” was given by Americans.

Young Nicholas was born as an answer to his parents’ plea to God for a child, and from his birth, they considered Nicholas a gift from God. Nicholas’ parents were devout Christians who always taught their son to be very generous to the needy. They died of an epidemic when Nicholas was in his teens, but their lessons stuck by him throughout his life. The wealth that he inherited after his parents’ death he distributed to the poor, and at the age of nineteen, Nicholas entered the priesthood. Later he became the Archbishop of Myra, and it was from there that the fame of his good deeds began to spread.

Many stories are told of Nicholas’ kindness to the needy. One particular story tells of a time when Nicholas heard that a local man had no money to provide dowries for his three daughters and was therefore planning to sell them into prostitution. Nicholas went to the house during the night and threw three bags of gold through the window.

Another time, while sailing on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Nicholas’s ship was overcome by a frightful storm, and the sailors feared they were about to die. They went to Nicholas and begged for his help. Nicholas prayed fervently over the ship, and the sea became calm. The sailors were astonished and gave praise to God.

A third story tells of an emperor who sent three princes to Lycea to stop a rebellion nearby. Stormy weather at sea forced the men into the port of Myra, where Nicholas was bishop. Nicholas invited the three princes to dine with him and other dignitaries of the town. While at dinner, however, the consul ordered that the three innocent princes be executed. Nicholas was horrified at this ill-treatment and even as the executioner raised his sword over the princes’ heads, Nicholas stormed into the room and blocked the executioner. He had the men unbound and led them to safety. Then he turned to the consul and rebuked him so sternly that the consul repented.

In the centuries that followed his death, Nicholas did indeed become a very popular figure, and stories of his deeds spread throughout Greece and into Russia. December 6, the day of Nicholas’ death, became St. Nicholas Day on the Roman Catholic calendar, and the custom of gift-giving on December 6 began in France and spread across all of Europe. With the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, St. Nicholas was no longer observed in England; but in Holland and Belgium, the traditional day of December 6 was still celebrated. There “Sinter Klaas”—the Dutch nickname for St. Nicholas—rode through the streets on a white horse, rewarding good children with treats and toys and giving bad children rods. In Germany, the saint was referred to as “Nicholas dressed in fur,” and he also gave sweets to good children and switches to bad ones.

When he landed in the West Indies on December 6, 1492, Christopher Columbus brought the first celebration of St. Nicholas Day to the New World and named the harbor “Port of St. Nicholas” in honor of the patron saint of sailors. With immigration to the New World, all of these traditions of the so-called “Sinter Klaas” blended together and as the English and Dutch came and intermarried, Father Christmas and Sinter Klaas blended into one figure. Dutch Americans eventually adopted December 25 as their day of celebration, and by the end of the Civil War, St. Nicholas the bishop was generally known in the United Stated as the one and only…Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, the person portrayed by our current customs is far removed from the godly saint Nicholas was. For instead of a generous man who saves men from death and girls from prostitution, is a jolly old man who poses with kids at the malls, tries to be a million places at once and fails, waves to onlookers at Christmas parades, and occasionally—if you’re lucky—throws miniature candy canes to eager children.