Saint Nicholas
The Real Saint Nicholas
The story of Santa Claus's namesake
TED
OLSEN
.
December 6 marks Saint Nicholas Day, and I
thought I'd mark the beginning of the Christmas season by telling the story of
Santa Claus's namesake.
.
But before I do, I should remark that, historically speaking, there's
not much we really know about Nicholas.
.
Though he's one of the most popular saints in
the Greek and Latin churches, his existence isn't attested by any historical
document.
.
All we can say is that he was probably the bishop of Myra (near modern Finike,
Turkey) sometime in the 300s.
.
That
said, there are of course many legends about Nicholas, and since these have
influenced people throughout history, and they likely illustrate something about the historical man, they are fair
game for a publication, like ours, devoted to Christian history.
Supposedly,
Nicholas was born to a wealthy family in Patara, Lycia. His parents died, and
he inherited a considerable sum of money, but he kept none of it.
In the
most famous story about his life, he threw bags of gold through the windows of
three girls about to be forced into lives of prostitution.
At
least that's the most common version of the story; there are others, including
an excessively grim one where the three girls are beheaded by an innkeeper and
pickled in a tub of brine until Nicholas resurrects them.
After a
couple of miracles (he's sometimes called Nicholas the Wonder-Worker) performed
while he was still a boy, Nicholas was chosen by the people of Myra to be their
new bishop.
But it
wasn't long before Diocletian and Maximian began their persecutions of
Christians, and the new bishop was imprisoned.
When
Constantine became emperor, Nicholas was released with countless others and
returned to his preaching only to find a new threat: Arianism.
According to one biographer (writing five centuries after
Nicholas's death), "Thanks to the
teaching of St. Nicholas, the metropolis of Myra alone was untouched by the
filth of the Arian heresy, which it firmly rejected as a death-dealing
poison."
Other
biographers claim Nicholas attacked the heresy of Arius (who denied the full
divinity of Christ) in a much more personal way—he traveled to the Council of
Nicea and slapped Arius in the face!
As the
story goes (and this should be taken as fantasy because there are pretty good
records of the council, and Nicholas isn't mentioned), the other bishops at
Nicea were shocked at such rude behavior and relieved him as bishop.
But
then Jesus and Mary appeared next to him, and they quickly recanted.
That's
the questionable legend of Nicholas. But not the end of the story.
Even by
the reign of Justinian (d. 565), Nicholas was famous, and the emperor
dedicated a church in Constantinople to him.
By the 900s, a Greek wrote, "The
West as well as the East acclaims and glorifies him. Wherever there are people,
his name is revered and churches are built in his honor. All Christians
reverence his memory and call upon his protection."
The
West became even more interested when his "relics" were taken from
Myra to Bari, Italy, on May 9, 1087.
He's
said to have been represented by medieval artists more frequently than any
saint but Mary, and nearly 400 churches were dedicated in his honor in England
alone during the late Middle Ages.
With
such a popularity, his legends inevitably became intertwined with others.
In
Germanic countries, it sometimes became hard to tell where the legend of
Nicholas began and that of Woden (or Odin) ended.
Somewhere
along the line, probably tied to the gold-giving story, people began giving
presents in his name on his feast day.
When
the Reformation came along, his following disappeared in all the Protestant
countries except Holland, where his legend continued as Sinterklass.
Martin
Luther, for example, replaced this bearer of gifts with the Christ Child, or,
in German, Christkindl.
Over
the years, that became repronounced Kriss Kringle, and ironically is now
considered another name for Santa Claus.
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