6th December: Feast Day of St Nicholas or Santa Claus.
marks the feast day of St. Nicholas, one of the most popular and venerated saints of both the western and eastern Christian traditions. St. Nicholas has, of course, become better known to us as Santa Claus.
Very little is actually known about the real person except that he was a fourth-century bishop of Myra, Lycia (now Muğla in modern Turkey). Nicholas’ reputation as a miracle worker and patron of children has helped to account for his popularity. He is said to have given gifts of three bags of gold to three girls for their marriage dowries in order to save them from a life of prostitution. Nicholas miraculously raised three boys, murdered by a butcher, from the dead. His veneration is very old and dates at least from the 6th-century when the emperor Justinian had a church dedicated to him built in Constantinople.
In 1087, Nicholas’ relics were taken to Bari, Italy, by Italian merchants (who may have possibly stolen them), following the overrunning of his shrine by the Seljuk Turks. The Basilica di San Nicola was built to house them there. Nicholas became a very popular figure in art; in England the 12th-century Tournai Font in Winchester Cathedral has scenes from his life carved on it; the Victoria and Albert Museum has a 12th-century crosier also with representations of St. Nicholas. The Jerusalem Chamber in Westminster has a 13th-century window with scenes of his life. There are many other examples of church art dedicated to Nicholas in England alone, and there are 8th-century mosaics in Rome, 10th-century in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul and other examples of art too numerous to list. Nicholas was included in many Renaissance paintings and was for several centuries the most popular image of a saintly bishop. In pre-Reformation England there were over over four hundred churches dedicated to St Nicholas and thousands in Europe; even today there are about sixty churches dedicated to him in England and at least one each in both Scotland and Wales.
Nicholas is of course most famous for his transformation into Santa Claus. It is possible that the story of the dowries given to the three girls is one of the earliest associations of Nicholas giving gifts to children. Customs of giving little gifts to children on Nicholas’ feast day, or overnight on the 5th/6th December grew up in many parts of Europe; the gifts were usually nuts or small treats placed in the children’s’ shoes which are left out for his visit. St Nicholas would also receive a gift of carrots and hay for his horse.
After the Reformation celebrations of St Nicholas Day became less popular, especially in Protestant countries, with the exception of the Netherlands. Modern Santa Claus is said to have derived from Dutch Sinterklaas or Sint-Nicolaas and is an amalgamation of the actual St Nicholas with many folkloric and pre-Christian figures from several cultures. His predecessor in England was Father Christmas, who was a sort of representation of Christmas and was not really associated with children but with the feasting and revelry of the season.
In many parts of Europe on 6th December, St Nicholas’ feast day was the occasion of the election of a boy, usually a cathedral chorister, as Boy Bishop; he would reign until 28th December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
Christmas has become of increasing economic importance over the past two or three centuries and is also the time of year when most charity organisations, in the UK at any rate, expect to raise the bulk of their funds for the coming year. Some people argue that the celebrations have become too commercialised and encourage people to spend more than they can afford on gifts.
The tradition of gift giving in wintertime has various origins, from the Roman Saturnalia and Germanic/Nordic Yule and Celtic traditions; customs which are believed to have migrated into Christianity over the centuries and eventually coalesced, along with the tales of St Nicholas, into our celebrations giving us our modern Christmas. The present day Santa Claus seems to be a 19th-century American development of several older figures and his well-known red-robes are often said to date from a 1930s Coca-Cola advertisement; there were in fact Victorian representations of Santa in red pre-dating Coca-Cola. However, he was often represented in green, blue, purple and other colours before the modern Christmas.
So far as is known Santa was first associated with reindeer in a children’s poem called “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” published in New York in 1821, although he only had a single reindeer in that work. In the more famous “A Visit from St Nicholas”, better known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore (1779 – 1863) the poet gives the reindeer the names by which they are still known, that is Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder (nowadays Donner) and Blitzen. In both these poems the date for St. Nicholas’ visits to children was Christmas Eve and not his actual feast-day of 6th December. Although reindeer were (and occasionally still are) used in parts of Scandinavia to pull sleds as a method of transport for people and goods, the image of flying reindeer may hint at shamanistic influences in the complex composite figure of our Santa.
St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children, of mariners, and of travellers; he is one of the patron saints of Greece, Russia, Sicily and Lorraine and of many cities in Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and others. In many parts of Europe St. Nicholas’ Day is still widely celebrated with processions and other activities, and is also the day, that until very recently at least, children in many parts of Europe received their seasonal gifts. In Canterbury Cathedral the St Nicholas Family Service 2023 takes place on Sunday, 10th December at 5.30pm.
YouTube has many, many films of St Nicholas’ Parades* in various parts of Europe (sometimes called Klaustag or Klausnacht in German).
Whatever the truth of the real Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, it goes without saying that he would probably be astonished at the manner in which his posthumous career developed.
HG1
*Fascinating amd very evocative little film showing scenes of St. Nicholas’s Day in Bari,
Puglia, Italy (site of his major shrine) . Only 1.22 minutes. Well worth watching. https://www.facebook.com/italia.it/videos/546950306139093
References:
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints: David Hugh Farmer, Oxford UnivPress, 1978.
A Dictionary of English Folklore: Jacqueline Simpson & Steve Roud, Oxford Univ Press, 2000.
Catholic Encyclopaedia Online, St. Nicholas: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11063b.htm
