St. Nicholas
Who is that man in red? The man who, every Christmas Eve,
brazenly breaks into people's homes, helps himself to cookies and milk, and
leaves things behind resulting in a mess of wrapping paper and ribbon for
others to clean up the next morning. Reindeer and a heavily laden sleigh can't
be good for the roof. Soot from a chimney tracked all over the floor…something
else left behind for others to clean.
Yet every year we anxiously anticipate his arrival, track
his progress through the skies, and welcome him into our homes.
Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk
named St. Nicholas. It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280
A.D. in Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey. Much admired for his piety and
kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends. It is said that he
gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the
poor and sick. One of the best known of the St. Nicholas stories is that he
saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their father
when he provided them with a dowry so they could be married. Over the course of
many years, Nicholas' popularity spread and he became known as the protector of
children and sailors. His feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his
death, December 6. This was traditionally considered a lucky day to make large
purchases or to get married. By the Renaissance, St. Nicholas was the most
popular saint in Europe. Even after the Protestant Reformation, when the
veneration of saints began to be discouraged, St. Nicholas maintained a
positive reputation, especially in Holland.
Sinter Klaas Comes to
New York
St. Nicholas made his first inroads into American popular
culture towards the end of the 18th century. In December 1773, and again in
1774, a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families had gathered
to honor the anniversary of his death.
The name Santa Claus evolved from his Dutch nickname, Sinter
Klaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas (Dutch for Saint Nicholas). In 1804,
John Pintard, a member of the New York Historical Society, distributed woodcuts
of St. Nicholas at the society's annual meeting. The background of the
engraving contains now-familiar Santa images including stockings filled with
toys and fruit hung over a fireplace. In 1809, Washington Irving helped to
popularize the Sinter Klaas stories when he referred to St. Nicholas as the
patron saint of New York in his book, The
History of New York. As his prominence grew, Sinter Klaas was described as
everything from a rascal with a blue
three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, and yellow stockings to a man wearing a
broad-brimmed hat and a "huge pair of Flemish trunk hose."
Shopping Mall Santas
Gift-giving, mainly centered around children, has been an
important part of the Christmas celebration since the holiday's rejuvenation in
the early 19th century. Stores began to advertise Christmas shopping in 1820,
and by the 1840s, newspapers were creating separate sections for holiday
advertisements, which often featured images of the newly-popular Santa Claus.
In 1841, thousands of children visited a Philadelphia shop to see a life-size
Santa Claus model. It was only a matter of time before stores began to attract
children, and their parents, with the lure of a peek at a live Santa Claus. In the early 1890s, the Salvation Army needed
money to pay for the free Christmas meals they provided to needy families. They
began dressing up unemployed men in Santa Claus suits and sending them into the
streets of New York to solicit donations. Those familiar Salvation Army Santas
have been ringing bells on the street corners of American cities ever since.
A Santa by Any Other
Name
18th-century America's Santa Claus was not the only St.
Nicholas-inspired gift-giver to make an appearance at Christmastime. Similar
figures were popular all over the world. Christkind or Kris Kringle was
believed to deliver presents to well-behaved Swiss and German children. Meaning
Christ child, Christkind is an
angel-like figure often accompanied by St. Nicholas on his holiday missions. In
Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a
sleigh drawn by goats. British legend explains that Father Christmas visits
each home on Christmas Eve to fill children's stockings with holiday treats.
Pere Noel is responsible for filling the shoes of French children. In Russia,
it is believed that an elderly woman named Babouschka purposely gave the wise
men wrong directions to Bethlehem so that they couldn't find Jesus. Later, she
felt remorseful, but could not find the men to undo the damage. To this day, on
January 5, Babouschka visits Russian children leaving gifts at their bedsides
in the hope that one of them is the baby Jesus and she will be forgiven. In
Italy, a similar story exists about a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch
who rides a broomstick down the chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into
the stockings of lucky children.
The Ninth Reindeer
Rudolph, "the most famous reindeer of all," was
born over a hundred years after his eight flying counterparts. The red-nosed
wonder was the creation of Robert L. May, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward
department store.
In 1939, May wrote a Christmas-themed story-poem to help
bring holiday traffic into his store. Using a similar rhyme pattern to Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, May
told the story of Rudolph, a young reindeer who was teased by the other deer
because of his large, glowing, red nose. But, when Christmas Eve turned foggy
and Santa worried that he wouldn't be able to deliver gifts that night, the
former outcast saved Christmas by leading the sleigh with the light of his red
nose. Rudolph's message—that given the opportunity, a liability can be turned
into an asset—proved popular. Montgomery Ward sold almost two and a half
million copies of the story in 1939. When it was reissued in 1946, the book
sold over three and half million copies. Several years later, one of May's
friends, Johnny Marks, wrote a short song based on Rudolph's story (1949). It
was recorded by Gene Autry and sold over two million copies. Since then, the
story has been translated into 25 languages and been made into a television
movie, narrated by Burl Ives, which has charmed audiences since 1964.
