December 6

What comes to mind when we think of Santa Claus? Probably something along the lines of a jolly figure, somewhat mysterious, who dresses in a vibrant red suit and stocking hat; sits upon an extravagant throne while children tell him what they want for Christmas; travels by a flying reindeer sled; and who miraculously, in one night, sneaks down our chimneys to drop off presents for all the good boys and girls around the globe. Such is the Santa we sing about, together with his flying team of reindeer, during the Advent and Christmas Seasons. The story is fun for children of any age really. And if we stuck to this story, there is much here that could get us back not only to the real figure behind Santa Claus, but to the One Who Santa Claus spent his life serving. We need only to remember Santa rightly, and if we remember him rightly, we can see him rightly.

Unfortunately, today, the living memory of Santa Claus is synonymous with the acquisition of material goods. While having roots in an ancient past, the Santa we think of today originated in a Coca-Cola Company ad campaign begun in the 1930s. “From 1931 to 1964,” the artist Haddon Sundblom, “produced warm and richly colored Christmas scenes featuring a larger-than-life Santa posing cheerfully in various locations, always with a bottle of Coke” (Adam C. English, The Saint Who Would be Santa Claus, 6). This was St. Nick’s baptism into the world of marketing, and his new role as a symbol of materialism. And, as time has gone on, Santa has become more and more synonymous with the idea of getting stuff. At a young age children write letters to Santa and visit him at various venues all for the sake of asking him to make their every material wish come true. In short, Santa has become a symbol of vice, specifically, the vice of greed. But the real Santa could not be further from the phenomenon that surrounds his image and likeness today.

The man known today around the globe as Santa Claus is St. Nicholas of Myra. Nicholas was born in modern day southern Turkey, then known as the Roman province of Lycia, in the city of Patara (The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 25). By all accounts, his parents were very wealthy Christians. As Michael the Archemandrite, St. Nicholas’s first biographer writes, “His parents were thoroughly noble and well-off, and surpassed many in their reverence toward Christ, on account of which they kept themselves free of worldly glory and were always eager to devote themselves to the works of justice” (The Life, 3). The various accounts of his youth include clear embellishments. For example, Michael tells us that even as a baby, Nicholas fasted from taking milk at his mother’s breast on Wednesdays and Fridays, drinking only once a day “at the appointed hour,” in keeping with the discipline of the Church at the time, “letting himself nurse according to the priestly rule rather than the fullness of his stomach” (The Life, 5). Another account tells us that “at his baptism, the meek and mild infant stunned all those present by standing up in his basin of water and pronouncing a blessing” (The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 33). What embellishments of this nature make clear is that Nicholas was, we might say, spiritually precocious. His first biographer, Michael the Archemandrite, goes on to write:

In fact, from his very budding, so to speak, all the way to his mature yield and indeed to his death, the renowned Nicholas appeared equal in his virtue and miracles, in proportion to the advance of his age both ripening the fruits of his virtues alongside each other and multiplying the proofs of his prophetic wonders (The Life, 6).

And, Michael suggests, it could not have been any other way in a sense. For the boy Nicholas was only imitating the example his holy parents had given him. Michael continues:

Brought up in such an amazing way, the boy carefully conformed himself to the character of his parents. He avoided all political involvement and the corruption of the business world. He absolutely renounced meeting and associating with improper and arrogant young men…He loathed worldly amusements and the rashness of the rabble, on the grounds that they were corrupters of the virtue that makes one a friend of Christ (The Life, 8).

In short, we find that Nicholas of Myra was much different than his contemporary doppelgänger. As we have seen Michael explain, the young Nicholas was not interested in the trappings of the world, all the more remarkable because he was wealthy. He did not spend his time figuring out how to increase his wealth or notoriety, but rather spent his time, Michael tells us, in “sacred spaces,” and on the teachings of the Church, he adds, “he enlightened his mind daily, divinely elevating it to the pure and truest devotion” (The Life, 8). Moreover, both the embellished scene of a fasting infant and the earliest icons of St. Nicholas portray him as an exemplar of the virtue of temperance, slender in body, rather than the somewhat gluttonous big-bellied figure we are more familiar with.

Unfortunately, Nicholas’ happy life with virtuous and loving parents did not last long. As Adam English tells us, Nicholas “enjoyed their nurture and protection for a tragically short amount of time…They died while he was still young, probably near the age of eighteen” (The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 49). Nicholas’ association with children finds its origin here. The young man, orphaned in very young adulthood, would one day soon become known as the patron saint of children, “especially those who could not fend for themselves” (The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 49). More on this in due course. But here, the importance of Nicholas’ upbringing should be dwelt on momentarily. We have seen that Nicholas was blessed with a great wealth of what St. Thomas Aquinas would call “natural virtue.” For Aquinas, natural virtues are “certain seeds or principles of acquired virtue [that] preexist in us by nature” (Summa Theologica I-II, 63.2.3; cf. 63.1). Among the natural virtues Nicholas seems to have been blessed with by his very constitution seems to have been the virtue of religion. For Aquinas, the virtue of religion habituates us to refer all our actions to God (Summa Theologica II-II, 81.5). Yet, in order to move from natural virtue to virtue that is acquired, the seeds of natural virtue needed to be cultivated. It was Nicholas’ parents who cultivated these seeds within him through their example and teaching. The fruits of their efforts are made clear by what Nicholas does after their untimely passing.

As Michael the Archimandrite tells us, “after his parents had gone to the Lord and left him much property and an abundance of money and possessions, he reckoned that he had God as his father” (The Life, 9). This is the virtue of religion at work in Nicholas, and this virtue made Nicholas a faithful man. As St. Thomas Aquinas writes in a sermon on St. Nicholas, God found in Nicholas a faithful servant, who “refers everything he has and does to God” (Sermon on the Feast of St. Nicholas, 2). Michael goes on to tell us that in order to discern his path forward in life, the faithfully religious Nicholas looked to the prayer book of Scripture, the Psalms. Nicholas prayed, “Teach me, Lord, to do Your will, because you are my God” (Psalm 143:10), and “Make known to me, Lord, the path upon which I am to journey, because to You I have lifted my soul from all triviality and worldly lowliness” (Psalm 143:8). In light of his own current state, a wealthy young man, Nicholas prayerfully meditated on the Word of God to discover what he ought to do next, and he found many passages which called him in a certain direction, including this passage from the Book of Proverbs: “That person benefits his soul, who has pity on the destitute and those who happen to be poor in their livelihood” (Proverbs 11:17). Nicholas discerned he was specially positioned to make of his life’s work the care of the poor, and this is what he did. Michael tells us, “Nicholas did not cease to continually hand over his abundance—to store it up in the secure treasure-houses of heaven. So, he was repaid in full by the impoverished” (The Life, 9). Michael’s description of Nicholas’ actions here make clear that through the time he spent prayerfully meditating on Scripture, Nicholas had come to the same conclusion that St. Augustine taught regarding the relationship between the rich and the poor:

Consider whether riches aren’t a greater burden than poverty for you. You don’t have poverty as a burden, but you do have riches as a burden. A poor man has one burden, you another. Carry his with him, and let him carry yours with you, so that you end up by carrying your burdens for each other (Sermon 164.9).

Nicholas made care for the poor out of his own resources his work in life, and thus he was always on the lookout for an opportunity to carry out this work God had entrusted to him. This brings us to perhaps the most famous episode of Nicholas’ life, the episode that gave birth to a legend. Michael tells us that it came to Nicholas’ attention that one of his neighbors had fallen on extremely difficult times. “He had gone from being well-off to extreme indigence” (The Life, 10). and, had no means by which to provide for his three daughters who were of marrying age. In this time and place, this meant that the father had no means of providing a dowery for his daughters. Consequently, left with seemingly no other options, he decided to sell his daughters into prostitution “so that he might thereby acquire the necessities of life for himself and his household” (The Life, 10).

By the working of Divine Providence, Nicholas became aware of the situation, and determined to help. However, Nicholas did not want what he had determined to do for the family to be known. He quite simply wanted to carry out this work of mercy for love of God and neighbor, not for any credit that might come to him for the extreme act of generosity he was about to carry out. So, under the cover of night, when all light had gone out of the house, Nicholas snuck up to their home, and “after hurling a bag containing a large amount of gold into the house through the window…he quickly hastened home” (The Life, 12). The next morning the father found the bag and was overwhelmed with joy. For in the bag was enough money for a dowry for his eldest daughter. Here, we see another important virtue at work in Nicholas, the virtue of prudence. Nicholas wanted to see if this father would be trustworthy with this gift. And, much to Nicholas’ pleasure, the father was indeed. The father made arrangements to marry off his eldest daughter. After the first daughter had been married, Nicholas decided he would do the same once again. And so, he hurled another bag of gold coins through the window under the cover of darkness and snuck away (The Life, 14). The result was the same. The father made preparations for the marriage of his second daughter, and so it came to pass. Unsurprisingly, Nicholas decided he would do the same for the third daughter.

However this time, the father, suspecting that the same might happen once again, waited up all night to see if the anonymous benefactor might show. “And again, at his usual point late at night…[Nicholas] threw in through the same window a gift of gold similar to the ones he had previously thrown in, and withdrew quietly from the place” (The Life, 16). But this time, the waiting father rushed out of the house and chased down the anonymous gift-giver. It is the father’s response that teaches us how we should remember St. Nicholas each and every time we see his image around us. Michael tells us that when the father recognized who Nicholas was,

he threw himself face-first at his feet with cries, and gave thanks to him over and over with many words and called him his and his three daughters’ savior, after God, and said, “If our common Master, Christ, hadn’t stirred your goodness, we would have long ago destroyed our own lives by a shameful and destructive livelihood. But as it is, our Lord has saved us through you… (The Life, 17).

The father looked at Nicholas and his marvelous act of mercy and saw one thing in him, Christ. We too, especially in the midst of a culture that has so distorted the image of the holy St. Nicholas so badly, to the point of making him the spokesperson of greed rather than mercy, must remember this about Nicholas, that he lived for no one else but Christ, to the point where Nicholas could say what Paul had said before him, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Thankfully, however distorted the popular portrayal of St. Nicholas has become, all of the clues are still present to get us back to the saint who would be Santa Claus. If we see rightly, we will remember rightly.

Sometime after Nicholas carried out the great threefold act of mercy that gave birth to the legend of Santa Claus, and still a young man, Nicholas found his life drastically changed once again. The city of Myra found itself without a shepherd, its bishop having recently died. Coming together in prayerful discernment, the bishops of the surrounding city looked for a replacement. Over the course of their discernment, one of the bishops received a message from God: “Go to the house of God at night and stand at the entrance, and whoever comes to enter the church quietly before anyone else, take this man and appoint him to the office of bishop. His name is Nicholas” (The Life, 21). That night, the young Nicholas, not even an ordained priest, walked in to the church as the bishop had been told, and was subsequently given the “throne of the bishop’s office” (The Life, 24). This was not an enviable position at the time, for the Church was on the verge of experiencing a widespread persecution under the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. Adam English writes,

No sooner had pastor Nicholas settled into the routine of his new assignment than he was arrested on religious charges…The inexperienced Nicholas was snatched up and carried to prison…he was led to the torturers where he was peppered with questions and accusations. He was threatened and beaten (The Saint Who Would Be Saint Nicholas, 92).

Yes, the man known today as Santa Claus was no less than a Confessor of the Church, one who was beaten severely for their faith though not to the point of martyrdom. Nicholas would be placed under house arrest again during the rule of Licinius (The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 95). Yet, although permanently injured for faithfully carrying out his work as the shepherd of the people of Myra, Nicholas lived to see brighter days. When Constantine came to power, the faith Nicholas held so dear was made legal and the Church flourished. When Constantine summoned the bishops of the world to Nicaea to settle the question of Christ’s divinity, Nicholas was among them. The fourteenth-century Byzantine historian Nicephorus Kallistos Xanthaopoulos tells us that Nicholas was among the many bishops who had survived the dark days of persecution and “still showed the wounds and scars in their flesh” (The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 93).

Having followed Nicholas’ life to this point, we can now go back to the image we drew for ourselves above, and we will see that the stereotypical image of Santa Claus points back to St. Nicholas of Myra. Behind the jolly, big-bellied old man with flowing white beard, we will find another, by all account jolly old man with flowing white beard, though not so big a belly. The earliest icons we have of him depict him in just this way. The bright red suit together with red stocking hat Santa now dons are simply a reimagining of the mitre and chasuble Nicholas would have worn as a Bishop, the high-priest of his people.

The intermediary figure between St. Nicholas of Myra and our modern-day Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, celebrated in the Netherlands makes this obvious, as he still dresses in Bishop’s attire. That big fancy chair Santa sits on at each event he attends, well, that’s nothing else but a riff on the Nicholas’ cathedra, the chair from which he would have taught the people of Myra in his cathedral. What of the practice of having children tell Santa their gift wishes, either in person at the mall or via letter? This is nothing else but a commercialization of petitionary prayer, whereby we ask the saints to intercede to God on our behalf. And that list that St. Nick checks twice to determine who is naughty or nice? That comes from the iconographical tradition surrounding St. Nicholas, who often is written attentively gazing upon the Scriptures held in his hand. And by what other standard would the man who allowed God to direct his life via Scripture use to determine whether we are naughty or nice anyway?

We are left with Santa’s great trek around the globe in one night. Does this tie back to the real St. Nicholas somehow? Absolutely! December 6^th was chosen as the day to celebrate the life of St. Nicholas not only because this is the day he is thought to have died and so have been born to eternal life, but for another important reason. As Adam English explains:

The sixth day of December was a special day in the calendar; it marked the symbolic start of winter and called for additional prayers and offerings to Artemis and Poseidon on behalf of those who dared venture onto the high seas in the winter months…All agreed that the winter sea was a terrible and cruel thing, demanding special reverence and honor to the gods who controlled them. The sixth day of each month, and December in particular, was dedicated to Artemis, who enjoyed a very large sanctuary in Myra until Nicholas closed it down. The annual remembrance of Nicholas on the sixth of December carried a clear message: the God of Nicholas had usurped Artemis” (The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 167).

St. Nicholas lived in a world that was shifting from a pre-Christian to Christian era. As such, many were still very much caught up in the worship of pagan gods, and Nicholas played a crucial role in this transition, both on this side of eternity and the next. His preaching of the Gospel way of life to the people of Myra, and his living embodiment of that same Gospel, left an unforgettable mark in the memory of the people of his time and place. Nicholas was one through whom God cared for his people, precisely by giving everything he had and was to them as a living gift of self-sacrificing love. This gave sea-farers the assurance that Nicholas had them in his care long after he was done teaching from his apostolic throne in Myra. So, who better to make a trek around the globe in a single night, handing out gifts, than the saint who prayed for safe passage for countless people, and spent his life giving?

St. Nicholas can play the same role for us today as he did in his own time and place. Just as Nicholas helped the antique world transition from a pre-Christian to a Christian society, he can likewise help us pull our post-Christian world back to a culture built on Christian values, both by his prayer and even more so by his example. C. S. Lewis famously described the Christ’s Incarnation as the Son of God sneaking into “enemy-occupied territory” disguised as one of us in order to win that territory back for God (Mere Christianity, Harper Collins, 46). I think God is up to something similar with St. Nicholas today. Look around you this Advent Season and you will see him, disguised as a jolly old giver of gifts. But now, you know his true identity and that the gift he truly desired everyone to have was the life of Christ in their souls. He gave his life for it, nearly to the point of martyrdom. If we remember him and celebrate his life rightly, God will continue his ongoing campaign of transforming enemy occupied territory into the Kingdom of God as intended from the beginning.

So, ought we celebrate the life of St. Nicholas? St. Augustine tells us that the right way to celebrate the lives of the saints is by imitating their virtues (Sermon 311.1). St. Nicholas exemplified many virtues. But in his sermon on St. Nicholas, Aquinas calls him “a man of great mercy” (Sermon on the Feast of St. Nicholas, 2), and I think it is this virtue exemplified by St. Nicholas that is most important for our time and place is the virtue of mercy. As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, mercy is the virtue that enables us to act readily on behalf of those most in need (Summa Theologica II-II, 30.3). But even more importantly, Aquinas goes on to add that mercy “likens us to God as regards similarity of works” (Summa Theologica II-II, 30.4).

Today, many Catholic families will celebrate the life of St. Nicholas by putting goodies of all kinds into the shoes of their children, commemorating St. Nicholas’ gift to the father and his three daughters. What if, instead, we celebrated his memory rightly and made today a day to practice the virtue of mercy as a family by helping those most in need, perhaps especially children in need who Nicholas has such a fondness for? If we celebrated his life by imitating his example, we would stand right beside Nicholas in Christ’s great campaign of transforming the world from sin-occupied territory into territory occupied by God’s Kingdom and ruled by His Divine Mercy. There could be no more authentic way to celebrate the life of St. Nicholas, nor better way to prepare to receive the gift of God’s Love Incarnate this Christmas.

Your servant in Christ,

Tony

Tony Crescio

Tony Crescio is the founder of FRESHImage Ministries. He holds an MTS from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a PhD candidate in Christian Theology at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on the intersection between moral and sacramental theology. His dissertation is entitled, Presencing the Divine: Augustine, the Eucharist and the Ethics of Exemplarity.

Tony’s academic publications can be found here.