Each year about this time I get lots of comments like this – “You would make a great Santa!” This year it went even further. I was invited to be Santa for a local Christmas parade. I declined, mostly because I wouldn’t be able to find a good suit in the short time before the parade, but in small part because I just wasn’t sure I was ready to become Santa, even though I more and more look the part.
Santa Claus has a long and convoluted history. The Second Century Saint Nicholas, upon whom he is based, has an even weirder backstory, and only bears a passing resemblance to the modern incarnation. I first learned some of this backstory when I performed Benjamin Britten’s cantata Saint Nicolas with the Greenville Chorale many years ago. One of the weirdest of these was the legend of “Saint Nicholas and the Pickled Boys.” Wikipedia describes that movement of the cantata thusly…
The seventh movement of Saint Nicolas depicts the legend of the Pickled Boys. Nicolas finds himself in an inn where a group of travelers have paused for the night. They invite the bishop to dine with them, but Nicolas stops them from eating, realizing that the meat that they eat is in fact the flesh of three boys murdered and pickled by the butcher. Nicolas calls to the boys, “Timothy, Mark, and John, put your fleshly garments on!” and the boys come back to life, singing “Alleluia!”
Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, supposedly got into a boxing match with Arius at the Council of Nicaea over the issue of Christ’s divinity.
Other tales include Nicholas delivering gold in secret to an impoverished family so that the three daughters will have a dowry and won’t have to resort to prostitution. Through his many miraculous deeds he became known as the protector of women, bearer of gifts, and patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people, and students in various cities and countries around Europe.
Santa Claus came to us by way of Sinterklaas, a corruption of the pronunciation of the Dutch version of Saint Nicholas. New Amsterdam, aka New York, was ground zero for Santa’s incursion. Santa has many counterparts that in modern times have become conflated with him, though they are not the same. Father Christmas in England actually predates Santa and was originally not associated with Saint Nicholas. Father Christmas was the personification of Christmas, a reaction to the Puritan edicts against the celebration of the holiday. The original version resembles Santa in that he was a jolly merrymaker.
Of course I had to find see what was in the news archives. First I searched for Santa Claus, sorted by oldest articles first. Nearly all of these articles are from the US. This points to Santa as a purely American creation from the very beginning. Some of these articles weren’t even from the holiday season, but other times of the year. The early articles show Santa as a protector of women, rather than the gift giver for which he is known today. For example, in this article from 1815 he decries the indiscriminate kissing of women on New Year’s Eve.
The poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” in 1823 changed everything. The poem became so popular that it solidified the image of Santa. That image became so popular that Father Christmas and Pierre Noel took on a similar persona.
Today is December 6, the feast day of Saint Nicholas, celebrated on the date thought to be the day of his death. On this feast day, eat some pickles, box a heretic, and enjoy Benjamin Britten’s interpretation of the story of Saint Nick.