Every Christmas since I was a child has featured Santa Claus. So, as a naturally curious person, I wanted to know exactly who Santa was. Good question. Like so many of our Christmas traditions, it’s complicated.
Christmas in America has combined elements of several winter celebrations into one holiday spectacular. We have taken the Saturnalia traditions of the Winter Solstice ,the Christian holidays St. Stephens Day (Dec. 26), St. Nicholas’ Day and the Christ Mass, and rolled them into one. By the way, one of our “Christmas “carols is actually a St. Stephens’ carol, Good King Wenceslas. I will get to him later.
We have followed a similar path with Santa. Nicholas of Myra was a rich young nobleman whose parents died of a plague while he was young. A devout Christian, Nicholas took his wealthy inheritance and gave it to the poor. He became the bishop of Myra, in what is now Turkey, at a young age. He died in 343 AD. Since then, his legend has grown.
One story involves dowries for three daughters of a poor man. Legend has it that Nicholas snuck over to the man’s house in the dead of night, shortly before each one of the daughters came of age, over a three-year period. Each time, he threw a bag of gold into a window-the dowry which the father could never have paid. By the way, one of the bags is said to have landed in a shoe…which later became a bag thrown down the chimney landed in a shoe…then a bag thrown down the chimney landed in a stocking…
Eventually St. Nicholas’ Day was all but forgotten, except by children in Holland who believed that St. Nick, “Sinter Klaus” brought them gifts on his special day.
Enter Cromwell and the Puritans. When Christmas was banned in England ( for being polluted by paganism) there arose a symbolic figure known as Lord Christmas, or Father Christmas. Father Christmas did not have anything to do with children and he did not give gifts. He just went around in his green coat and long beard looking an awful lot like Woten, the Anglo-Saxon god. ( He was from Scandinavia, with reindeer and all…just saying.)
The Dutch came to New Amsterdam, soon to be taken over by the English and renamed New York, with Santa in tow. Somehow, in the next two hundred years, St. Nicholas melded with Father Christmas to become our modern Santa Claus. He got his creepy ability to see you when you are sleeping and know when you are awake from Father Christmas, but he brought gifts down the chimney like St. Nick. He got his appearance (and sleigh) entirely from Father Christmas, except that he traded in the green coat for a red one. (St. Nicholas had always had a red bishop’s robe.) However he got here, he is definitely big time.
A lesser known Christmas figure is Good King Wenceslas. Turns out there really was a Wenceslas who ruled in Bohemia ( now in the Czech Republic)
until he was martyred in 929 AD. It was said of him by Cosmas of Prague, in 1119 that, ” he went around to God’s churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty, so much so that he was considered, not a prince, but the father of all the wretched.” This was in the age when most of Europe was teetering between paganism and Christianity. The pagan lords of Bohemia backed his brother against him and Wenceslas was killed on the steps of a chapel as he went to prayer alone.
These summaries are a little over-simplified and the real history behind our traditions is a little harder to follow, but I was taken by one thing: These two men, Nicholas and Wenceslas, served their communities to the point that their giving lived after them. What if I lived my life so sacrificially that legends were told of my giving? Songs were sung, and gifts exchanged?
We can protest all the non-Christian elements in our traditions, but does that really show the world who Jesus is? I will celebrate Christ at Christmas. I will also celebrate Christ on New Years, St. Patrick’s Day, and Secretaries Day…okay, that would take some imagination, but you get the idea.
So in the true spirit of Christmas, I went to Wal-mart this morning with a few crazy friends from my church, and we wrapped gifts and gave away cookies at no charge. One guy insisted on paying us and I told him that it was against my religion to take his money. We were able to pray with one young man about a need in his life and some people even gave us all hugs as they left. I do not have a personal fortune to disperse, but this was my best impersonation of Wenceslas.
In all your giving, give yourself wholly to Christ and to serve those for whom He died.
Merry Christmas!
Jimmy H. Malone Jr. 