After his parents died, Nicholas is said to have distributed their wealth to the poor. In his most famous exploit, which is first attested in Michael the Archimandrite’s Life of Saint Nicholas, Nicholas heard of a devout man who once been wealthy, but had lost all his money due to the “plotting and envy of Satan.” The man had three daughters, but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried and probably, in absence of any other possible employment, be forced to become prostitutes. Hearing of the girls’ plight, Nicholas decided to help them, but, being too modest to help the family in public (or to save them the humiliation of accepting charity), he went to the house under the cover of night and threw a purse filled with gold coins through the window opening into the house. He did the same thing the next two nights, giving the man a total of three bags of gold, one for each of his three daughters. According to Michael the Archimandrite’s version, on the third night, the father of the three girls stayed up and caught Saint Nicholas in the act of the charity. The father fell on his knees, thanking him. Nicholas ordered him not to tell anyone about the gift. The historicity of this event is not much in question. For several hundred years, circa 1200 to 1500, St. Nicholas was the unchallenged bringer of gifts and the toast of celebrations centered around his day, December 6. The strict saint took on some aspects of earlier European deities, like the Roman Saturn or the Norse Odin, who appeared as white-bearded men and had magical powers like flight. He also ensured that kids toed the line by saying their prayers and practicing good behavior.
But after the Protestant Reformation, saints like Nicholas fell out of favor across much of northern Europe. “That was problematic,” Bowler said. “You still love your kids, but now who is going to bring them the gifts?” Bowler said that, in many cases, that job fell to baby Jesus, and the date was moved to Christmas rather than December 6. “But the infant’s carrying capacity is very limited, and he’s not very scary either,” Bowler said. “So the Christ child was often given a scary helper to do the lugging of presents and the threatening of kids that doesn’t seem appropriate coming from the baby Jesus.” Some of these scary Germanic figures again were based on Nicholas, no longer as a saint but as a threatening sidekick like Ru-klaus (Rough Nicholas), Aschenklas (Ashy Nicholas), and Pelznickel (Furry Nicholas). These figures expected good behavior or forced children to suffer consequences like whippings or kidnappings. Dissimilar as they seem to the jolly man in red, these colorful characters would later figure in the development of Santa himself.
In the Netherlands, kids and families simply refused to give up St. Nicholas as a gift bringer. They brought “Sinterklaas” and his enduring name with them to New World colonies, where the legends of the shaggy and scary Germanic gift bringers also endured. But in early America Christmas wasn’t much like the modern holiday. The holiday was shunned in New England, and elsewhere it had become a bit like the pagan Saturnalia that once occupied its place on the calendar. “‘It was celebrated as a kind of outdoor, alcohol-fueled, rowdy community blowout,” Bowler said. “That’s what it had become in England as well. And there was no particular, magical gift bringer.” Then, during the early decades of the 19th century, all that changed thanks to a series of poets and writers who strove to make Christmas a family celebration—by reviving and remaking St. Nicholas.
Washington Irving’s 1809 book Knickerbocker’s History of New York first portrayed a pipe-smoking Nicholas soaring over the rooftops in a flying wagon, delivering presents to good girls and boys and switches to bad ones. In 1821 an anonymous illustrated poem entitled “The Children’s Friend” went much further in shaping the modern Santa and associating him with Christmas. “Here we finally have the appearance of a Santa Claus,” Bowler said. “They’ve taken the magical gift-bringing of St. Nicholas, stripped him of any religious characteristics, and dressed this Santa in the furs of those shaggy Germanic gift bringers.” That figure brought gifts to good girls and boys, but he also sported a birch rod, the poem noted, that “directs a Parent’s hand to use when virtue’s path his sons refuse.” Santa’s thin wagon was pulled by a single reindeer—but both driver and team would get a major makeover the next year. In 1822 Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit From St. Nicholas” also known as “The Night Before Christmas,” for his six children, with no intention of adding to the fledgling Santa Claus phenomenon. It was published anonymously the next year, and to this day the plump, jolly Santa described therein rides a sleigh driven by eight familiar reindeer. “It went viral,” Bowler said. But familiar as the poem is, it still leaves much to the imagination, and the 19th century saw Santa appear in different-colored clothing, in sizes from miniature to massive, and in a variety of different guises. “I have a wonderful picture of him that looks exactly like George Washington riding a broomstick,” Bowler said.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century, he added, that the image of Santa became standardized as a full-size adult, dressed in red with white fur trim, venturing out from the North Pole in a reindeer-driven sleigh and keeping an eye on children’s behavior.
Pastor Dave
Lutheran Schreff 