Friday, December 6, 2024

It is the 6th of December 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

If you are a kid listening to this show, I have some bad news for you. For centuries and centuries, kids didn’t have to wait until December 25th (or 24th if you’re one of *those* families). The greatest day of the year, the day with all the gifts, was not Christmas Day but instead the feast day of St. Nicholas, the Turkish saint who became wildly popular in the Middle Ages and then morphed into our Santa Claus (with help from an artist with the Coca Cola company).

So, who was St. Nicholas, how did he become so popular, and what is the reason we give gifts around this time of year?

The answer, as we’ve told on this show before is that we don’t know much about the actual St. Nicholas. He was the Bishop of Myra- so, a high position in the church in Turkey. And this was in the 300s- so, maybe persecuted or maybe not. Maybe at the Council of Nicea in 325, maybe not.

Our primary sources are lacking, but the secondary sources give us a picture of a massively famous saint. He was popular in Turkey, and thereabouts, when his relics were taken to the Italian peninsula in the 1000s, he became just as popular in the West.

He became the patron saint of children and the poor and sailors, merchants, the unwed, students, and repentant robbers. Whole countries like Russia and Greece named him their patron saint, as did Aberdeen, Scotland and Amiens in France. He became the patron saint of New York City when a bunch of folks, sick of the English prattling on about their patron saint, George made the society of St. Nicholas and made him the patron saint of the town.  

So, how did this saint who was popular, who we know so little about, come to be associated with Santa Claus?

As the patron saint of children, his feast day- today, the 6th of December- became a day in which children would awake to treats in their shoes (or perhaps in their socks hanging by the fire).

Now- the Reformation almost killed all the fun. After all, Protestants thought that undue attention was paid to the saints, that praying to or with the dead wasn’t biblical etc., etc. Saint's days were abolished. Some reformers wanted to get rid of everything, but you can thank Martin Luther, among others, for blending the tradition of Nicholas and Christmas. We see in his home ledger in the 1520s money put aside for “Nicholas gifts”. He knew if you lost the presents,  you lost the kids. And so he introduced a figure- not St. Nicholas- who would give the gifts instead: the Christ Child. With Christ’s birth soon to be celebrated, Luther thought this was a good compromise. Various streams would blend over time, and the practice of giving gifts was moved from St. Nicholas Day (today) to Christ’s-own-Mass.

NOW, in German, the Christ Child is “ChristKind” or “Christkindl,” which morphed into “Kriss Kringle.”

In America, those Dutch who settled in New York and made Nicholas the patron saint loved to celebrate Saint Nick or, in Dutch, “Sint Nikolaas” became “Sinterklaas,” which became “Santa Claus” blended with Kris Kringle (even though that was supposed to be something else) and with Old Man Time coming at the end of the year and the British Father Christmas we start to see the genesis of everything Santa Claus.

Fun fact: Coca-Cola’s famous painting is what codified him as human-sized- in the famous poem “The Night Before Christmas,” he is an elf.

But- even though we have to wait until the 25th for presents, it could be worse, there could be no presents at all. And the real St. Nicholas, whoever that Turkish bishop was, would not want us celebrating him as the center of the season but rather to the ChristKind he pointed forward to. So, happy St. Nicholas Day- from Turkey to the North Pole, what a trip. More tomorrow on volume 2 of the Christmas (and Advent) History Almanac for the weekend edition!

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary from Philippians 1:

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. 20 I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 6th of December 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who only recognizes Tim Allen in the Santa Claus (1, 2, 3 and TV program) as the proper representation of Santa Claus; he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who was surprised to discover how many images of Christmas figures in my head are claymation…  Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.