Today is one of the best and yet one of the most forgotten days of the Christmas Season. Today is The Feast Day of Saint Nicholas.
Father Christmas, Santa Claus and all the other gift givers at Christmas time are probably in one way or another connected to this man and his memory. A lot of the trouble and commercial issues can be brought back to what marketers have done to this man and his memory.
If you don’t know much about The Catholic Church then what you need to know here is that every day of The Calendar is dedicated to a holy event such as Christmas Easter The Epiphany and so on, or the day is dedicated to a specific saint. These saints are people like you and me that were deemed holier than the rest and were ordained saints by the church. The Catholic Church has a list of attributes that have to be met before an individual can be named a saint. It’s a long process. You may even be aware of one saint’s day. That would be Saint Patrick on March 17. Saint Nicholas met the criteria a long time ago and December The 6th was dedicated to him.
Now who was St. Nicholas? Why do we associate him with children? Why did get mixed up with Christmas?
St Nicholas was the Bishop of Myra in the fourth century. He was a kindly man having been raised by a mother of great faith he dedicated his life to God after the death of his parents. Nicholas helped out many children during his time here on Earth, There are miracles attributed to him that deal with saving the lives of children, as well as good deeds to help out children in need. Here is one of my favorite stories and you will see what modern day tradition sprang from it.
There was a poor man with three daughters. In the fourth century it was customary for father to give a sum of money to the man who married his daughter. This custom continued into the 20th century. The man, being poor, had no money to give anyone and so, since no man would marry a girl without a dowry, the father decided to sell his daughters into a life of sin. I will leave it to your imagination to figure out what “a life of sin means.”
Nicholas heard about the dilemma and decided to help. He had some money from his parents and he decided to secretly give some money to each girl so she could be married. He went with the money to the home where the father and his daughters lived but could find no way to get in. He climbed up to a high window and saw the girls stockings hanging by the fire and he took some gold coins and with aim that would make any of today’s pro basketball players jealous, tossed the coins into the eldest daughters stocking.
He did this for two more nights throwing the coins into the middle girls and then last girls stocking thus saving them from what have been a terrible fate.
In Germany and Austria, at least before the Second World War, Santa Claus did not come to bring presents to the children. It was The Christ Child Himself that would come and give the many toys and gifts that were received on Christmas day. But He had a forerunner that went before Him and this was St. Nicholas.
Nicholas came down from heaven on December the 6th. He came with a large sack filled with fruit and little candies as well as something’s not so nice. He went into each home a visitor from heaven. He also went in when the children were wide awake. He spoke to each member of the family and revealed their secret sins and got promises from everyone to do better. To each repentant person he gave a small bag of treats. If someone was not particularly repentant for their sins or if they had done something really bad, that person a got a stick, the kind of stick used to swat children on the behinds with, This stick would be hung up in the house reminding the child or adult to watch their behavior.
So this is the man we celebrate today and this is also the man who would eventually be known as Santa Claus.
