The Real Santa Claus

Let’s talk about Santa Claus.  No, not an overweight old man with white hair and a beard who dresses up in a red suit and flies around in a sleigh driven by reindeer hopping down chimneys all night long on Christmas Eve.  That’s the modern consumer driven marketing version designed to facilitate the spending of billions of dollars every year on material goods.  What I want to tell you about is the real Santa Claus.  You see, our modern version of the name comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas (SEEn-ter-class), which is itself a modified and corrupted transliteration of the original name, Saint Nikolaos, or Nicholas.

The real person of Nicholas was born in 303 A.D. in Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey.  His parents were wealthy Christians who trained him in the faith from an early age.  After they died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young he went to live with his uncle, the bishop of Patara, who continued to teach the young man about Christianity.  So as you can see his formative years were deeply rooted in the Christian faith.  When Nicholas grew up he became a bishop himself, of the town of Myra.  And he took the teachings of Jesus very seriously.  In particular Christ’s command to the rich young man to sell all he had and give to the poor.  Nicholas took this idea and ran with it, developing a reputation for secret gift giving over the years and having many stories told about his exploits.  Many of these stories are fanciful and not very believable, involving miraculous powers and supernatural occurrences.

One of the most credible of these stories involves a father with three young daughters of marriageable age.  In that culture the family of a young woman had to provide a dowry along with the bride to be, so as to help the new family build a foundation.  If you were too poor to afford a dowry your daughters didn’t get married and oftentimes were either sold into slavery or turned to prostitution in an effort to avoid starvation.  Well, the specific details of the story vary, but one version goes that this father fell on hard times and didn’t have any money for his daughters to get married with.  They were to be sold as slaves, beginning with the eldest.  The night before her sale, the young lady washed her stockings, hung them in front of the fire to dry, and went to sleep.  In the morning she saw a lump in her stocking.  Reaching in she found a small bag filled with gold, enough to provide food and a dowry for her.  The next night the same thing happened to the middle daughter.  On the third evening the father decided to find out what was going on so he stayed awake through the night.  Eventually, he caught Bishop Nicholas in the act of climbing onto their roof and dropping a sack of money down the chimney and into the stocking hanging in front of the fire place.  Nicholas asked the father to keep his identity hidden.  He wanted to remain anonymous in keeping with his Lord’s instructions about giving in secret.  Nevertheless, stories about him spread and his fame grew.

In 325 A.D. he was asked to attend the Council of Nicaea.  If you recall, the main topic of debate at this council was the deity of Christ.  Arius, a priest from Alexandria, was teaching that Christ was not God but rather the first of all created beings; still deserving of much respect but not on the same level as God Himself.  Opposed to Arius was Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria as well as none other than our Bishop Nicholas.  The story goes that during the council Nicholas became so enraged at Arius’s heretical teachings that he punched him right in the face on the council floor.  What’s fascinating about this is that today modern versions of Arians still exist, in the form of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not believe that Jesus is God.  It is quite fascinating that they refuse to celebrate Christmas, a holiday with ties to the man who opposed their ancient teacher.  They would deny this of course, stating instead that they don’t observe Christmas solely because they perceive it to be unbiblical.  But I think it’s an interesting coincidence nonetheless.

The point in all this for me is one of reminder.  I am reminded of the rich heritage we have as Christians.  I am reminded how clouded and distorted our cultural perceptions are.  And I am reminded that in spite of all the exaggerations, all the mysticism, all the consumerism, and all the secularization the character of Santa Claus is drawn from a real historical figure who was attempting to do nothing more than obey his Lord and master, Jesus.  That is a version of Santa Claus that I can get behind and support wholeheartedly.