(SBA) - A question that arises this time of year is how did Santa Claus come to be part of the Christmas celebration of Christ’s birth? I have never had a good answer, so this year I thought I would do some research. An article in the Sioux City Journal (12-5-2024) said that St. Nicholas was a fourth century bishop from the Mediterranean port city of Myra now in Turkey) A reference in the article led me to the book STORIES BEHIND THE GREAT TRADITIONS OF CHRISTMAS by Ace Collins. The author writes that St. Nicholas was the son of wealthy parents. When his parents died, the young man took all his family’s money and distributed it to the poor in his town. Then Nicholas became a monk at seventeen and shortly thereafter became a priest. In his early twenties, Father Nicholas became the archbishop of Myra. As an archbishop, Nicholas saved many lives and was a powerful prayer warrior. Legend maintains the Archbishop Nicholas could heal the sick. He became known for great spiritual powers, but what most endeared him to his congregation was his generosity. Many groups throughout history have claimed Nicholas as their patron saint of countries including Russia, Greece, and the cities of New York and Moscow. St. Nicholas’ death on December 6th in the late 340s or early 350s saddened many people. An annual feast was held throughout Asia Minor to honor his life. On St. Nicholas Eve, children would set out food for the saint and straw for his donkey. The next morning, obedient children woke up to find the food and straw replaced by sweets and toys on St. Nicholas Day. Devotion to St. Nicholas (I could not find information about when he was awarded Sainthood) spread during the Middle Ages. He became a popular subject of medieval artists, as well as a character in liturgical plays. In 1807, Italian sailors carried St. Nicholas’ remains from his hometown of Myra to the seaport of Bari on the southeast coast of the boot of Italy. The relic of St. Nicolas is believed to have been initially interred in the basilica of San Nicola in Bari. There, they built a church in his honor and reinterred his remains there, where his remains are there today.
After the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, Catholic relics were banned in Germany and England. But people were accustomed to the annual visit of the gift-giving saint and many towns and villages defied the church and soon merged the festivities of St. Nicholas Day with a Christmas celebration. Although the saint took on new, nonreligious forms, his generous spirit was always remembered in the new forms. Many people in England at the time wanted to ban St. Nicolas due to his pagan roots and rhe Puritans in the New World made it illegal to mention the name of St. Nicolas, expanding the ban to singing carols, exchanging gifts or lighting candles at Christmas time. (I think the Puritans banned everything that could be a joyous or generous It would not have been much fun to be a Puritan child!) Not until 150 years later was St, Nicolas’ name mentioned in American newspapers during the Christmas season. The influence of German or Dutch observances led to a revival of St. Nicolas, and he was referred to in colonial newspapers as the saint “A. Claus” and spoke of his impact on the homes of some immigrants. Thirty years later, the roots of an American Christmas were established when the New York Historical Society (with its deep Dutch roots), proclaimed St. Nicholas its patron saint. Society members renewed the Dutch practice of giving gifts at Christmas. Because children had difficulty pronouncing the Dutch “Sinterklaas,” they spoke so quickly that the word became “Santy Claus.”
It was a professor of theology, Clement Clarke Moore, whose poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (later renamed “The Night Before Christmas”) created the figure that we know today as “Santa Claus.” On Christmas Eve 1822, professor and Episcopal Church bishop, Clement Moore, recited his poem to his four children. Initially, Moore did not want his name attached to the poem as he feared the poem would hurt his status in the community, but the next year a Moore relative took the poem to a local newspaper where it was first published. Moore’s poem instantly made Santa an American Christmas institution. In the 1840s, department stores began hiring individuals to appear as the Santa described in Moore’s poem. In 1863, German immigrant Thomas Nash, a famed illustrator, was asked to illustrate a book of children’s poems that included “The Night Before Christmas”. Nash’s Santa was kind, gentle and jolly. Ironically, Nash based his illustration on the “robber barons” of the time, who were anything but “Santa-like.” Abraham Lincoln, understanding the irony of Nash’s figure, asked Nash to draw the character visiting with Federal Troops around a battlefield campfire on Christmas Eve during the Civil War. President Lincoln wanted children on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line to know that Santa Claus stood for the side of the preservation of the Union. Nash’s sketch had a dynamic effect on morale in the North during that first long, cold and bloody winter. Over the next twenty years, Thomas Nash drew increasingly sophisticated scenes that came to include Santa’s workshop at the North Pole.
Sadly, with so many poor in the United States in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, many children never received gifts from Santa and the feeling grew that Santa Claus did not really exist. In 1892, a schoolgirl named Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the “New York Sun” asking the editors to settle the question of Santa’s existence. Virginia’s letter was answered by veteran editor, Francis P. Church, who worried about the reputation of the newspaper for always telling the truth. His answer to Virginia O’Hanlon settled the question once and for all. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
