Since I’ve been posting on Advent, I thought I’d also examine the Christian History of Santa. Most people know that Santa Claus also possesses the moniker: Saint Nic. Yet does anyone know who St. Nicholas was?
Well he was bearded, but he was hardly a pasty white northerner surrounded by snow and reindeer. Nicholas was the Bishop of Myra in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Now for those of you whose Byzantine geography is rusty, that’s in Modern-day Turkey. God performed many miracles through him and he was thus known as the wonderworker, and is the patron of sailors, merchants, archers, thieves, children, and students.
Like the caped crusader, Nicholas was born to rich parents who died when he was a child. As an orphan, Nicholas was raised by his uncle who was a bishop, and it was said that he became in time, a father and protector to children. According to one gruesome legend, a butcher during a famine killed three kids to serve as cuisine. Nicholas swiftly perceived the evil with his spiritual capabilities, and through prayer, raised them back from the dead.
Not content to simply care for the poor children, Nicholas was also a churchman of zealous orthodoxy. In the Council of Nicea, the heresiarch Arius began to teach his false doctrine before the bishops of Christ’s church. So overwhelmed with righteous anger, Nicholas punched Arius in the face, refusing to listen to another word. In the spirit of decorum, he was put in a holding cell and had his staff (crossier) and bible removed, until the Blessed Virgin and Christ appeared to him and released him from his cell (after which he presumably began round 2 on Arius).
So while we celebrate the infant Jesus in his meekness and mildness, we ought to remember the Pastor of the Turkish church who showed what it meant to be a man of faith and a promoter of true religion (James 1:27)