Christmas is our most important holiday, and its literature is correspondingly rich. Yet until now no adequate bundle of Christmas treasures in poetry and prose has found its way onto the Internet for Winter, Christmas, the birth of Christ, Santa Claus, and so much more..Santa Claus and Christmas
The Christmas tree is traditional; so is Santa Claus. We’ve always had him around at Christmas; he’s really a tradition!
But just what does Santa Claus have to do with Christmas, anyway? And how did he get into the picture?
Well, my child, the figure of Santa Claus is actually a symbol of the truly Christian spirit of giving, in spite of what some people say about him. He represents a man named Nicholas who, according to tradition, lived many, many years ago in Asia Minor. Nicholas’ father was a very rich merchant who for years had no children. He and his wife prayed and promised God that if He would send them a child, they would train him to love and serve God. God answered their prayer and sent the boy, whom they named Nicholas. He was carefully and lovingly nurtured and well educated in the Christian faith.
His parents died, however, when he was quite young, and left him a great deal of money. The spirit of the Lord prompted Nicholas to give away all he had, with the exception of three small bags of gold, which at that time would have kept him nicely for the rest of his life.
One day he overheard the weeping of a neighbor’s daughter, and he heard the father say to the girl that he was too poor to give her a dowry for her marriage. (In those days a girl could not marry unless she had a dowry, or a gift of money, to bring to her husband; if she could not do this, her father had to sell her as a slave.) There were three daughters in this family, and they all wept when they were told they could not have a dowry. The girl who was at the marriageable age wept loudest of all; she was the one Nicholas heard, and he couldn’t bear it. He had all three bags of his gold at this time; he crept behind a bush under the window of the neighbor’s home, and tossed one of his three bags of gold through the window. He did not want them to know who did it, for he remembered the words of Jesus:
“When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine4 alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.”
So the daughter was happily married. Then came the next daughter’s turn. The father was still poor, and again Nicholas heard the weeping. Again he secretly provided the dowry by tossing his second bag of gold through the window.
By this time, the father was determined to know who their “angel of charity” was - so when it carne time for the third daughter to marry, he stationed a watchman outside the house, to catch his wonderful benefactor. Sure enough! As Nicholas tossed in his last bag of gold, the man grabbed him and took him in the house, where a very grateful father thanked him for insuring the futures of three tearful but very grateful girls.
Of course, this became known in the town, which embarrassed Nicholas, for he was a modest young man; and since he loved to serve God and his fellow man, he decided to become a priest. When he had finished his studies, he decided to return to his home town of Myra, in western Greece. Myra was having quite a time of it, right then, trying to elect a new bishop to preside in their cathedral to take the place of the old bishop who had just died. The clergy just couldn’t agree on the man to fill the vacancy so they decided to wait until the next out-of-town priest walked into their cathedral, and they would make him the bishop.
While all this was going on inside the cathedral, Nicholas came along the main street of the town; just outside the cathedral he found a crowd of little children and he stopped to talk with them (and, I like to think, even play a little with them!). Then he stepped into the cathedral-to be welcomed by the shouts of the clergy, who then and there proclaimed him the new Bishop of Myra.
Nicholas became known as “the patron of the children” for his untiring efforts to help them and teach them. Each year on his birthday, which was December 6, Nicholas would collect presents and distribute them among the children. This idea of presents for the children spread all over Europe, and it was always done in memory of St. Nicholas, who was such an outstanding example of the Spirit of Jesus.
The word “Santa Claus” is the Dutch name for St. Nicholas, and we adopted “Santa Claus” when the early Dutch settlers came to New Amsterdam, or New York, as it was called later. The English called him “St. Nicholas” and, sometimes, “old Kris Kringle,” but whatever they called him, they always associated him with the giving of gifts at Christmas. In the town of Myra, after Nicholas died, the practice of giving gifts continued on December 6 for a long, long time before it was finally transferred to December 25.
The red robe of Santa Claus has a religious significance too; it represents the red “cope” (or cape) which the priests of the church wore at Christmas. The fur-trimmed hat and boots were adopted by the cold countries of the north; travel there would be very cold and very difficult for Santa unless he had a sled and some fast reindeer-so he got the deer and the big sled, and he became a jolly, round, old man distributing untold happiness to children everywhere. He was never meant to overshadow the celebration of the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ, but only to supplement it, for it was the Spirit of our Lord that gave us “St. Nicholas.”
