December 16, 2006

• Saint Nicholas

  Nine days to
  
  Christmas –

  
  

  The
  Legend
  of
  Saint Nicholas

  The legend of Saint Nicholas has been growing and
  changing since the Middle Ages.  He is said to have first won fame by tossing (supposedly anonymously, but then how did he become famous for it?) bags of coins through the windows of poor orphaned girls, so that they could afford dowries to marry and escape the usual fate in that culture of women without the protection of husband or father:  a life of prostitution.   Through being conflated with various pagan demi-gods of winter and mythical philanthropists, he has morphed into Sinterklaas,
  Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santa Claus and other forms in various
  parts of the planet. 

  
  According to the Kids’ Domain:

  “St. Nicholas was born in 271 AD and died around December 6, 342 or 343
  AD near the Asia Minor (Turkey) town of Myra,. where he later became
  Bishop. He performed many good deeds and was a friend to the poor and
  helpless, and upon his death, myths soon sprang up about him all around
  the Mediterranean Sea. He was reputed to be able to calm the raging
  seas, rescue desperate sailors, help the poor and downtrodden, and save
  children. He was soon named as the patron saint of sailors, and when
  Myra was overthrown, his bones were transported by sailors to Bari, a
  port in Italy, where a tomb was built over the grave and became the
  center of honor for St. Nicholas. From here the legend spread on around
  to the Atlantic Coast of Europe and the North Sea to become a European
  holiday tradition regardless of religion.”

  Did you notice that it says he became bishop after his death?

  

    Fordham University’s online Mediaeval Sourcebook translates the story of Nicholas’s death from Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (written ca.1275, pub. 1470):

  “And when it pleased our Lord to have him depart out this world, he prayed our Lord that
  he would send him his angels; and inclining his head he saw the angels come to him,
  whereby he knew well that he should depart, and began this holy psalm: In te domine
  speravi, unto, in manus tuas, and so saying: Lord, into thine hands I commend my spirit,
  he rendered up his soul and died, the year of our Lord three hundred and forty- three,
  with great melody sung of the celestial company. And when he was buried in a tomb of
  marble, a fountain of oil sprang out from the head unto his feet; and unto this day holy
  oil issueth out of his body, which is much available to the health of sicknesses of many
  men. And after him in his see succeeded a man of good and holy life, which by envy was put
  out of his bishopric. And when he was out of his see the oil ceased to run, and when he
  was restored again thereto, the oil ran again.”

  
  If the bones revered by the Roman Catholic Church in Bari, Italy are truly those of Bishop Nicholas, he must have looked something like the picture at right here.  According to Inquiring Minds online newsletter:

  Surely, the face of this man would be rosy-cheeked, smiling, and
  beatifically kind—something between [Clement] Moore’s description and the
  Catholic Church’s favorite portraits of recent popes. But old St.
  Nick’s face has been carefully reconstructed, using modern forensic
  techniques, and the face that resulted wasn’t exactly straight out of
  an animated Christmas special.

  What are believed to be the bones of St. Nicholas are kept
  in a sacred crypt in Bari, Italy. They were exhumed in 1953, during
  some work that was being done on the church, and an anatomist from a
  local university, Luigi Martino, was given permission to examine and
  x-ray the remains. A half-century later, an anthropologist named
  Caroline Wilkinson used those data to produce a clay model of St.
  Nicholas, employing the same techniques that are used to build an
  identity onto the skull of the victim of a suspected crime.

  The kindly saint is a powerful figure, far beyond his role as answerer of sailors’ prayers and calmer of stormy seas.  In modern mythology, he has become a hypervigilant bogey man, always spying on children for their parents.  My
  parents tried to use the Santa Claus legend to convince me to be a
  “good girl,” as many parents do.  I was told that if I was good
  I’d get nice presents, and if I was bad there would be coal instead of
  fruits and nuts in my stocking, and my prettily wrapped presents would
  contain only rocks.

  
   
  I remember the day I got wise to their lies.  I even recall
  the moment that it all fell together for me.  I think I was three
  years old.  I hadn’t started to school yet.  My mother was
  holding my hand as we waited for the light to change to cross a street
  in downtown San Jose.  We were Christmas shopping.  I’d been
  on the lap of various “Santas” in three or four different department
  stores.

   They all smelled different, and certainly looked different from each other. 
  Most of the Santas wore bright red in rough fabrics, but one of them
  had a suit of deep wine colored velvet.  There were some fairly
  incredible elements in the story itself, such as the idea that this old
  guy kept track of every girl and boy in the world and judged our
  behavior.  It just did not hold up to logic in my young mind.

  I kept my thoughts to myself as we crossed the street and entered yet
  another store.  Riding up the escalator, I caught sight of another
  Santa with a line of kids waiting to sit on his lap.  I gave a tug
  on my mother’s hand and said to her, “There really isn’t a real Santa
  Claus, is there?”
  She paused, seeming a bit flustered, and then insisted that there was,
  indeed, a real Santa, and these men impersonating him were only
  Santa’s helpers.
  As we stood in that line and watched the “Santa’s helper” in an elf
  costume handing candy canes to the kids and guiding them off the stage
  as they came off Santa’s lap, I questioned her more.  She kept
  replying with flimsy lies.  That night when Daddy got home from
  work, I asked him.  He wouldn’t lie to me.  I was then free, at least, of one of the bogeymen of childhood.

  As a child, I was an insufferable know-it-all.  I wasted not a
  moment telling every kid I knew that there was no Santa Claus, that it
  was all a trick to make us be good.  Their parents didn’t like
  that, oh no!  My parents heard about it from some of my friends’
  parents, and they tried to enlist
  me in the Santa Claus conspiracy.  My father let me read the, “Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus” story that was reprinted in our newspaper.  Mama and
  Daddy explained how much fun kids had waiting for Santa, leaving milk and cookies for him and such.  They appealed to me as a reasoning adult, and I fell into line, the
  politically correct line.  Although I personally never enjoyed waiting for goodies and thought the whole thing was unfair and dishonest, I stopped telling kids there was no
  Santa Claus.  Instead, I took perverse pleasure and pride in being in on
  the secret, part of the adult conspiracy.  But when I had children of my own, I never told any of
  my kids the Santa bullshit. 

  Doug and I have been discussing his early school days when he
  first encountered children who believed in Santa Claus.  He
  recalls being in on the conspiracy and keeping the secret, not spoiling
  the “fun” for the other kids.  I seriously question whether it is
  actually fun to be afraid of any bogey man, even a “right jolly old
  elf” who lives at the North Pole and brings toys to all the “good” obedient, line-toeing, deferential, gullible and imperceptive girls
  and boys and provides excuses for all the parents who can’t afford gifts for their kids, or who fail to choose an appropriate present or don’t want to give the kids what they’ve asked for.

  

  

  • 3:51 pm
  • 5 Comments