St. Nicholas

The strongest character to have influenced the shaping of today’s Santa was St. Nicholas. Legend has St. Nicholas born approximately 270 years after Christ, on the shores of the Mediterranean in Lycia, today in western Turkey. According to legend, his parents were wealthy Greek Christians. When Nicholas was still a very young man, he was consecrated archbishop of Myra (now Kale).

There are numerous stories that tell of his good, charitable life and miracle-working. One popular legend tells of how he tossed a small bag of gold down the chimney belonging to a family needing help. The gold landed in a stocking that was hung up to dry. Nicholas did not want his giving deeds known, and he was known to deliver his gifts at night until he was discovered. He was believed to have died in Myra on December 6, about AD 343. The anniversary of his death became a day to exchange gifts.

From the thirteenth century until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, St. Nicholas was the foremost saint in Christendom. Throughout Europe, several thousand churches were dedicated to him. St. Nicholas became the patron of little children, as well as of maidens and students, merchants and others.

By the Middle Ages, St. Nicholas was linked with Christmas. Today, it is thought that the giving of gifts to children in his name originated in France, where nuns in the thirteenth century began leaving presents at the homes of the poor on the eve of his saint's day, December 6th. The custom spread across Europe as street parades were led by someone representing St. Nicholas mounted on a white horse.

During the Reformation, Martin Luther and other reformers tried zealously to stop the worship of saints and to erase the popular St. Nicholas from people's minds. For a time, the Feast of Saint Nicholas was abolished in some European countries. In Germany, the saint who had put nuts and apples in the shoes of children became disguised in many Protestant homes as the Christchild. Both saint and Christchild were described as wanderers, generally said to travel afoot, by chariot or horseback, inspecting the deeds of mankind in general and children in particular, making sure that there was good behavior before apples, nuts, and sweets were scattered.

German pre-Santa figures include: Knecht Ruprecht, Hans Trapp, Krampus, Klaubauf, Schwarze Peter, Pelznickel and finally Weihnachtsmann, who carried a Christmas tree and had a long, white beard. The Old English Father Christmas, was known in medieval mummers' plays as a pagan spirit more concerned with wassail, mistletoe, and the yule-log than with gifts for children.