Six hundred years later, the Russian Emperor Vladimir visited Constantinople and heard all the wonderful stories about Bishop Nicholas and decided to make him the patron saint of Russia. The stories even spread to the Laplands - to the people of the reindeer sleds.
The three bags of gold Nicholas gave the sisters made him the focus of merchants in northern Italy. Statutes and pictures had shown him holding the three bags and when taken as the patron saint of the merchants, the bags became gold balls, representing money lenders and today, pawnbrokers.
The anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6th, either 345 A.D. or 352 A.D., is so close to Christmas that, in many countries, the two merged. But in Germany and the Netherlands, the two remain separate.
Saint Nicholas - The Legend Begins  
Saint Nicholas - The Legend Begins
Saint Nicholas was not left to rest in peace after his death, for in those days the bodies of holy men were of great value, not only spiritually but commercially. News leaked that the Venetians were coming to carry off the saint’s body. The merchant seamen of the port of Bari in south-eastern Italy were determined to divert them. On May 9, 1087, they made a raid on Myra, took the Saint’s remains and carried them back home to Bari, where they are to this day in the beautiful Basilica of Saint Nicholas, which was built to house them. Through the centuries the shrine has been visited and sometimes experienced miracles. They offered prayers to Saint Nicholas, who was known to have had such a care for all who are poor and needy, whether in mind or body.
During the Reformation all saints fell into disrepute in parts of Europe that took to the Protestant faith. Reformers did everything they could to erase the popular Saint Nicholas. But despite their efforts, they were never completely successful. Even though he was removed from the church, Saint Nicholas continued his popularity in the streets and homes. In Germany he put nuts and apples in the shoes of Protestant children under the guise of the Christchild. In 1545 Martin Luther’s children received gifts from the “Holychild,” after previous receiving them from Saint Nicholas. The Christchild and Saint Nicholas were described as wanderers, traveling afoot or by chariot or by horseback, examining the deeds of mankind, children especially, for good behavior and rewarding them with the apples, nuts, and sweets.
Parents quickly began using these “visits” to encourage good behavior from their offspring. It was also known that bad children received switches from Saint Nicholas. More often than not , Saint Nicholas had an assistant to hand out any discipline and particularly in Germanic Europe, the visit was an occasion of a solemn, sometimes terrifying experience for children before being given goodies.
Dutch children were told that Saint Nicholas , or Sinterklaas, sailed from Spain with a Moorish helper. They filled their shoes with hay and sugar for his horse and woke up to find the shoes filled with nuts and candies. When he was actually seen, dressed in his bishop’s robes and carrying presents and a birch rod, he knew a great deal about the children’s behavior and resembled father or older brother.
Black Peter walks along with Sinterklaas. He wears animal skins or sometimes the colorful clothing of the medieval Moor and gives a switch to parents of bad boys and girls. Some say the bad children are taken away in the sack that Black Peter carries on his back.
Santa Discovers America
Europeans first brought Saint Nicholas to America in the fifteenth century. On his first voyage, Columbus named a port in Haiti for Saint Nicholas; and the Spaniards originally called Jackson, Florida, “Saint Nicholas Ferry”. When the Dutch emigrated to America they took their beloved saint with them. At the prow of the ship in which they sailed to the New World in 1630 was a figure of Saint Nicholas. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and held a long -stemmed Dutch pipe.
But at the same time the Reformation was fiercely dividing their homeland. A ban was placed on the celebration of Saint Nicholas Eve, forbidding passing out of cookies and cakes to children, a custom that had been as entrenched as our own trick-or-treating on Halloween. Saint Nicholas never regained his wide popularity and virtually disappeared as 17th century Dutch New Amsterdam was becoming 18th century English New York.
With their arrival, the Dutch Sinterklaas did become forerunner for Santa Claus in the United States. German immigrants brought with them a positive attitude toward Christmas. They brought their custom of setting out hay in the barnyard for the Christchild’s donkey on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day finding the basket filled with snits (dried apple slices), choosets (candy), walnuts and gingerbread. As the Germans intermarried with the English, the dialect “Christ-kindle,”: from the proper German Christkindlein, became “Kristkingle” or “Kriss-kingle.” Eventually the “Kriss Kringle” replaced the Christchild figure entirely, a substitute akin to Santa Claus. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, Kriss Kringle was the most common Christmas bearer in Pennsylvania.
Pelznickel (Saint Nicholas in furs), another Old World German Christmas servant, was better known as “Belsnickel”. He had been portrayed as someone out to have some fun by scaring children half to death, before changing character and giving them sweets. In more southern states of the America, Belsnickel was said to kidnap bad children and carry them away to who knows where. Children’s imaginations called up fates worse than anything the adults might suggest. He rattles at windows with a horsewhip and wrapped around the wrist of the first child to reach for scattered candy without his permission. Gradually “Belsnickeling” became the custom of going from door to door collecting food and money for the poor and survived well into the present century.
Jon Kankus is similar to Belsnickeling in theme and location.
Children in old Czechoslovakia believed Svaty Mikulas was let down from heaven on a golden cord by an angel. When he arrived on Christmas, children rushed to the table to say their prayers. If they did well, Svaty Mikulas told the angel to give the children presents.
Santa Claus in United States
Once the Dutch brought Saint Nicholas to America, he was gradually transformed from an austere bishop to a jolly old elf. First Washington Irving described the saint as a plump and jolly old Dutchman in his comic History of New York. It provided the first literary description of Saint Nicholas to appear in America. It poked fun at the Dutch founders of New York and contained numerous references to the Dutch patron saint. In later editions of his work, Irving gave this account of Saint Nicholas bringing gifts: “and lo, the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children....And he lit his pipe by the fire and sat himself down and smoked....And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe, he twisted it in his hatband, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished VanKortlandt a very significant look; then mounting his wagon, he returned over the treetops and disappeared.”
Irving’s book was a best seller of the day and after its publication in 1809, the Saint Nicholas legend traveled fast. At the first anniversary for it, John Pintard and his friends at the New York Historical Society passed out a broadside he’d commissioned with his own money. It included a poem, “Sancte Claus Goed Heyligman!” (“Santa Claus, Good Holy Man!”). It was a wood engraving by Alexander Anderson and the first known picture of the saint to be mad in America.
In 1822 Saint Nicholas’ American transformation was given a more definitive description by a professor named Doctor Clement Clarke Moore. Moore, the father of several children, presented his family with a Christmas first: the famous poem, A Visit From Saint Nicholas, (more popularly known as T’was the Night Before Christmas) first published in 1823. The poem quickly became popular around the United States. Unlike the European Saint Nicholas who was feared by naughty children, Clement Moore inadvertently Americanized the Old World Saint Nicholas, turning him into “jolly Saint Nick, a plump, happy-go-lucky elf with a sleigh full of toys and eight flying reindeer.
Through the years, many publishers have offered Moore’s poem as an illustrated book for children. The first one was published in 1848 by Henry M. Onderdonk, a New York printer and bookseller, and a friend of Clement Moore. C. Boyd did eight wood engravings depicting sleeping children, stockings hanging, the Christmas elf driving his miniature team through streets and over rooftops of a quaint old-fashioned Dutch New York, and other familiar scenes to every illustrated edition since. These were put together in an eight-page pamphlet prepared as “a present for good little boys and girls.” Only two know copies of that paperback publication have survived.
In 1860 Thomas Nast immortalized Santa Claus with an illustration for Harper’s Weekly. The Gregory Company of New York contacted him with an offer to do the illustrations for a book of Christmas poems, including Clement Moore’s. Acquiring a copy, Nast read it repeatedly, making mental sketches of the character. He wanted a warm, jolly old elf. The first Santa Claus appeared as a small part of a large illustration titled “A Christmas Furlough” in the December 26, 1863 issue and each Christmas following, Nast set aside his regular news and political coverage to a Santa Claus drawing. He provided twenty -three years of Santa Claus until the paper changed from a leading newsweekly into a magazine for late nineteenth-century homemakers.
Saint Nicholas’ attire has gone through as many changes as he has. In New York City in 1865, at midnight on Christmas night, it was reported that Saint Nick appeared, at ball given in his honor, in “buckskin boots of large proportions; his pants were of a fawn color, with a blue stripe. A vest of scarlet, with large brass buttons, encircled a truly aldermanic paunch. A coat of dark brown, over which was thrown an ample cloak of scarlet and gold completed his attire. He was laden with toys - they hung from his arms, round his neck, his waist, and his back was heavily freighted. Round the room he tripped good humoredly, chuckling to himself as he distributed his stock and trade to all. The figure seemed to have elicited from Robert Walter Weir’s painting and drawing at the Military Academy of West Point.
Clement Moore had clad in him in fur, common dress for 18th century gentlemen. In 1884, when Santa made his entrance at the Five Points Mission School, eight hundred wide eyed children saw him “wrapped in a great coat of Siberian wolf skins, over which his long beard hung down to his knees!”
But Santa Claus was often shown dressed in green clothes, or blue or black. When one Clement Moore’s daughters did a calligraphy of version of her father’s famous poem as a Christmas gift to her husband, inspite of her father’s words, she dressed Saint Nicholas in a long green coat.
Evolution of Modern Santa
The Evolution of Modern Day Santa
It was in an 1870 edition of “A Visit From Saint Nicholas” (more popularly known as T’was the Night Before Christmas) that Saint Nicholas wore a red cloth coat. Thomas Nast has depicted him in a reddish brown outfit, trimmed in white ermine, in 1866. This illustration appeared in George P. Walker’s verse story Santa Claus And His Works was probably a major contributor to the idea that Santa wore red. Walker’s story also contributed the legend of Santa Claus that he lives in the North Pole.
In the early twentieth century, red Santa Claus suits became popular and were sold by department stores and mail-order houses such as Sears and Roebuck.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, stores began referring to themselves as “Santa Claus headquarters.” One of the first was J.W. Parkinson’s in Philadelphia in 1841. The owner, Mr. Parkinson, had a real “Criscringle” come down a chimney above the door of his store right before the eyes of the children present. It was a great success and in 1846, Mr. Parkinson was advertising his store as “Kriss Kringle’s Headquarters.”
It took forty years for another store to catch on and expand the idea. The Boston Store in Brockton, Massachusetts, became the father of department Santas when it hired Edgar, a Scottish immigrant, who tall, roly-poly, with a white beard, a warm voice and a hearty laugh, to be Santa Claus. To top it off, he loved children. In 1890 he darned a Santa Claus to wear during after school hours. But his fame spread so rapidly that within a few days long lines had formed outside the store and more parents and children arrived by train as far away as Providence, Rhode Island. Before the turn of the century, department stores across America had added Santa Claus and even sat him on a throne. Children sat on his knee and whispered their deepest secrets into his ears.
Also in the latter part of the eighteen hundreds, children wrote letters to Santa Claus. By the 1890s post offices were overrun with letters for Santa each December. There was great diversity in the correct spelling o his and where he lived - South or North Pole - as well as what to do with the letters. Mail clerks gravely stamped them with a certification that the addressee could not be found and forwarded them to the dead letter office in Washington.
But children had faith in the Postal Service and knew Santa would get their letters. They came from children from all walks of life. One Christmas Eve, eight-year-old Edsel Ford, son of Henry and Clara Ford, and the future president of the Ford Motor Company, penned his letter in Detroit, Michigan:
Dear Santa Claus:
I Havent Had Any Christmas Tree in 4 Years And I Have Broken My Trimmings And I Want A Pair of Roller Skates And A Book, I Cant Think Of Any Thing More. I Want You To Think O Something More.
Good By.
Edsel Ford
Though no mention was made of her, Santa Claus’ wife made her debut in 1899 in Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride, one of a set of thirty-two books by Katharine Lee Bates, composer of “America the Beautiful. In 1908, another story encouraged children to start leaving a little food for Santa Claus because he would be tired after his hard work. Carrots and other treats were later added for his reindeer. Of course, Santa always left a note thanking the children for their kindness. A 1910 advertisement for Ivory Soap showed a child sitting in front of the fireplace with a bowl of water, a towel and a bar of Ivory soap so that Santa could wash up after coming down the chimney. Following the ad to the letter, soiled wash clothes and dirty water was often found on Christmas morning.
In 1931, the Coca Cola company commissioned drawings of Santa Claus for their Coca Cola Advertisement. This Santa is the beginning of the modern day Santa that we know and love. He had a red suit and was a large man with a white beard. This Santa became the standard for future Santas—it was as if ...we had a photo of him.
Santa Around the World
Santa is indeed a very popular figure around the world.
To Christians in the African Republic of Ghana,
Father Christmas comes from the jungle.
In Hawaii
he comes by boat.
On the Nerang River in Australia
he rides water skis, wears a white beard and red bathing trunks.
In Brazil
Grandpapa Indian, Vovo Indo, brings gifts.
In China,
Santa Claus is called Dun Che Lao Ren, which means Christmas Old Man. He brings presents to good children. Being a culturally diverse and worldly fellow, Santa has many interpretations:
In parts of the Alps, “Ghosts of the field” cleared the way for Saint Nicholas . Behind them came a man wearing a goat’s head, and a masked demon with a birch switch.
In Germany’s Berchtesgaden District,
twelve young men dressed in straw and wearing animal masks danced along after Saint Nicholas, ringing cowbells. After gifts were given as each home, the masked men drove the young people out and beat them, or pretended to do so. This was symbolic punishment for having misbehaved. It had also been a part of a pagan ritual that was thought to ensure crops the following year.
The German Saint Nicholas also comes with a helper.
He has different names in different parts of Germany:
Knecht Ruprecht or Krampus in southern German;
Pelzebock in the northwestern part of the country; and
Hans Muff in the Rhineland.
Like Black Peter, he carries a sack on his back and a rod in his hand. The helper was a frightening being given to ogre-like growls, quite the opposite of Saint Nicholas’ shining goodness.
Swedish children
wait eagerly for Jultomten, a gnome, whose sleigh is drawn by the Julbocker, the goats of the Thor, the god of thunder. He dresses in red and carries a bulging sack on his back.
In Denmark
The gift bringer, Julemanden, also carries a sack and is drawn by reindeer. Elves called Juul Nisse are said to come from the attic, where they live, to help Julemanden. Children put a saucer of milk or rice pudding out for them in the attic and hope to find it empty in the morning.
In Poland
The children’s gifts are said to come from the stars.
In Hungary
Angels bring gifts.
In Syria
Children’s gifts come from the youngest camel on January 6th, which is Three Kings Day.
In Spanish speaking countries such as Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina , Brazil, the Philippines and Spain, the Three Kings, themselves, give the gifts to the children.
In Italy
Children also receive gifts on Three Kings Day, but the gift bearer is La Befana. La Befana refused to go to Bethlehem with the wise men when they passed her door because she had not finished her sweeping. Now she goes from place to place hoping that some day she will find the Christ Child. Everywhere she goes, she leaves a little gift.
In Russia
the same ageless wanderer is called Baboushka. She gave the wise men the wrong directions and on the eve of Three Kings Day she wanders from house to house, peering into the faces of children and leaving gifts. Russia also has Grandfather Frost.
In English
Children wait for Father Christmas, known to their ancestors as Christmas itself.
In France
Gifts are also brought by Father Christmas, Pre Noel, or the Christ Child himself.
In Austria and Switzerland
the Christkindl bears gifts. In some towns Christkindl is a beautiful girl-angel sent down from heaven to give gifts.
When the Roman Rite was introduced into Gaul in the 9th century, Gregory’s Advent went along with it, to be enriched there with Gallican prayers and rites. It was the Gallicans who did most to bring about the emphasis upon the second coming, which is so striking an element of the present Advent liturgy.
The fusion of the Roman and Gallican Advents found its way back to Rome in the 10th century, giving the Church the rich Advent liturgy it has today. Whatever the object of the original Roman Advent may have been, its scope has been widened to include not only a preparation for the anniversary of the first coming of Christ, but also the expectation of His Second Coming in power and majesty.
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