Hello Nicholas
@ the usual place, 22
December, 12h30
How
did the kindly Christian
sant
, good
Bishop
Nicholas, become a roly-poly red-suited American symbol for merry
holiday festivity and commercial activity? History tells the
tale.
The
first Europeans to arrive in the New World brought St. Nicholas.
Vikings dedicated their cathedral to him in Greenland. On his first
voyage, Columbus named a Haitian port for St. Nicholas on December
6, 1492. In Florida, Spaniards named an early settlement St.
Nicholas Ferry, now known as Jacksonville. However, St. Nicholas
had a difficult time during the 16th century Protestant
Reformation
which took a dim view of
saints
. Even though both reformers and counter-reformers tried to stamp
out St. Nicholas-related customs, they had very little long-term
success; only in England were the religious folk traditions of
Christmas permanently altered. (It is ironic that fervent
Puritan
Christians began what turned into a trend to a more secular
Christmas observance.) Because the common people so loved St.
Nicholas, he survived on the European continent as people continued
to place nuts, apples, and sweets in shoes left beside beds, on
windowsills, or before the hearth.
The
first Colonists, primarily Puritans and other Protestant
reformers, did not bring Nicholas traditions to the New World.
What about the Dutch? Although it is almost universally
reported that the Dutch brought St. Nicholas to
New Amsterdam
, scholars find scant evidence of such traditions in Dutch
New Netherland.
Colonial Germans in Pennsylvania kept the feast of St.
Nicholas, and several later accounts have St. Nicholas
visiting New York Dutch on New Years' Eve. In 1773 patriots formed
the Sons of St. Nicholas, primarily as a non-British symbol to
counter the English St. George societies, rather than to honor St.
Nicholas. This society was similar to the Sons of St. Tammany
in Philadelphia. Not exactly St. Nicholas, the children's
gift-giver.
After
the American Revolution, New Yorkers remembered with pride the
colony's nearly-forgotten Dutch roots. John Pintard, influential
patriot and antiquarian, who founded the New York Historical
Society in 1804, promoted St. Nicholas as
patron saint
of both society and city. In January 1809,
Washington Irving
joined the society and on
St. Nicholas Day
that year he published the satirical
fiction, Knickerbocker's History of New York,
with numerous references to a jolly St. Nicholas character.
This was not a saintly bishop, rather an elfin Dutch burgher with a
clay pipe. These delightful flights of imagination are the origin
of the New Amsterdam St. Nicholas legends: that the first Dutch
emigrant ship had a figurehead of St. Nicholas; that St. Nicholas
Day was observed in the colony; that the first church was dedicated
to him; and that St. Nicholas comes down chimneys to bring gifts.
Irving's work was regarded as the "first notable work of
imagination in the New World."
The
New York Historical Society held its first St. Nicholas anniversary
dinner on December 6, 1810. John Pintard commissioned artist
Alexander Anderson to create the first American image of Nicholas
for the occasion. Nicholas was shown in a gift-giving role with
children's treats in stockings hanging at a fireplace. The
accompanying poem ends, "Saint Nicholas, my dear good friend! To
serve you ever was my end, If you will, now, me something give,
I'll serve you ever while I live."
The
jolly elf image received a big boost in 1823, from a poem destined
to become immensely popular, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," now
better known as "The Night Before Christmas."
He was dressed all in fur,
from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they
twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the
snow;
The stump of a pipe he
held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old
elf. . . .
Washington Irving's St.
Nicholas strongly influenced the poem's portrayal of a round,
pipe-smoking, elf-like St. Nicholas. The poem generally has been
attributed to
Clement Clark Moore
, a professor of biblical languages at New York's Episcopal
General Theological Seminary. However, a case has been made by Don
Foster in Author Unknown, that
Henry Livingston
actually penned it in 1807 or 1808. Livingston was a farmer/patriot
who wrote humorous verse for children. In any case, "A Visit from
St. Nicholas" became a defining American holiday classic. No matter
who wrote it, the poem has had enormous influence on the
Americanization of St. Nicholas.
Other
artists and writers continued the change to an elf-like St.
Nicholas, "Sancte Claus," or "Santa Claus," unlike the stately
European bishop. In 1863, political cartoonist
Thomas Nast
began a series of annual black-and-white drawings in Harper's
Weekly, based on the descriptions found in the poem and
Washington Irving's work. These drawings established a rotund Santa
with flowing beard, fur garments, and an omnipresent clay pipe. As
Nast drew Santas until 1886, his work had considerable influence in
forming the American Santa Claus. Along with appearance changes,
the saint's name shifted to Santa Claus—a natural phonetic
alteration from the German Sankt Niklaus and Dutch
Sinterklaas
.
Santa was then portrayed by
dozens of artists in a wide variety of styles, sizes, and colors.
However by the end of the 1920s, a standard American
Santa—life-sized in a red, fur-trimmed suit—had emerged from the
work of N. C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell and other popular
illustrators. In 1931
Haddon Sundblom
began thirty-five years of Coca-Cola Santa advertisements that
popularized and firmly established this Santa as an icon of
contemporary commercial culture.
This Santa was life-sized,
jolly, and wore the now familiar red suit. He appeared in
magazines, on billboards, and shop counters, encouraging Americans
to see
Coke as the solution to "a thirst for all
seasons." By the 1950s Santa was turning up everywhere as a
benign source of beneficence, endorsing an amazing range
of consumer products. This commercial success led to the
North American Santa Claus being exported around the world
where he threatens to overcome the European St. Nicholas, who
has retained his identity as a Christian bishop and
saint.
It's
been a long journey from the Fourth Century Bishop of
Myra
, St. Nicholas, who showed his devotion to God in extraordinary
kindness and generosity, to America's jolly Santa Claus. However,
if you peel back the accretions he is still Nicholas, Bishop of
Myra, whose caring surprises continue to model true giving and
faithfulness.
There
is growing interest in reclaiming the original saint in the United
States to help restore the spiritual dimension of this festive
time. For indeed, St. Nicholas, lover of the poor and patron saint
of children, is a model of how Christians are meant to live.
A bishop, Nicholas put Jesus Christ at the center of his life,
his ministry, his entire existence. Families, churches, and schools
are embracing true St Nicholas traditions as one way to claim the
true center of Christmas—the birth of Jesus. Such a focus helps
restore balance to increasingly materialistic and stress-filled
Advent
and Christmas seasons.
Source
Happy Holidays and a
Merry Christmas to everyone
___________________________