St. Nicholas
St. Nicholas ,who morphed into Santa Claus, was the fourth-century Bishop of Myra. Myra was then in Greece. It is now in Turkey.
Not much is known of the life of St. Nicholas. He is said to have been generous to children and to the poor. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children. Here is a link to a list of Saints.
St. Nicholas is said to have been born into a prosperous home. His parents died when he was a young man and he was left an inheritance. Nicholas used this inheritance to help a poor man support three daughters who otherwise would have been sold into prostitution to support the family home.
It was this gift giving that is the connection between the St. Nicholas of old and the Santa of the modern day. In the spirit of the gifts for the three children, people in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands began to give each other gifts at Christmas. Santa Claus is, after a few mutations, St. Nicholas.
Here is a link to the website of Adbusters. Adbusters suggests you should buy as little as you get away with at Christmas and offers often insightful critiques of consumer culture.
It is said Nicholas brought back to life two or three boys who had been cut-up and tossed in a brine-tub by an innkeeper. The innkeeper was going to sell the boys as pickled pork. It is not known how Nicholas performed this feat.
It is claimed God himself indicated to the people of Myra that Nicholas should be selected as Bishop. It is not clear what type of signal was sent.
Nicholas was renowned as a champion of the falsely accused. He saved the lives of three men who were going to be put to death based on a sentence that had been made on this basis of a bribe. That account is the basis of the picture above.
Many falsely accused people are put to death and placed in jail in the United States in the current day. Please click here to read about The Innocence Project.
Nicholas is the patron saint of prisoners and prostitutes. All people merit concern. Here is a list of the many groups that can claim Nicholas as patron saint.
I notice ”consumers” are not on the list. Caveat emptor!
St. Nicholas is said to have stopped a raging storm in Greece and in so doing saved the lives of many mariners. In Greece, he is the patron of sailors. Here is a link to a story about a United Nations treaty meant to protect the rights of the commerical sailors who help ship goods around the world.
Santa is about more than gift giving. I don’t think St. Nicholas would have lined up at Best Buy at 5 AM the morning after Thanksgiving to get a bargain on a laptop.
One source for this post was The Oxford Companion To The Year—An Exploration Of Calender Customs And Time-Reckoning. It’s a great book.
THAT WAS AWESOME THANK YOU!!
Glad you posted this entry in time for Christmas. I have resolved to get off the gifting treadmill, and have shared with family members that we will not be purchasing gifts for anyone, except for a couple of our child relatives. I think we will all be relieved, once the shock is over. It’s time to take back the spirit and quit spending on crap we hate, and the awful chore that was shopping for Christmas. Thanks
Maragret—Thank you very much for such a nice comment.
medicale–Would like to know how that goes for you and yours. You’ve got a great family if that goes over well. I thought about asking some family for donations to certain charity groups, but was not sure that is what they would want to give. Though the wife did think it was a good idea.
Thank you for the comment.
Tx Liberal: what I did was announce to all family members that I intended to forgo gift exchanges. (A coupla children will get gift certificates or magazine subscriptions). Small kids will get small gifts as well, as creative as I can be. What I am telling the grown ups: I want to SEE you and to enjoy Christmas Season, and I am going to visit you, and hope you don’t mind that we are getting off the treadmill and not shopping. I would like you to do the same. We’ll see how it goes, but they were surprisingly receptive. I framed all this with “take back our holidays away from retailers, who want to make our holidays manic and expensvie”. I’ll work on the children more slowly, but we are getting creative with them as welll. Hope I answered your question. I don’t know how it will turn out, but we are putting our foot down to “no more junk” and sticking to it. Sometimes a group (family, friends, etc) just need an inspiration, and I hope in this case it is contagious.
Medicale
That’s right on that sometimes a group just needs an inspiration. I’m going to try to commit that line to memory for when it might apply. One person can always make some difference.
It sure is a treadmill of stuff you can’t recall who bought you what from year to year.
Great stuff here. And people always have the option if they don’t want to go that far, of taking a bit of extra effort to pick out one special thing that might be recalled or a charity donation in someone’s name.
Thanks for the follow up. Have a happy holiday.