Say "Santa", and the image of a white-bearded, red-suited, jolly old elf is evoked. From department stores to street parades and greeting cards to tree ornaments, the rotund gift-giver is an unmistakable Christmas presence. Yet, it has taken him seventeen centuries and three continents to arrive.
Our modern Santa Claus is a composite character: evolved from Teutonic gods, minor Roman deities, pagan feast figures, cartoon and literary inventions, and a Near Eastern saint. The latter - a Greek Christian named Nicholas - is the person who set the myth in motion. Born around A.D. 270 in the area that is now Turkey, Nicholas was a deeply religious child who joined the priesthood at the age nineteen.
Among the many good works and miracles that earned him sainthood was his generosity toward an impoverished nobleman's three daughters. The young women were to be sold presumably into prostitution, for want of dowries. Nicholas heard of their plight and secretly tossed three bags of gold through their bedroom window, which magically landed in stockings hung to dry by the fireplace.
The saint was later adopted as patron and protector for diverse groups: sailors, tailors, maidens, travelers, and pawnbrokers (who took the three sacks of gold as their trade symbol). Throughout the Middle Ages, the cult of Saint Nicholas spread across the Byzantine Empire; north to Russia and west to continental Europe. Bishops named churches for him, stained-glass windows told of his life, miracle plays reenacted his deeds, and hymns sang his praises. He was the most revered figure in Christendom until the sixteenth-century Reformation Protestants decried saints as too popish and forbade their worship. Yet, rather than abandoning the ecclesiastical Nicholas, his followers simply transformed him into a secular folk hero who treated good children with gifts. On December 6, the feast day in memory of Nicholas' death in A.D. 343, children received nuts or fruit in their shoes, supposedly left by the wandering saint.
Over time, each European country embroidered its own myths and characters into the story of Nicholas. The English "Father Christmas" has been depicted as a shadowy hooded figure clutching an evergreen and a wassail-besotted bacchant who was crowned with a wreath of mistletoe, a plant sacred to his Druidic ancestors. His merrymaking character may have descended from the feast-king of the Roman Saturnalia, a raucous mid-winter festival.
Le pere Noel
French children await the arrival of le pere Noel, who leaves treats in their shoes. In Holland, Saint Nick arrives on a ship - befitting that seafaring country - but makes his rounds on a white horse, as he does in Belgium and Hungary. The Czechoslovakian saint slides down from heaven on golden cord, along with an angel in white and a devil in black.
The Italian and Spanish receive their holiday gifts from the three kings on January 6, but they also have a secret guest on Christmas morning in the form of a white-bearded old man named Baboo Natale. Italians also enjoy one of the many female Santa counterparts named Befana, a corruption of Epiphany, the holiday falling twelve days after Christmas. The Russians, despite having adopted Nicholas as patron saint, have Baboushka, a witchlike
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