Thoughts on St. Nicholas

Santa doesn't need one more person to speak for him. He's everywhere - live and cartoon form, in all hues and ethnicities, in malls and schools and homes and movies and parades and toy stores and billboards. He may have started as a Christian figure, but he's all things to almost all people. He's exactly what we're told God isn't - a cosmic, omniscient vending machine who, despite the song's admonishment that he knows when you've been bad or good, seems to give everyone whatever they want (or can afford to buy, in any case), regardless of good behavior. Somewhere along the line he must have entered into a contract with the business community, and when you crack down on disobedience or lying or staying up past one's bedtime, you don't sell as much stuff. Rewarding children according to their deeds was really only helping the coal companies, and only marginally, since each stocking holds very little coal.

No, I want to talk about St. Nicholas, often cited as the historical inspiration for Santa. St. Nicholas was the Bishop of Myra (located in modern-day Turkey) sometime during the fourth century and was known as Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker because of the many miracles attributed to him. He was revered by both the Eastern and Western Churches. There are many versions of the legend that would eventually inspire the creation of Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, and the like, but the basic gist is that there was a poor man in Myra who had three daughters and could not afford dowries for them (meaning that they could never marry, that he would have to continue to support them in his own house, and possibly that they would be forced into slavery and/or prostitution). St. Nicholas disguised himself and came to the poor man's house by night (maybe just in one night, or maybe on several occasions, as each of the girls came of age), where he left a bag or bags of gold coins to be used as dowries. In some versions, the man finally discovers the identity of his benefactor and thanks him; the bishop tells him to thank God instead. Sometimes Nicholas chastises the man for planning to sell his daughters into slavery and not simply trusting God. The common denominator of these stories seems to be the desperate need of the recipient and the anonymity of the giver.

What a far cry from Christmas gift-giving in America today. Sure, many of us give to the poor around Christmastime, but we consider a shoebox of cheap toys or a gently used pair of shoes to be a sufficient Christmas present for a poor child, while we pile the gift high for our own children and then continue to be anxious about whether each child has an equal quantity and quality of gifts, whether we got our children exactly what they wanted, and so on.

The ritual of Black Friday seems to have replaced many older Christmas rituals, as Americans barely finished with their Thanksgiving dinners spend hours in line, mostly for a shot at a great price on a big ticket item - a big-screen TV, video gaming platform, computer, or camera, for instance. This year, the article run by the New York Times about Black Friday shopping featured multiple interviews with shoppers who were buying big-ticket items only for themselves, not for friends or family members. "[R]etailers and analysts said they saw a surge in traffic at stores and malls over last year, and also were noticing that shoppers snapped up discretionary items for themselves rather than gifts or necessities," the newspaper reported.

So, as if the excess in gift-giving weren't enough, we have now reached a point at which for many people gift-giving is secondary, and the Christmas season is about treating ourselves to something new and different and luxurious. The retailers are jumping on it, too, using slogans that appeal to the notion that I deserve to do something for myself this Christmas.

My husband suggested that we tell our children that Santa doesn't come to our house, because we're not poor enough. In fact, he went on, perhaps the secret of Santa's ability to do all his work in one night is that he only delivers to the very neediest families. After all, that's what Saint Nicholas would have done.

- KPE