The Facts: Santa Claus Is Real

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A lot is said during the holidays about Santa Claus. Bill Bennett, well-known conservative author and former member of the Reagan Administration, recently published a book which sets out the facts about the man we know today as Santa Claus. His account dovetails with my own research on this subject over many years. (I speak on the origins of the various holidays' traditions.)

Santa Claus is the English translation of the Dutch Sinter Claus or St. Nicholas. During the early 300s AD, a boy named Nicholas was born to Christian parents. At an early age, following the death of his parents, the smart and kind young man became the bishop of Myra, a large commercial city in Asia Minor. The popular former bishop had just died and Nicholas, who had gained fame for his sincerity and scholarship, was pressed into service by an enthusiastic crowd.

Nicholas, who was later made a saint by the Catholic Church, had inherited great wealth from his parents but started giving it away secretly. Our tradition of filling stockings comes from an allegedly true story of Nicholas leaving money for three penniless sisters to have dowries and be able to wed. His throwing the money through a window (not a chimney) into the stockings of the sleeping girls is one of the earliest stories of his generosity. His parishioners continued his practice of generosity after his death, giving anonymous gifts to the needy and claiming that the gifts were “from St. Nicholas.”

Church tradition indicates that Nicholas attended the famous Council of Nicea, presided over by Emperor Constantine, in which the basic principles of the Christian faith were codified into the Nicean Creed, which believers recite even today. Yes, Santa Claus worships Jesus!

St. Nicholas was such a famed and beloved real figure that stories about him persisted long after his death, and he became identified with the generosity associated with the Christmas season. In fact, he became the personification of the Christmas spirit of selfless and thoughtful gift-giving. Traditional paintings of St. Nicholas show angels accompanying him on charity missions. In Mideval and Renaissance folklore and art, Nicholas, also known as Father Christmas and Papa Noel throughout Europe and Russia, was portrayed as was typical of portrayals of real people who were canonized as saints -- thin, refined, serious, and elegant. When American writer Washington Irving, author of Rip Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow and a descendant of Dutch settlers, wrote his Christmas stories during the early 1800s, it was this type of man he described as St. Nicholas. Clement Clark Moore's popular poem, The Night Before Christmas, originally entitled A Visit from St. Nicholas, published in the 1820s, however, portrayed a portly, jolly, laughing small man, actually described as an "elf," borrowing from more recent German folklore about elves accompanying St. Nicholas on his Christmas journeys. Civil-War cartoonist Thomas Nast, who created the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey symbols, based his drawings of Santa Claus on Moore's poem rather than the traditional "saintly" description, and Coca-Cola's turn-of-the-century holiday marketing campaign sealed the change when it tweaked Nast's version further into the rotund, cheery jolly man in the red suit.

Over the years, various traditions have been added like layers of fur clothing to the real person of St. Nicholas, but nonetheless, the truth is there. Santa Claus existed and those of us who are believers in Christ contend that he himself is alive still -- in Heaven today, and certainly his spirit, the embodiment of the generosity of Christmas, walks this earth to this very day.

by J. Lenora Bresler from Woman To Woman

[Doug Ross]

J. Lenora,
Good to see you here at WQ. My connection to Polk CC (by whatever is it's new name) was all part of of the cutbacks. Good to hear about Old SSt. Nick! When my kids were at that age I used to be asked whether irt was OK for kids to believe in Santa. I hated to go on the recond about it, but ususally said it depends!

Doug