“Always winter but never Christmas. How awful, said Lucy.”
From “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” by C.S. Lewis
It’s beginning to look at lot more like Christmas everywhere you go. Decorations on street corners and in store windows. Icicle lights line rooftops. Tiny plastic nativity scenes lit up on front lawns. Inflatables flat during the day rise up at nightfall. Lighted Christmas trees visible in windows are viewed by passersby. Salvation Army bells ring across busy parking lots. Christmas catalogs fill the mailbox. Packages left on doorsteps. No matter how many Christmases you’ve seen, it always retains a bit of wonder.
I’ve vaguely wondered how Christmas migrated from St. Nicholas, where it is said to originate, to Santa Claus carted by reindeer and coming down the chimney. I looked on the internet using Wikipedia and Stnicholascenter.org. Here’s what I found:
St. Nicholas was an early Christian bishop in Myra, in the ancient Greek area now Turkey. He lived from 270-343 A.D. His parents were very wealthy. Both parents died in an epidemic, leaving their wealth to Nicholas. Having been taught at an early age to be mindful of the poor, Nicholas used his wealth to aid the less fortunate. He was known for “secret gift giving.” A story is told of his tossing a bag of gold into the home of three young women. Their father was poor and had no dowry to provide them husbands. It is likely the young women would become slaves or prostitutes. On three separate nights Nicholas tossed the gold through the window where it landed in the girls socks by the fireside. Nicholas would later become the patron saint of prostitutes as well as sailors, students, merchants, repentant thieves, children, archers, brewers and pawnbrokers. Known as a protector of all in trouble or need. Gold in the socks would become the inspiration for gifts in stockings hung by the fireplace.
St. Nicholas is pictured in different ways in Eastern Orthodox icons — often as an elderly man with a short, full and fluffy beard. Some Europeans desiring the holiday to be more Christ-centered called St. Nicholas Christkindl, which later became Kris Kringle.
In the 19th century the celebration of St. Nicholas Day, traditionally on Dec. 5 or 6, moved toward a more secular holiday. The Dutch called St. Nicholas “Sinterklass,” translated Santa Claus. Some historians say Christmas in the U.S. with Santa Claus was anglicized by Dutch settlements in New York. There are countries that celebrate both St. Nicholas Day as well as Christmas, to reserve a day to celebrate the Christ child.
There are 160 countries globally that celebrate Christmas; some traditions are different than our own. There are countries that call the Dec. 25 holiday by a different name like “Family Day.” Some countries allow the holiday only for Christians. There’s a website, whyChristmas.com, that gives the customs of all the Christmas-celebrating countries, as well as Christmas activities and crafts.
Once my mother, a Sunday School teacher, asked her young class, “Do you know why we have Christmas?” A little boy replied, “God knew we needed a good time sometime.”
Email reaches Shannon Bardwell of Columbus as [email protected].
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