St. Nicholas to Father Christmas

The Man Behind the Story of Father Christmas

St. Nicholas was a Bishop who lived in the fourth century AD in a place called Myra in Asia Minor (now called Turkey). He was a very rich man because his parents died when he was young and left him a lot of money. He was also a very kind man and had a reputation for helping the poor and giving secret gifts to people who needed it. There are several legends about St. Nicholas, although we don’t know if any of them are true!

The most famous story about St. Nicholas tells how the custom of hanging up stockings to get presents in first started! It goes like this…

There was a poor man who had three daughters. He was so poor, he did not have enough money for a dowry, so his daughters couldn’t get married. (A dowry is a sum of money paid to the bridegroom by the bride’s parents on the wedding day. This still happens in some countries, even today.) One night, Nicholas secretly dropped a bag of gold down the chimney and into the house. The oldest daughter was then able to be married. This was repeated later with the second daughter. Finally, determined to discover the person who had given him the money, the father secretly hid by the fire every evening until he caught Nicholas dropping in a bag of gold. Nicholas begged the man to not tell anyone what he had done, because he did not want to bring attention to himself. But soon the news got out and when anyone received a secret gift, it was thought that maybe it was from Nicholas.

Because of his kindness Nicholas was made a Saint. St. Nicholas is not only the saint of children but also of sailors! One story tells of him helping some sailors that were caught in a dreadful storm off the coast of Turkey. The storm was raging around them and all the men were terrified that their ship would sink beneath the giant waves. They prayed to St. Nicholas to help them. Suddenly, he was standing on the deck before them. He ordered the sea to be calm, the storm died away, and they were able to sail their ship safely to port.

St. Nicholas was exiled from Myra and later put in prison during the persecution of his Emperor, Diocletian. No one is really knows when he died, but it was on 6th December in either 345 or 352 AD. In 1807, his bones were stolen from Turkey by some Italian merchant sailors. The bones are now kept in the Church named after him in the Italian port of Bari. On St. Nicholas’ feast day (6th December), the sailors of Bari still carry his statue from the Cathedral out to sea, so that he can bless the waters and so give them safe voyages throughout the year.

How Nich Became Santa

In the 16th Century in Europe, the stories and traditions about St. Nicholas became very unpopular.

But someone had to deliver presents to children at Christmas, so in the UK, he became ‘Father Christmas’, a character from old children’s stories; in France, he was then known as ‘Père Nöel’; in Germany, the Christ Child or ‘Christ Kind’. In the early USA his name was ‘Kris Kringle’. Later, Dutch settlers in the USA took the old stories of St. Nicholas with them and Kris Kringle became ‘Sinter Klass’ or as we now say ‘Santa Claus’!

Some countries such as Holland still celebrate St. Nicholas’ Day on 6th December.

St. Nicholas became popular again in the Victorian era when writers, poets and artists rediscovered the old stories. In the new stories and pictures about him, his Bishop’s robes soon became the hat and coat that he wears today — but as you can see, he went through a few colour changes!!

No one knows how St. Nicholas’ traditional white horse became a sledge and pack of reindeer. A picture in a Victorian book show them: and the poem ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’, written in 1882, by Dr Clement Clarke Moore for his children, describes the eight reindeer and gives them their names. They became really well known in the song ‘ Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer’, written in 1949. Do you know all eight names? Click on Rudolph’s nose to find out!

The UK Father Christmas and the American Santa Claus became more and more alike over years and are now one and the same.

New stories and customs about Santa Claus were written in the 1900s and they still exist today.

Some people say that Santa lives at the North Pole. In Finland, they say that he lives in the north part of their country called Lapland. But everyone agrees that he travels through the sky on a sledge that is pulled by reindeer, that he comes into houses down the chimney at night and places presents for the children in socks or bags by their beds, in front of the family Christmas tree, or by the fire place.

Most children receive their presents on Christmas Eve night or early Christmas morning, but in some countries they get their presents on St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6th.