December 22, 2024

Yes, Nicholas, there is a Santa Claus

Dr. Rutger Kramer tells us that there really was a medieval St. Nicholas. He has plenty of interesting stories of gift-giving, but is there a connection to Christmas?

Modern Medieval

by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele

(from Matt and David: This is a guest post by Dr. Rutger Kramer of the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. Dr. Kramer is working on a book on the medieval legend of St. Nicholas, so we thought he’s the perfect person for this time of year…)

On 21 September 1897, the auspiciously named publisher Francis Church published an editorial in New York City’s newspaper The Sun (an actual newspaper back in the day, not to be confused with whatever the New York Sun is these days). In it, he explained to eight-year old Virginia O’Hanlon that Santa Claus does, in fact, exist. ‘You might as well not believe in fairies!’, the author states, assuring her that ‘the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see’. He then concluded that ‘ten times ten thousand years from now, [Santa Claus] will continue to make glad the heart of childhood’.

All in all, and especially given the Baptist background of the author, this is a surprisingly ‘medieval’ take on the idea of Santa Claus – a reflection on the true meaning of what it means to be a saint, wrapped up in a joyfully kid-friendly piece of prose.

So… was there a Santa Claus?

Looking for the historical Santa Claus, the ‘real’ Nicholas, presents us with a problem that is well-known to any historian of the pre-modern era: there’s so much chronological distance between the actual events and the earliest written record, that we might as well be looking at a piece of fiction.

In the case of Nicholas, about 5 centuries separate his tenure as archbishop of Myra (present-day Demre, Turkey) and the earliest full story about him as a saint, which dates to the early 9th century and was written in Byzantium. We do, however, have clear indications that some kind of cult had developed around him well before that time. For instance, a 6th-century source tells us how another saint visits the grave of Nicholas in Myra, so evidently, there must have been something. The waters get a bit muddled, however, when we realize that this other saint was also called Nicholas (of Sion),  and that the sitting archbishop of Myra at the time (his uncle) was ALSO called Nicholas. It was apparently a thing in the Greek-speaking world.

This is the sort of thing that makes it difficult to get at the ‘real’ Nicholas: eventually, many of them were folded into the story of the main Nicholas (the above-mentioned Life of Nicholas of Sion, for instance, contains the DNA of many of the later stories we associate with his namesake from Myra). However, it also shows that there was a lingering presence of the saint in the region – indicated, if nothing else, by the popularity of his name (this particular narrative even has two more Nicholases in it, bringing us to 5 so far). In addition, the altar of the church in Myra contained bones that attracted pilgrims due to the miracles ascribed to their previous owner – if the science is correct, thanks to modern carbon dating, a man who lived in the fourth century or thereabouts. A man who would, in the early ninth century, became the protagonist for a saint’s life that would end up providing the template for all subsequent Nicholases in Europe. So: yes, there was a Nicholas. A bishop who lived in the time of Constantine the Great, who may or may not have been at the Council of Nicaea (where he did not punch any heretics I am sorry to say – that story is a much later addition to his portfolio, first recorded in the 14^th century), and who had apparently garnered so much goodwill that his relics ended up becoming a focal point for all the miracle stories recorded in the region.

So popular was he, in fact, that his fame soon spread across the Mediterranean and beyond. A Latin version of the life of Saint Nicholas was composed in (Greek-occupied) Naples, and his cult arrived in north-western Europe in the wake of attempts by the 10^th-century Ottonian imperial family to make their court more ‘Byzantine’. Then, in the year 1087, his relics were acquired from Myra by a group of traders from Bari (in Italy), and Nicholas was on the way of becoming a truly ‘Western’ saint.

It is easy enough to see this so-called furta sacra (holy theft) by the traders from Bari as a form of piracy – and in many ways it is, and is still seen as such – but there were other forces at play as well. From a near-contemporary source from Kyiv, for instance, we learn that Myra was increasingly under threat from the Islamic Seljuks in the East, and that the Eastern Roman emperors were no longer capable of protecting the saint (remember that the First Crusade would be kicked off about a decade after the translation of the relics) – which meant that his move across the sea was good, actually. A Latin source, meanwhile, narrates how Nicholas “allowed” himself to be taken so that he could spread his fame and good works among even more people.

Both sources are, of course, justifications after the fact, and there is no doubt that the citizens of Bari were after that sweet sweet pilgrimage money. The people of Myra/Demre, meanwhile, were left with an empty tomb – and they are still salty about it. But both narratives also show how Nicholas’ rise to fame in the West was a reflection of larger political and religious movements: the opening of trade routes in the Mediterranean; the increasing power of the Seljuks as a threat to the Eastern Roman Empire; the constant pushing and pulling between the Greek and Latin religious traditions; and, once more, the awesome power of a good story.

And his story is powerful indeed. As an amalgamation of several saints, and a locus of holy power since time immemorial, the life of Nicholas became a source of inspiration to everyone from parents and children, to merchants and sailors, thieves and the falsely accused, as well as a host of other trades – all people who share one of more stories with the saint in one way or another. Over the centuries, stories emerged about the saint allowing us to read of Nicholas rescuing children from cannibalistic butchers, sailors from storms, pilgrims from a bomb attack by the Greek goddess Artemis, and Jews from swindlers (and, because these stories remain deeply Christian, also from themselves). These stories, then, were told and retold for various communities in various languages – Latin and Greek, of course, but eventually also Old French, Flemish, Anglo-Norman and even Old Norse. Together, they paint the picture of a saint throughout the European Middle Ages who protects the downtrodden and underprivileged, but who also stands up for ‘traditional’ norms and values. Whose deeds are simultaneously altruistic and reactionary, socially conscious and deeply conservative.

This is nowhere as clear as in the most famous story about Nicholas – and also the story that got him a reputation as a gift-giver. We find this in the earliest, ninth-century, version of his life, and practically all subsequent retellings as well, regardless of the language. In it, we read about a family that has fallen on hard times. So hard, in fact, that the father sees no other options than to send his daughters off into prostitution. When Nicholas hears about this, he secretly gives a bag of gold for each of the daughters, allowing them to get married after all.

This is an anecdote that speaks to many people: the story of a model millionaire using his wealth to save children from a lifetime of abuse. But it is also the story of a privileged man who uses his money to safeguard the traditional values of the community. The gold, in the end, goes to the father, not the daughters. Nicholas is not out to rescue them as such, but, depending on the version we read, wants to prevent a crime from happening, sins from occurring, or the reputation of the family to get damaged. It is generosity used as an instrument to underline the importance of Christian values – gifts intended to maintain the status quo.

And that there is the medieval basis for the modern Santa Claus. It is, surprisingly enough, not exactly clear how exactly the jump from Christian holy man to capitalist icon went exactly, but the links between now and then are undeniably there. In my own research, I’m currently trying to find out more about the exact ways in which Nicholas was adopted and adapted from one community and one generation to the next, in order to gain a clearer view of how the saint weathered the Reformation, the secularization, and the cynicism of the modern era. He had strong foundations indeed – but they are foundations that are deceptively hard to see.

Nicholas was always a flexible saint, ready to stand up for the values and traditions of whatever community wanted to continue his story, ready to defend the dreams of those wanting to make it a better place. It is not unconditional goodness that he is selling, after all: with God’s omniscience at his side, he is gonna find out who is naughty and who is nice, and bestow his gifts only on those who play by the rules – whatever those may be.

Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, who at some point doubted the existence of Santa Claus, definitely understood the rules. She became an elementary school teacher, a mother, and by all accounts an all-around good person. She also, in 1930, defended a PhD thesis on The Importance of Play at Fordham University, in which she states that play “may be an outgrowth of dramatic folk lore”, and that play is perhaps “civilisation’s most powerful agency”. She goes on to extol the virtues of board games, sports, dancing – even chivalry and other sort of martial play enjoyed by the ‘Teutons’ in the Middle Ages. She never talks about the joy of storytelling, however, and while she approvingly quotes Mat. 19:14 (Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me), she does not credit Nicholas, that great purveyor of games and toys who first brought her into the limelight, with also being an (unwitting) pioneer in the playfulness of hagiographical retellings, from Late Antiquity to the present day.

It seems like a missed opportunity. After all, as Francis Church already wrote her, if Santa Claus weren’t around, ‘there would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence’.

On this, people in the Middle Ages would definitely have agreed with Church.

---

Rutger Kramer is an assistant professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His research mostly focuses on questions of community formation in the early middle ages, and especially the way people in places of authority used religious modes of thinking to try and keep the people under them in line – and of course, why those same people usually accepted this authority in the end. His work has mostly focused on the Carolingian era so far (c. 750-900), but he is presently starting to figure out the deal with Saint Nicholas across Medieval Europe: a project that is due to take him many years, but which will hopefully end in at least one book once it’s over.

See his website for more, and follow him on Bluesky. He avoids most other social media like the plague.

Thanks for reading Modern Medieval! Subscribe for free to receive new posts every week.