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Winnipeg's own Canadian Historian specializing in the history of Christmas is sharing real-life facts about the man known as Saint Nicholas, and how he got all wrapped up in Christmas.
Dr. Gerry Bowler, a retired professor at the University of Manitoba, compiled his Christmas knowledge about the history of the season so many know and love in his book Santa Claus: A Biography. Bowler also expands on the real-life bishop, Saint Nicholas.
"The name Saint Nick and Saint Nicholas, and Santa, are often confused, but they are two separate people," says Bowler. "Saint Nicholas was, we think, a real Bishop around the year 300 B.C. in which Christianity was still being persecuted. We are told that he was one of those imprisoned in the great persecution that occurred just after 300. Both the Eastern and the Western Emporer went after Christianity quite severely."
While there is some mystery behind the actual man and the myths that started pouring out about him decades after he died, there are a few solid facts. One of those is that he was part of the underground Christian church, and a bishop of the little town of Myra, Anatolia, which is modern-day Turkey.
"He attended the Great Council of Nicaea in 325. Now this was one of the most important meetings in the history of Christianity. The Emperor had summoned it in order to solve a problem, and the problem was, how much of God was Jesus? How could you maintain the notion of monotheism and still have Jesus as God?"
Two positions were proposed. A Christian priest Arias said that Jesus must have been a super angel, someone worthy to be praised, but not God. Then, Athanasius came up with the trinitarian solution, stating that Jesus could be God as a three-in-one being. During this meeting, it is said that St. Nicholas punched Arias on the nose, and then was promptly rebuked.
Charity Work, Sainthood, and Tales of Miracles
"Nicholas is famous for his charity," says Bowler. "When he died on Dec. 6, which thus became his Saints Day, astonishing tales started to grow about his miracles."
One of the most well-known tales of charity work done by Saint Nicholas involved helping women.
"Probably the most famous story to modern ears about Saint Nicholas is of gold purses into the stockings of three young women who were in danger of being sold into prostitution. This is the origin of the concept of a secret midnight, Christmas season, gift bringer."
There are tales of Nicholas flying and being able to appear in more than one place at a time. He became known as the protector of sailors and children. The following story is graphic in depiction, yet one of the symbols that follows the saint to this day.
"Probably the story that appealed most to the Middle Ages was his resurrection of three students. The story goes that three students were on their way to school and stopped off at an inn, and the innkeeper murdered them. He chopped their bodies up and put them in barrels, later to be served to hungry customers. Saint Nicholas came along, sensed something was wrong, and took the innkeeper down to the basement where the barrels were, and resurrected the three boys."
Becoming Known as a Gift-Bringer
As the most popular saint, there are hundreds of churches across Europe named after him. According to Bowler, the idea of Saint Nicholas as a midnight gift bringer started around 1,200 A.D.
"Note that it was not Dec. 25 or the 24 when the gifts come. It was on Saint Nicholas Day, Dec. 6. Christmas is a season and it lasts over two months on the church calendar."
This tradition, including the idea that Saint Nicholas would bring a switch with him, beat naughty children, and gift good children, lasted until roughly 1,500.
Reformation and Baby Jesus
"Protestants began to suggest that Christmas gifts come from the baby Jesus," says Bowler. "Or as you say in German, Das Krist Kindle, the Christ child. In Protestant countries, Saint Nicholas gradually disappears. The only place that hangs onto him is the Netherlands."
The issue Protestants came up against as the Christ child bringing gifts to children is that he is a baby and can't carry gifts himself.
"[The story goes] that the Christ child gets scary helpers. The child will appear with somebody dressed in furs, with a dirty face, with a switch, or some chains or a basket in his hands to frighten kids into good behaviour."
As Europeans started making their way over to North America, Dutch people who set up in the New York area brought the idea of Saint Nicholas at Christmas time again. Their name for him? Sinter Claus.
"Sinter Claus is on American soil as a Christmas season gift-bringer. The Dutch, even when they were conquered by the English and New Amsterdam became New York, they keep up this notion."
Cancelling Christmas in America
Around 1800, Puritans and Calvinists abolished Christmas because it had become a raucous event with rioting and drunkenness.
"New England and Scotland wouldn't celebrate Christmas. It had become an outdoor, alcohol-fuelled, rowdy, adult time. Kind of like New Year's Eve gone bad. There were mobs in the streets of Boston and New York, banging on pots and pans, beating up on African Americans and immigrants, going after Catholics, and even disrupting church services. A number of thinkers, poets, and artists come up with the notion of Saint Nicholas."
The group decided to try and bring the idea of Christmas inside people's homes, domesticate it, and have the focus put back on children.
New Christmas Traditions
"Charles Dickens in England did this with his Christmas stories and a couple of poets in New York who do it in 1821 and 1822. They conceive of Saint Nicholas coming to American girls and boys in a sleigh drawn by reindeer. An upper-class fellow by the name of Clement Clarke Moore steals a poem and makes a much better one that we know as The Night Before Christmas."
This is where the split took place of Saint Nicholas and the idea of Santa Claus, changing the dates even from Dec. 6 to Dec. 25.
"After WWII in Europe, Santa Claus starts replacing the Christ child, the angels, and Saint Nicholas. There are places in the Netherlands where it is illegal to dress up as Santa Claus until Saint Nicholas has had his day, on Dec. 6."
Regardless of the traditions surrounding Christmas, most of what is known of Saint Nicholas the actual man who walked the earth is from the stories told after his passing.
Christmas was first called Feast of the Nativity and the first record of it being celebrated was in 336 A.D.