Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Saint Nicholas

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

On December 6 every year, countries all across Europe celebrate Saint Nicholas Day. The way they celebrate can vary dramatically from place to place, but what they all have in common is honoring a man with a long white beard who gives presents to children. If all that sounds familiar, it should. Learn more about St. Nicholas, St. Nicholas day, and how it is celebrated around the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On December 6th every year, countries across Europe celebrate St. Nicholas Day. The way they celebrate can vary dramatically from place to place, but what they all have in common is honoring a man with a long white beard who gives presents to children. And if that all sounds familiar, it should. Learn more about St. Nicholas' St. Nicholas Day and how it's celebrated around the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping ahead to do that,

tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain, off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to nothing much happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. The story of St. Nicholas

is similar to the story of many saints and other personalities from antiquity. We don't know much about them. What we do know was written well after the fact, and there was probably a lot of embellishment of their stories. So everything about St. Nicholas has to be taken with a big grain of salt. Nicholas was born in the year 270 in the city of Patara in Asia Minor, or what we call today Turkey. He was born in the Roman Empire when it was pretty much at its peak. He was supposedly born to a wealthy Greek Christian family and yet an uncle who was a bishop in the city of Mirna. There is little known about his life growing up. When he was a young man, his parents supposedly died in an epidemic. When he received his inheritance, he made the

decision to give it all away to the poor. His uncle, seeing his virtue, supposedly made him a priest. His generosity became legendary. In one of his most famous acts of charity, there was a man with three daughters who couldn't afford their dowries to get them married. Without getting married, and this is the way it worked at the time, the daughters would probably have been forced into prostitution. He wanted to help the father, but he didn't want to embarrass him by publicly giving him charity. So he snuck into his house on three separate nights,

delivering three bags of gold, one for each daughter. On the third night, the father stayed up to find out who had been leaving the gold, and he found Nicholas was delivering it. He thanked him profusely, but Nicholas asked him to keep it a secret. He was also known for leaving coins in the shoes of children who left them out overnight. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then returned to Mirna, where he was made a bishop, holding the position that his uncle once held. He also famously freed three innocent men who were about to be executed.

He reportedly attended the Council of Nicaea in 325, which is an interesting story in and of itself, and will be the focus of a future episode. He also was imprisoned under the Christian persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, but was later freed by Emperor Constantine. All the things I've just listed are biographical items that fall into the category of plausibility. However, there are a whole bunch of things that fall into the miraculous category, which are also attributed to Nicholas. When he went to the Holy Land, supposedly his boat got caught in a storm, and he commanded the seas to become calm. The most famous miracle attributed to him is one of the most bizarre to modern audiences. supposedly during a famine, a man lured three children into his house and killed them.

He then chopped up the children and put them in a pickling barrel with the intent of selling them as meat. St. Nicholas met the man and saw through his lies. He made the sign of the cross over the pickling barrel, and the three children came out alive and reassembled. FYI, reassembling and reviving disassembled children is an awesome party trick. This miracle is the one for which Nicholas was best known for. When he appears in paintings throughout history, he's usually shown with three children coming out of a vat. After his death, he was declared a saint and is the patron saint of a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated things. Sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, prostitutes, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, unmarried people, and students.

Nicholas was buried in his church, and 200 years later, a new church of St. Nicholas was built under the orders of Emperor Theodosius II, where his remains removed. After the great schism between Eastern and Western churches, his body was stolen by Italians and taken to the city of Bari, Italy, and enshrined at the Basilica di San Nicola, where they reside today. He supposedly died on December 6, 343, which is why December 6th is his feast day. So, okay, biography of an ancient saint, fine and dandy. But how does the person I just described become the person we know as jolly old Saint Nick? In the Middle Ages, there were tons of feast days centered around saints. Nicholas was a pretty prominent saint at the time, and he was best known for both children and gift giving. The way St. Nicholas Day is celebrated really varies quite a bit throughout Europe.

While the traditions might vary, there are several things which most of the celebrations have in common. First is the giving of gifts in some form. The most common form of this is children leaving shoes out, and then having them filled at night with coins, candy, gifts, or fruit. Second, someone or many people will usually dress up as St. Nicholas as a bishop. This will usually entail wearing a bishop's mitre on their head, having a staff, and of course, a long white beard. Third, St. Nicholas will often tell children that they need to be good for the year. Many countries also have an associate of St. Nicholas whose job is to punish bad children, and that character often goes by crampus.

The parallels to Christmas are pretty obvious, but how did a Roman-era saint and the associated traditions with his feast day get associated with the totally different holiday of Christmas? The first reason had to do with the Protestant Reformation. In Northern Europe, as Protestantism became ascendant, saints and feast days fell out of popularity. However, people still wanted to engage in gift giving, especially giving gifts to children. Because St. Nicholas Day and Christmas are only about three weeks apart, many of the traditions were just transferred over to Christmas. Instead of St. Nicholas giving gifts, they could just have come from baby Jesus directly.

However, there was one Northern European country that had a much more direct impact on transferring the St. Nicholas traditions to Christmas, and that would be the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, they never really gave up on St. Nicholas Day. To the Dutch, St. Nicholas is known as Sinterklaas. When the Dutch set colonies in North America, they brought their traditions of St. Nicholas Day with them. Many of the communities in the United States would still celebrate St. Nicholas Day have communities with a significant Dutch heritage. I'm about half Dutch, and I remember getting gifts every St. Nicholas Day. My grandmother would knock on our windows at night, and then we would find fruit or candy on our doorstep.

It was this Dutch tradition of St. Nicholas that gradually morphed into Christmas traditions and how Cinterklaas became Santa Claus. In 1809, Washington Irving wrote a Knickerbocker's history of New York, where he talked about a flying, pipe-smoking St. Nicholas. An 1821 poem titled The Children's Friend, took the idea of St. Nicholas and stripped him of most religious symbolism.

Finally, in 1822, Clement Clark Moore, wrote a visit from St. Nicholas, also commonly known as a night before Christmas, which really cemented the association of St. Nicholas with Christmas and with a Santa-type figure. The complete story of the creation of the modern version of Santa Claus, I will leave for a future episode. However, the Santa Claus we have today,

and many of the traditions we associate with Christmas, all come from a third-century Greek bishop, who is best known for reassembling chopped-up children. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you two can have it read on the show.