Who Is Santa Claus?

Santa Claus is also known as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle or just plain old Santa and these are but a few of the names for the ghost of Saint Nicholas who, according to Western cultures, brings gifts on Christmas Eve (December 24) or on his Feast Day (December 6).

Historically, the original Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas was a Christian named Nicholas who was born in a southeastern Turkish town called Lycia in the early years of the fourth century. To prove his extraordinary piety he began fasting twice a week from the time he was a very young child and when both his parents died, he entered a seminary in order to dedicate his entire life to worshiping Christ.

Nicholas is credited with many miracles but his first one occurred during a journey to the Holy Land. The boat he sailed met with a stormy sea and when Nicholas extended his arms, the turbulent waters came to a standstill. Due to this first miracle Saint Nicholas became the patron saint of sailors.

Nicholas was appointed as the bishop of Myra in the Asia Minor. His triumphant record at winning converts and his altruistic generosity toward the poor and the needy infuriated the Romans during their persecution of Christians and Christianity and under the orders of the tyrannical Roman emperor Gaius Diocletianus, Nicholas was imprisoned. Fortunately for him however, this despot abdicated his thrown to Constantine who freed the bishop of Myra. In his later years, Constantine converted to Christianity and when he assembled the first Church council in Nicaea in 325, Nicholas was invited as a prominent member. Although none of the evidence is concrete, it is believed that Nicholas died on December 6, 342 and was soon taken on as the patron saint of Russia, Greece and Sicily.

There were two very pivotal characteristics about the life of St. Nicholas that were the decisive factors in his becoming Santa Claus. The first was his legendary kindness and generosity and the second was his love for children which also made him the patron saint of children.

For centuries, Saint Nicholas was believed to make his rounds wearing his red and white bishop’s outfit and his long white beard as he distributed gifts of candy and sugar to children while pulling along an indolent donkey. During the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, however, many Europeans replace Saint Nicholas with more secular figures such as Father Christmas in Britain and papa Noel in France. The Dutch managed to keep Saint Nicholas alive, though, and brought him along with them to the New World where he was called Sint Nikolass and later Sinterklass. When the English captured New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, Sinterklass was Anglicized to Santa Claus.

Most of what we attribute to Santa Claus today originated in America and the credit goes to Dr. Clement Clarke Moore, a New York theology professor who composed “The Night before Christmas” in 1822 to read to his own children. The poem quickly gained popularity throughout the New World when a friend of Dr. Moore submitted it anonymously to a well known magazine of that time. Dr. Moore was greatly embarrassed and did not admit authorship of the “frivolous” children’s poem until 1838 when just about every child in America could already recite it by heart.

Whereas the original Saint Nicholas was slender and tall, thanks to the highly regarded nineteenth century cartoonist Thomas Nast the American Santa Claus took on the rosy-cheeked and roly-poly characteristics. Nast worked for Harper’s Weekly between 1863 and 1886 and created an extensive series of Christmas drawings that depicted a dramatic change in Santa as he evolved from the pudgy elf-like character acquired from Dr. Moore’s undying poem to the bearded, potbellied, life-size bell ringer Santa familiar to everyone in America today. Nast’s Christmas drawings also depicted Santa’s life during the entire year and his designing of toys, checking on children’s behavior and reading their letters. Nast’s depictions became tightly integrated into the Santa Claus lore.