A JOLLY GENEROSITY

© Rev. Joy Atkinson 2008
Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation
December 7, 2008

When my son Ian was about 9 years old, he got me into a bit of trouble with the parents of some of the children in the church school at the San Mateo Unitarian Universalist Church, where I was minister for many years. Ian had told several of the younger kids that I had told him that the Santa Claus story was "just a silly fairy tale." Well, a preacher is used to being misquoted from time to time, but not usually by her own child! Years before, when Ian was 5, he asked me if there really was a Santa, and I threw the question back to him. He decided that there really was, and I decided not to shake his belief.

But three years later, after hearing the older kids at school debunking the Santa Claus myth, Ian asked me again. He said, in a very adult way, "Mom, I want you to tell me the truth - is Santa Claus real or not?" This time when I asked him what he believed, he said he thought there was no Santa, and I gathered by that time that he was ready for the truth, so I leveled with him. I admitted that what he heard in school is true - the story about some elfin gift-giver riding through the sky with a herd of jet-powered reindeer and squeezing through chimneys to leave presents is not really true, but that it is a fun kind of story that young children enjoy believing in, as he himself did when he was younger. I never said that it was a "silly fairy tale," and I also told him not to ruin the fun for his cousin and other younger children who still believe, but apparently, Ian had forgotten my admonition about not ruining it for others, and I had to once again enlist him as a fellow co-conspirator in keeping the myth alive for the youngest set.

The Santa Claus story is an enduring myth, and Santa himself is a very old figure, who only recently evolved into his present form. Today, one day after the feast day of St. Nicholas, I would like to spend a few minutes exploring the evolution of Santa Claus, and the human inclination toward generosity that lies at the center of his story.

St. Nicholas, upon whom Santa is partly based, is said to have lived in the third to fourth centuries and was the Bishop of Myra, a Mediterranean seaport city in the country of Lycia, which is now part of Turkey. Not much is known for sure about this saint, and some scholars contend that he was fabricated as a Christian version of an ancient sea god named Hold Nickar. According to the Christian stories, Nicholas was born to a wealthy family. His parents died when he was just nine, leaving him their fortune. Nicholas, a devout Christian, was in the habit of giving away large sums of money to the needy, and he did so in secret, usually at night.

One legend about the Saint involved three maidens, daughters of a nobleman who had lost all his wealth, and who had no dowry for his daughters, and barely enough to feed and clothe them. Without a dowry, young women at the time could not marry, and with no other alternatives available to support the girls, the three daughters would have to be sold into prostitution. When Nicholas, who was just a boy, heard of their plight, he crept up to their house at night and lowered a bag of gold into the eldest daughter's room through an open window, and with this valuable gift she was soon able to marry. Nicholas then did the same for each of the other daughters, but on the third try he was intercepted by the girls' father, who asked Nicholas why he bestowed his gifts in secret. Nicholas insisted that the father tell no one who had helped them. In artists' depictions of this legend, Nicholas is sometimes pictured with three bags of gold, but in other versions, the bags have taken the shape of three gold balls. Later, when Nicholas became the patron saint of merchants, the three golden balls of St. Nicholas became the symbol of the pawnbroker - to signify that one's merchandise is safe under the sign of the good Saint.

Nicholas was made a Bishop while still a teenager. According to the legend, he had been traveling back from the Holy Land when the ship he was on got caught in a storm. The sailors asked Nicholas to pray for their safety, which he did, and when the ship landed safely in Myra, Nicholas went to a church to offer thanks. The Bishop there had recently died, and one Bishop who was taking part in the deliberations about a successor reported having heard a voice the night before which said that the first person to come into the church at a particular hour, with the name Nicholas, should be named the new Bishop. In walked the young Nicholas, and though he at first refused, he was prevailed upon to accept the office.

Saint Nicholas was purported to have been among those present at the famous church council at Nicea in 325 - the council called by the Emperor Constantine to settle once and for all some disputes on theological points, such as the nature of Jesus. It was at this council that the Trinity was made the official doctrine of the Church, and the minority Unitarian point of view represented by Bishop Arius was thrown out. It is not known exactly what role Nicholas may have had at the council, assuming that there truly was a Bishop from Myra named Nicholas. In one legend, after a heated debate with a theological opponent, the ardent Trinitarian Nicholas slapped a fellow Bishop and was put in a jail cell overnight to cool off. Again, as the story goes, a miracle took place: Nicholas' shackles mysteriously came off during the night, and when he returned to the council, his point of view prevailed. Perhaps it was a Unitarian who got the devout St. Nicholas' goat!

In another miracle story, the Bishop Nicholas persuaded the captains of several ships carrying grain from Constantinople to Alexandria to leave a year's supply of grain in Myra, where a severe food shortage was causing famine. Nicholas promised the ship captains that their larders would be full when they reached Alexandria, despite them sharing their grain with Myra. The grain saved the people from starvation, and when the Bishop's promise of a miraculously re-filled shipment came true, the captains and sailors spread the news throughout the Mediterranean. Underneath this miraculous legend is a truth about generosity: those who are generous, who share of their bounty, will themselves be fulfilled.

Nicholas was said to have rescued ships caught in storms, and he became the patron of sailors. He was to Christian sailors what the gods Neptune and Poseidon were to Roman and Greek sailors: their protector - or, if they were not in favor with the saint, their destroyer, since if he could calm a storm, it was believed that he could also bring one on. This association with the sea lends some credence to the recent idea that Nicholas was really an ancient sea god who was made into a Christian saint, as has happened with other ancient deities.

Reverence for St. Nicholas was so firmly established by the Middle Ages that he was the most often invoked Christian figure after Jesus and Mary. Around the 12th century, people began leaving gifts in St. Nicholas' name on the Eve of his feast day, December 6th. Parents caught on that the promise of a gift from the saint if you're good and a switch if you're bad, would keep children in line. But since switching children was beneath the dignity of a saint, in some parts of Europe, St. Nicholas was split into the good saint and his horned and black-robed attendants, variously named Krampus, Knecht Ruprecht, Ru Clos, and other names. Ru Clos means "rough Nicholas."

In Holland, the shadow side of Santa was the Devil himself, whom the Dutch call Black Peter. Some of these shadow Santa figures were female. One female figure, Befana, is still expected by children in Southern Italy on the Twelfth Night. It is she, in these regions, not Nicholas, who gives gifts and sweets for good children, and a switch or coal for naughty ones.

From these legends, we can see some of the seeds of our modern Santa Claus myth: Saint Nick is a worker of miracles, the protector of children, the night-time bestower of gifts, and one who will reward the good, and perhaps punish or deprive the bad.

But the old saint is still a far cry from the modern, red-suited, white bearded figure we know. One of his modern features, the white beard, derives from the figure of Odin, the ancient Norse god. Odin, or Woden - from whom we get the word Wednesday (Woden's Day), was the chief of a trinity of Northern European gods. He was called "All Father," and one story about him tells how he dedicated himself to humanity by hanging himself on a tree, pierced by a spear, a story echoed in Christianity. Odin had one eye and a long white beard, and rode a white horse across the sky during the winter solstice, with his wide-brimmed hat fluttering in the wind. To this day, many Europeans picture Sinterklaas (as the Dutch call him) as a modern Wodin, with a broad-brimmed hat and long white beard, who arrives either on the eve of St. Nicholas' Day or on Christmas Eve. Like Odin, Sinterklaas comes not with a retinue of reindeer, but on a white steed.

It can be said that St. Nicholas arrived on American soil with Columbus, because on the Saint's day, Dec. 6, 1492, Columbus entered the Haitian harbor of Bohio in the West Indies and named the port St. Nicholas, in honor of the saint. But it was really the Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam who brought their Sinterklaas here. He was later adopted by the British settlers when New Amsterdam became New York in the mid 1600s. Then in the mid 1800s, two New Yorkers helped to give old St. Nick the appearance he retains to this day. One was, of course, the Professor and Episcopal minister Clement Clarke Moore, author of the immortal poem, "A Visit From Saint Nicholas." From Moore's poem we get the sleigh and reindeer, instead of the European white horse, and we get a humorous picture of Santa as a jolly overweight elf.

The task of depicting this elfin gift-giver who has become so familiar to us fell to the political cartoonist and Unitarian, Thomas Nast. Nast was the cartoonist for Harper's Weekly, and he was also the one who drew the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey, as well as Uncle Sam dressed in stars and stripes. President Lincoln once said, "Thomas Nast has been our best recruiting sergeant," because his cartoons helped in gaining sympathy for the Union cause. Nast drew many versions of Santa over many years, and his Santa began to look more and more like our modern Santa. But it was not was not until he was asked to draw some of his Santas in color for a children's book, using a newly developed color printing process, that Santa acquired the familiar red suit. Nast had always thought of his pen and ink Santas as wearing a tan suit before, but this wouldn't do for a book featuring bright colors, so he dressed the jolly elf in a red suit with white ermine trim - and voila! We have our modern Santa Claus! It's a bit ironic that old St. Nicholas, the legendary fourth century defender of the Trinity against Unitarian and other heresies, would be given his definitive, and very secular, American appearance by a nineteenth century Unitarian!

So, we have in our modern Santa Claus a curious mixture: he is a defender of maidens, children, and orthodoxy, and the generous bearer of secret gifts. He is part Christian saint, part pagan God. Like a God, he knows if we're naughty or nice. Nowadays he is also a kind of shill for the toy makers and department stores - urging children to want, and us to buy.

I have sometimes been asked whether I think it is right and healthy to lie to children to keep the Santa Claus myth alive, especially given the modern, overly commercial uses to which he is put. I would like to answer this question by correcting my son's misinterpretation of what I said about Santa Claus: As I see it, the Santa story is not a "silly fairy tale" at all. It is a rich mythic story, which captures something of the spirit of the Christian Christmas as well as of the ancient Yuletide season. In fact, there are Santa-like figures from non-Christian lands as well - gift-bearers who help the needy and bring gifts to children, personifying the universal impulse to generosity.

Should we skeptical Unitarian Universalists continue to honor this Trinitarian Christian saint and his antecedents and descendents by telling, singing and reciting the Santa legend, creating in our children's minds a loving character, only to have to knock him off his tinselly pedestal when our kids and grandkids are old enough to learn the truth?

I for one say, YES! Let's enjoy our Santa myths. Our world, with its continued wars and human misery, needs the sense of hope and caring that a figure like Santa brings. At this darkest, coldest time of the year, the Santa story speaks of charity and generosity; it lights up the eyes of children, and it brings, even to us grumpy grownups, a little warmth and a bit of humor and good cheer.

We want to rise to express the best that is within us, we want to be generous and caring. The legends about the good saint giving anonymously to those in need, the secular stories of Santa delivering presents to children, and even the sight of Salvation Army Santas ringing those bells to remind us of the need to be charitable: all of these images find a resonance within us, year after year, because generosity and sharing are a part of who we are, because we want to give of ourselves and our resources, because we too want to partake in the jolly generosity of the season. Generosity is a spiritual discipline, and the stories of St. Nicholas indicate that he raised this discipline to a fine art.

Closing

I close with a meditation, my little petition to Santa:

Santa, Spirit of hope and selfless giving,
may you come to us once again
to dress up our dreary, darkening world with your joyful presence.
Come with Bishop's Scepter or great white steed,
or sleigh speeding through the crisp night air,
or ringing your bell over an open kettle, inviting our generosity.
Come, and enter our hearts,
while a million wide-eyed children perch upon your bounteous knee.

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