This is an updated version of an article I originally posted five years ago, in the midst of an El Niño December. Mother Nature has decidedly “cooled off” this year, but I doubt whether the debate over Santa Claus has followed suit.
Let’s get right to it: Can Christians claim Santa as their own, as being based on the fourth-century St. Nicholas of Myra?
Certainly, the evidence is there. The sainted bishop was well known for his amazing generosity to the poor, and in particular for clandestinely helping three dower-less young women by tossing bags of gold coins through their window under cover of night. According to one version of the story, the bags landed in a stocking hung up by the fire to dry (hence the tradition of hanging stockings at Christmas).
Not surprisingly, as early as the Middle Ages the custom of giving gifts to children was observed on St. Nicholas’ feast day (Dec. 6th).
But there is also a resemblance to various folkloric figures of pre-Christian Europe. Take for instance the Germanic god Odin, often portrayed as a wandering old man with a long, white beard. Odin was said to have led the fabled “Wild Hunt,” a ghostly procession of spectral horsemen, across the sky. Here we may have an “ancestor” of Santa’s sleigh and the flying reindeer (albeit a less jolly one).
Or, is Santa Claus simply the jolly old caricature that has become so familiar to the modern Western world?
If you are familiar with this blog, you may have gathered by now that I am not a big fan of either/or scenarios when it comes to stuff like this. I am a devout Catholic, which might lead some to think me narrow-minded and rigid. Quite the contrary. My Catholic faith gives me a comprehensive worldview in which everything good, true, and beautiful has its place.
J.R.R. Tolkien (also a devout Catholic) had some things to say in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” that I find helpful here. In this great work, he points out that the fact of a certain motif or situation appearing in various stories cannot be taken as proof against its actual occurrence in the life of a flesh-and-blood human being, and goes on to say the following:
I wish to point out something else that these traditions contain: a singularly suggestive example of the relation of the ‘fairy-tale element’ to gods and kings and nameless men, illustrating (I believe) the view that this element does not rise or fall, but is there, in the Cauldron of Story, waiting for the great figures of Myth and History, and for the yet nameless He or She, waiting for the moment when they are cast into the simmering stew (. . .) If indeed Ingeld and Freawaru never lived, or at least never loved, then it is ultimately from nameless man and woman that they get their tale, or rather into whose tale they have entered.
(Tolkien, pg. 127 — parenthesis included, brackets and italics mine)
Anyone’s life story can participate in the age-old archetypes of storytelling, and saints are no exception.
With sainthood, something else gets thrown into the Cauldron. By living in union with God, the saint becomes holy; and, being thrown into the Cauldron, s/he sanctifies the Cauldron (much as Christ sanctified the waters of the Jordan by being baptized in them).
From there I segue to Saint John Henry Newman, who spoke of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in Christians as well as in Christ (or, rather, in Christians by participation in Christ):
In answer to the objection urged against our Lord’s supreme Divinity from texts which speak of His exaltation, St. Athanasius is led to insist (. . .) that, in truth, not Christ, but that human nature which He had assumed, was raised and glorified in Him.
(. . .)
[The saints] have those titles of honour by participation, which are properly His. Without misgiving we may apply to them the most sacred language of Psalmists and Prophets. “Thou art a Priest for ever” may be said of St. Polycarp or St. Martin as well as of their Lord. “He hath dispersed abroad, he hath given to the poor,” was fulfilled in (. . .) St. Laurence. “I have found David My servant,” first said typically of the King of Israel, and belonging really to Christ, is transferred back again by grace to His Vicegerents upon earth. “I have given thee the nations for thine inheritance” is the prerogative of Popes; “Thou hast given him his heart’s desire,” the record of a martyr; “thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity,” the praise of Virgins.
(An Essay on the Development of Christian Docrtine — available at Project Gutenberg]
In a somewhat vaguer sense, Christ and His saints can also be seen foreshadowed in the myths of the gentile nations.
Take, for instance, the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” in which the Viking woman sees in a gentle and faithful Catholic priest the living image of “Baldur the mild.”
Or take St. Francis of Assisi, who famously sang the praises of God and His creation and befriended the denizens of nature. Him we might call the fulfillment of Orpheus, that great mythic musician and friend of animals, trees, etc.
Moving west into the Celtic world, we see the mythic hero Fionn mac Cumhaill and his band of followers emerging into the light of day…in the persons of St. Finian and the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.
Likewise, the enchanted food which was said by the Irish to keep the Tuatha de Danaan, or fairies, forever young could find no bettter realization than the Holy Eucharist, the true Manna from Heaven and the Bread of Eternal Life.
Going back to the Greco-Roman tradition: In mythology the ancients had Artemis, goddess of the hunt, who was said to have been attended by a train of nymphs.
In fact we now have the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the holy virgins who dedicate their lives to Our Lady.
As long as we are back in the Greco-Roman mythic atmosphere, let’s mention Atlas, the legendary Titan thought to bear the heavens upon his shoulders. Legend places him atop Mount Atlas in North Africa.
Is there a “true Atlas?” I would argue that there is, with the qualification that we will not find him in North Africa. To meet the true Atlas, we need to journey back in time to the fifth century, and quite a ways east to the land of Syria.
There we will meet St. Simeon Stylites, who spent thirty-seven years living on top of a pillar from whence he worked a number of miracles, and displayed great personal holiness.
Going from Syria to Egypt, we recall the myth of Osiris, the god who is put to death and dismembered — and whose scattered body parts are gathered back together for resurrection.
One thinks of St. James Intercisus (also known as St. James the Persian and St. James the Martyr), who met his death through dismemberment in the fifth century. Countless other martyrs in various times and places have met a similar fate, all in the hope of the bodily Resurection at the end of the ages.
Given the connection of Santa Claus with Odinic imagery, it is appropriate that we should take our last example from Nordic folklore. From the Norse sagas we learn of the Valkyries, the shield maidens of Valhalla, present at great battles to escort the souls of slain warriors to the halls of the gods.
Strong women, filled with supernatural life, present on the battlefield…could there ever actually be such a being? I would say that in fact, a real-life Valkyrie is found in the annals of history. She appeared in the land of the Franks in the fifteenth century…
…and her name was St. Joan of Arc.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. As a lifelong lover of mythology myself, I have come to understand and love it for what it truly is at root: A nameless dream of a Christified humanity. With the coming of Christ, supernatural wonder is no longer a mere gleam along the frontiers of memory and the edges of our consciousness. It is now a reality breaking through the thin veil of our world.
St. Nicholas could well be thought of as the fulfillment of many wise old men from folklore, and our modern Santa Claus most definitely draws attention to his love and generosity.
As fellow Internet Catholic Brett Fawcett suggests, Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole is in some sense evocative of St. Nicholas’ place in Heaven, “the North Pole of the universe,” and the elfin toymakers of the hosts of angels and saints into whose fellowship he has entered (see video, Santa Claus is Real. Seriously). Santa’s generosity and gift–giving, furthermore, are realized in St. Nicholas’ loving care and intercession for humanity as a saint in heaven.
Something even of the flying reindeer is realized in the angelic hosts who proclaim the Creator from one end of creation to another.
Finally: Those who ridicule the idea of Santa Claus are charged with taking the wonder out of Christmas, of taking magic out of the world. Here we have an opportunity to look at a lesser-known feature of St. Nicholas’ life and work.
St. Nicholas was known for his fierce opposition to the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. According to Arius, the heresy’s eponymous founder, Jesus Christ was God’s highest and most perfect creature; He did indeed come down from a higher state of being to dwell among us in human form, but He was not God Incarnate.
Arianism was popular among the societal elite of the time, because it did not strike with the force of the Great Mystery in which Almighty God united Himself to all humanity by assuming human nature unto Himself, thus conferring an inestimable dignity on all people (including, naturally, the masses of the poor).
There was no keener and more tragic way of taking wonder out of the world, of diminishing the dignity of every human person, than by taking God out of the world by denying His coming to us as a man. We could say that Arianism amounts essentially to a denial of Christ–mass (literal meaning: “Christ’s Coming”).
To this sad distortion of reality, St. Nicholas bravely said “no.” And so both the wonder and the charity of Santa Claus speak to a higher truth, which we would do well to remember as we prepare for Christmas.
In short, the modern Santa Claus shows us much of the spirit of St. Nicholas, while also shining a light on the latter’s place in the Gospel’s hallowing of storytelling. He is, to that extent, preparatio evangelica.
And so I conclude with a hearty ho ho ho, and: St. Nicholas, pray for us!
Acknowledgements
1. “MerryOldSanta” by Thomas Nast – Edited version of Image:1881 0101tnast santa 200.jpg.. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MerryOldSanta.jpg#/media/File:MerryOldSanta.jpg
2. “St Nicholas Icon Sinai 13th century” by Unknown – Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai (Egypt) / K. Weitzmann: “Die Ikone”. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Nicholas_Icon_Sinai_13th_century.jpg#/media/File:St_Nicholas_Icon_Sinai_13th_century.jpg
3. “Georg von Rosen – Oden som vandringsman, 1886 (Odin, the Wanderer)” by Georg von Rosen – Appeared in the 1893 Swedish translation of the Poetic Edda. Immediate source: http://www.ginnungagap.info/gge_pic6.asp (accessed July 14th 2005). Taken from the English Wikipedia.. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Georg_von_Rosen_-_Oden_som_vandringsman,_1886_(Odin,_the_Wanderer).jpg#/media/File:Georg_von_Rosen_-_Oden_som_vandringsman,_1886_(Odin,_the_Wanderer).jpg
4. “SantaWithKids2014” by Bailiwick Studios from Rockford, MI – _C130063.jpg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SantaWithKids2014.jpg#/media/File:SantaWithKids2014.jpg
5. “Oxford Tolkien” by Julian Nitzsche – Own work (own photograph). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxford_Tolkien.JPG#/media/File:Oxford_Tolkien.JPG
6. Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy-Stories.” The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. London: HarperCollins, 2006.
7. By George Richmond – Newman: https://archive.org/stream/newmanfran00barruoft#page/48/mode/2up, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37002298
8. By Jens Galschiøt – http://www.aidoh.dk/, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18270371
9. By Jp16103 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47366822
10. By Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2795294
11. By Gunnar Bach Pedersen – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2237632
12. By Przykuta – Przykuta, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3029389
13. By Anonymous – http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613/0207?sid=a7590df9b8aca22111c8359533716419&zoomlevel=4, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47529982
14. By Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres – cartelfr.louvre.fr, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3876400
15. “Santas’s Workshop2” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Santas%27s_Workshop2.jpg#/media/File:Santas%
16. By Unknown – https://www.welt.de/multimedia/archive/01332/bs_10_07_DW_Kultur_1332681p.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15860779
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