GOOD ST. NICHOLAS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5515, 18 December 1929, Page 4

GOOD ST. NICHOLAS.

THE SAINT OF CHRISTMASTIDB. The spirit of Santa Claus is abroad this month, and children all over the world are thinking of the kindly old saint whose visit on Christmas Eve is the great event of the year. Who was this Saint Nicholas—this beneficient old man—whose doings have been surrounded by such a wealth of story and legend that he has become the Christmastide saint ? His fame dates from far back in the early Christian era, and one of the first churches to be named after him was built by the Emperor Justinian at Constantinople in A.D. 430. His renown increased with each year, and spread from the east all over Western Europe, until his ♦festival became one of the most important feasts in Belgium, Holland, right through Eastern France, and the Rhine Provinces to Switzerland and Bavaria. He is the patron saint of schoolboys, the protector of young maidens, the friend of childhood, and the patron saint of sailors. His blessing is invoked by many trades and callings ; the boatmen of the Meuse, the haberdashers and mercers of Malines, the seedsmen, packers, and coopers of Liege, the sawyers, dyers, and turners of Bruges all acknowledge his beneficence; While up till recently every Russian and Greek merchant vessel carried an ikon of blessed St. Nicholas, and in Germany sailors saved from shipwreck always dedicated a scrap of their torn sail to their patron protector. Curiously enough, the barest details are available of the real life story of this famous personage, and even those details are open to question. All that is known is that he was born in Patras, in Asia Minor, and was the only child of rich and godly parents. His childhood and early youth were marked by singular piety and deeds of charity, and while still a youth he was elected Bishop of Myrea, in Lycia, in response to a miraculous sign. At the famous Council of Nice, A.D. 325, he strongly opposed the Aryan heresy, and his remains were transferred with great pomp to Bari, in Italy, in 1087. All else is a mist of legend and story, from which we glean impressions of a bountiful, kindly man, given to perpetual charitable deeds. Were three maids to lose their maidenhood for lack of money —St. Nicholas throws his fortune into their windows for a marriage dowry ; are three schoolboys wickedly murdered—the saint will restore them to life and overthrow their enemies ; a kidnapped child will be miraculously restored to his weeping and desolate father ; and sailors will be saved from shipwreck by the presence on board of the young boy saint. In fact, his good nature was such that as ages rolled past all manner of people enrolled themselves under his name, and pirates and robbers invoked his aid and became known as the “St. Nicholas men.”

His fame as the Christmas saint was a natural outcome of the triumph of Christianity over paganism. The early Church found itself confronted by a closely drawn barrier of pagan rite and festival. In Romy and its tributaries December was the feast of the old god Saturn, and from December 17 to 23 was a-time of wildest license and revelry until the title “saturnalia” became synonymous with all manner of disgraceful orgies. In the cold northern lands the early fathers met the dark worship of the Teutonic gods —Thor, Odin, and many another grim deity whose faith was marked by many primitive sacrifices. Instead of hurling itself in vain against associated tradition, the early Church set its own festivals against the pagan feasts, and with St. Martin’s Day on November 11, St. Andrew on November 30, and St. Nicholas on December 6, they tried to prepare the way for the great feast of Christmas. Gradually the Church conquered, but the slow change from one rule to another brought a curious mingling of tradition, pagan and Christian ; and while in Asia Minor the .little Byzantine churches of St. Nicholas were often built on the older temples of Artemis, in the Teutonic lands the new feasts became invested with an old background of Teutonic legend. The magic robe of Odin became the “beste tabbaerd” or best cloak of St. Nicholas, and the magis steed . Steipnir, which carried Odin over the world by night, changed into a grey steed and later into the reindeer of Santa Claus. From Odin also came the long white beard with which Father Christmas is always associated, and the pagan custom of leaving a sheaf of grain in the field for Odin’s steed has been converted by time into the wisps of straw, hay, or oats which Belgian and Dutch children put in their shoes on St. Nicholas eve to feed the St. Nicholas horse.

The life story of St. Nicholas —both as boy and man—exercised such an amazing influence on Europe that even at this day there are 106 churches in Belgium alone dedicated to him, and the history of the Church is full of St. Nicholas customs, of St. Nicholas plays, and of the yearly ceremonies of “the Boy Bishop.” These ceremonies were in all probability a Christian interpretation of pagan custom, for the Roman Saturnalia was marked by the election of a mock ruler, a general levelling of rank, and a relaxation of discipline. The Church superimposed a Christian version in which for three days after Christmas church rules were relaxed and the lower orders of clergy and the choirboys took their turn in ordering church affairs. The choirboys held their celebration on December 28, the Holy Innocents or “childermas” day, and their revels were supervised by a “boy bishop” or “Nicholas bishop,” whose election was held on St. Nicholas Day. The occasion was marked by a great church procession on Childermas Eve, in which all ranks were reversed and senior church dignitaries bore the candles and censers usually carried by the choristers ,and when in church the boy bishop occupied the bishop’s chair, while the canons and other high authorities sat in the choir stalls. The evening ended with a big supper, at which the boys were the guests of the church. On Childermas Day the boys I

and their bishop performed all the church services, and during the day they went in a band to all the principal citizens, singing songs and asking for gifts and hospitality. This quaint Custom is first referred to in the year A.D. 911 at St. Gall, and it spread through the whole of Europe, only being abolished in France in 1721, and still existing in Germany in 1779. Even to-day in the Netherlands, which still cling devotedly to the St. Nicholas festival, the boy bishop tradition is perpetuated in the children’s festival of the Holy Innocents. On this day in Belgium, says George McKnight, in his fascinating life of St. Nicholas, “children are masters in the house, and parents must obey them. At Antwerp, in Brabant, and in some parts of the country of Limbourg, little boys and girls dress up for the day as papas and mammas. Usually the youngest of the family receives the key to the pantry, and orders the meals for the day.” In the early centuries of the Church the St. Nicholas festival even outshone the Christmas feast, which, in spite of continuous effort on the part of the clergy, remained for a long period a purely religious celebration, whereas the popular festival associated with all the folk custom of pre-Christian time was St. Nicholas Day. When Protestantism became a power a further effort was made by the Reformers to disassociate December 6 from its pomp, on the ground that it savoured of “saint worship,” and was derogatory to the festival of the Christ child. Little by little combined influences drew the merry-making of the early saint’s day around the great Church feast, but Holland and Belgium still cling loyally to the old Church tradition, although the childish endearment og “Sinterklaes,” given by Dutch babies to their patron saint, has become the “Santa Claus” or “Father Christmas” of the English-speaking lands.