Jolly Old St. Nick

[Valin]

 

To quote Joni Mitchell:

It's coming on Christmas

They're cutting down trees

They're putting up reindeer

And singing songs of joy and peace

Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

 

So I thought why not at a look at Nicholas.

Weekly Standard

His generosity and wonderworking were fabled in Christendom.

DAWN EDEN

12/3/12

 

Legends surrounding the life of Nicholas of Myra rank among the most popular stories of the early Church—and for good reason. He slapped heretics and gave gifts to children. What more could you want of a saint?

 

However, according to Adam C. English, hagiographers over the centuries have toyed around quite a bit with the story of Santa Claus’s namesake. While the legends aren’t entirely ho-ho-hokum, the Myra bishop is often confused with another saint, Nicholas of Sion. With this volume, English—a Baptist minister and Campbell University professor of religion—sets out to distinguish between two lives that have become as tangled as a pile of used Christmas tree lights.

 

(Snip)

 

Even so, Nicholas was no model of relativistic tolerance. As English observes, the record shows he “not only spoke against the gods and goddesses, he also destroyed their temples and sacred groves with his own hands.” Not for nothing do medieval frescoes depict him “red in the face with holy anger, toppling temple columns with his bare hands and then swinging an axe into the base of a sacred cypress.” The real-life Santa may indeed have had rosy cheeks; but with him around, no tannenbaum was safe.

 

In this light, a bit of trivia that English tosses out in his final chapter reveals what is perhaps the most prophetic aspect of Nicholas’s legacy. *Some of the saint’s bones that had been given to the St. Nicholas (Greek Orthodox) Church in Lower Manhattan were destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. There is something poignant about the ashes of those killed by radical Islamist hatred being mingled with the remains of a saint who devoted his life to serving the God of love. Between the lines of English’s book shines the witness of a holy man whose courage and devotion can prepare us to face the ghosts of Christmases yet to come.

 

* Learn something new everyday!