Santa Claus is coming to town

If we should wake on the sixth of December and find our stockings full of candy and toys we should think that the ruddy old fellow who comes down the chimney has lost his wits and arrived about three weeks too soon. But his arrival would seem exactly on time to children in other parts of the world. For the feast of Saint Nicholas is the sixth of December, and how he became the patron saint of the day of the Saint of saints, the Christ - Child, is a story.

It is the story of a story. And when we say that it is true we shall remember that truth lives in the region of dreams. We shall be true to a glorious legend and to the way that legend has come down to us. Truth here consists in knowing that Santa Claus does come down the chimney and fills our stockings. If we do not believe that truth, we are lost souls and beauty and poetry, the only real truth, means nothing.

Once upon a time a man called Nicholas lived in Patara, a town in the East. Because he was very fond of children and was kind and generous to them, they came to think of him as their dear friend and their beloved saint. So it was that after a time the wonderful things he did were woven into a beautiful legend. You know that Santa means Saint and Claus stands for Nicholas, and that is how he came to be known as Santa Claus.

In Santa Claus's own town, Patara, lived a great lord who had three daughters. He was very poor, so poor that one day he was on the point of sending his daughters out to beg for food from his neighbors. But it happened that Saint Nicholas not long before had come into a fortune, and as he loved giving to those in need, he no sooner heard of the trouble the poor lord was in than he made up his mind to help him secretly. So he went to the nobleman's house at night, and as the moon shone out from behind a cloud, he saw an open window into which he threw a bag of gold, and with this timely gift the father was able to provide for his eldest daughter so that she could be married. On another night Santa Claus set off with another bag of gold, and threw it in at the window, so the second daughter was provided for. But by this time, the father had grown eager to discover who the mysterious visitor could be, and next night he kept on the lookout. Then for the third time Santa Claus came with a bag of gold upon his back and itched it in at the window. The old lord at once recognized his fellow townsman, and falling on his knees, cried out "Oh! Nicholas, servant of God, why seek to hide yourself?"

Nicholas was an actual person. Though he is the most popular saint in the calendar, not excepting St. Christopher and St. Francis, we know little about the man to whom so many lovely deeds, human and miraculous, have been ascribed. He was bishop of Myra. He was the youngest bishop in the history of the church. He was persecuted and imprisoned with many other Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian, and was released and honoured when Constantine the Great established the Christian Church as the official religion, or at least recognised the Christian Church as the official religion, or at least recognised and encouraged it. Under Constantine in 325, was held the first general Council of the Christians at Nicaea, where many important matters were decided. These matters belong to theology and are not in our picture, but Nicholas may have had a hand, as vigorous hand in them. One of the arguers who seemed to Nicholas, and to the later orthodox church, a dangerous heretic so roused the righteous ire of the saint that Nicholas smote him in the jaw. This is one of the first episodes in militant Christianity.

Is it not wonderful to think that this was so long ago, sixteen hundred years, yet we still look for the secret coming of Santa Claus with his Christmas gifts? At first he was said to come on his own birthday, which is early in December, but after awhile, as was very natural with Christmas so near, the night of his coming was moved on in the calendar, and now we hang up our stockings to receive his gifts on Christmas Eve. In some countries children still put their shoes by the fireside on his birthday. In others they say it is the Christ-Kindlein or Christ Child who brings the gifts at Christmastime. But it is always a surprise visit, and though it has happened so many hundreds or times, the hanging up of the Christmas stocking is still as great a delight as ever.