Image via Complex Original
intro
We all know that fat, jolly man named Santa Claus, who, with his hearty chuckle and his bag of puppies and Xbox 360s, makes dreams come true. But before he moved to the North Pole and settled down with Mrs. Claus, he had a long resume, from bishop to sailor to slave owner, and more. We trace his surprisingly weird legend from ancient Greece to your very own chimney.
Naughtier than nice, A Complex History of St. Nick.
birth Birth of St. Nicholas, 15th c.
Birth of St. Nicholas, 15th c.
Nicholas was born around 270 AD on the southern coast of present-day Turkey, which was then a part of Greece. His birth was a surprise and a miracle to his parents, who had been unable to have a child for many years. They died when he was just a child and he was raised by his uncle, a bishop. He eventually became a bishop himself of the city of Myra.
story
Fra Angelico, The Story of St Nicholas: Giving Dowry to Three Poor Girls, c. 1437
In order to become a Saint, you not only have to devote your life to God, but you have to do tons of good deeds and usually perform a few miracles too (miracles are semi-magical things that happen when you pray a lot). He earned his solid reputation as a generous giver through the various kindnesses he performed throughout his life. In his best-known legend, he aided the three daughters of a poor man. In the days when fathers paid prospective husbands to marry their daughters, the girls were doomed to never be married and would be sold into slavery or prostitution instead. To spare them from that fate, Nicholas dropped purses of gold into their window, as he is seen doing in the painting above, providing enough for their dowries and allowing them to be courted.
david
Gerard David, Legend of St. Nicholas, 1500-1510
A darker tale tells of a terrible famine that came over the land. Hunger-crazed and malicious, one butcher murdered three young boys and stuffed their bodies in a pickling barrel to make into meat pies. As Nicholas happened to pass through the town where the butcher lived, he had a vision of the crime and went and prayed over the boys, who arose from the jar, fully alive and saved.
serbia
Radul, Nicholas destroying the Temple of Artemis, from the life of St. Nicholas cycle, 1673-74, St. Nicholas Chapel, Monastery of the Patriarchate of Pec, Serbia
Saints are kind and pious men, but they’re not Ghandi, and they will kick some ass if they have to in the name of the Lord. In the early 4th century, Nicholas was imprisoned for being a Christian under the Roman Emperor Diocletan. When Constantine came to power in 306, he ended the persecution of Christians and Nicholas returned home. When he arrived, he wanted to spread Christianity and protect the people of his land from falling pray to the worship of false idols and pagan deities. In Myra stood one certain symbol of non-Christian life and faith, and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Temple of Artemis. According to Myth, and the picture above, Nicholas took the 4th-century equivalent of a baseball bat to the temple and razed it to the ground, destroying the false idols and evil spirits that came with it.
aleska
Aleksa Petrov, St Nicholas Lipensky, 1294
Nicholas died December 6, 343 and was buried in Myra. December 6 is still celebrated as the feast of St. Nicholas in Catholic and Orthodox tradition, and as St. Nicholas Day in many European countries. While the date does fall within the advent season and Nicholas was a holy man, his Saint day is not associated with the December 25th birth of Jesus in most traditions.
relics
Relics of St. Nicholas, disinterred 1953
In 1087, Nicholas’ bones were taken from their tomb in Myra and brought to Bari, Italy. When the ship carrying the saintly spoils docked on May 9th, thousands of townspeople and pilgrims greeted them gleefully at the harbor. In 1953, the bones were disinterred, studied and cataloged, then replaced in a retrofitted crypt.
To this day, the town of Bari celebrates the relic’s arrival with a huge, festival. A couple days before May 9th, a group of priests are sent to sea with a painting of Nicholas, then return to port on the 9th to be greeted by people dressed up in 11th-century garb, a parade, fireworks, and a huge outdoor mass. The festival is generously called the "translation of the relics", to disassociate it from the rather less holy fact that it is a celebration of centuries-old grand larceny. In 2009, the Turkish government requested the return of the relics from Italy to Demre, the present-day city that was once Myra. The bones have yet to budge.
king
Josiah King, The Tryal and Examination of Father Christmas, 1636
The British figure of Father Christmas dates from the 15th century, as a personification of good cheer at Christmas time. He was not necessarily associated with children or gift-giving, but somewhere between the 18th- and 19th-centuries, his legend began to merge with the generous figure of St. Nicholas, into the Santa Claus that we now associate with Christmas. In the multicultural, Protestant context of America, the Catholic icon St. Nicholas became a secular symbol of gift-giving that combined a number of European traditions and characters.
nast
Thomas Nast, Santa Claus in Camp, 1863
The first depiction of Santa Claus as we know him in America was drawn by Thomas Nast for an 1863 cover of Harper’s Weekly magazine. Rather than a thin, holy figure, Nast drew a chubby, bearded man handing presents to Union soldiers.
post
J.C. Leyendecker, Saturday Evening Post, December 26, 1925
In the first half of the 20th century, Santa got his shiny, sugar-coated, commercial persona, on covers the Saturday Evening Post and Coca-Cola ads that solidified the jolly image of Santa Claus in American culture. The kinds of images made by J.C. Levendecker and Norman Rockwell set forth a pristine and idealized picture of middle-class American life that remains in our collective memory today, for better or for worse.
dutch
Sinterklaas
In the Netherlands, St. Nicholas’ generous reputation evolved him into a character called Sinterklaas. His legend is roughly similar to our Santa Claus, but Sinterklaas lives in Spain, and takes a boat to Holland, where he then rides his white horse, Amerigo, from rooftop to rooftop, bringing presents to good children. If you've made the grave mistake of being bad, however, he doesn’t bother with coal: he will drag you out of bed, kick you and beat you with a switch. If you've really misbehaved, he will pack you up and take you back to Spain until you straighten out.
black
Zwarte Piet (Black Peter)
The Dutch Sinterklaas is accompanied by several helpers called Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter. Until the 1950s they were described as Sinterklaas's slaves, but when the civil rights movement came around, they became his “friends,” who had become black from soot as they went down chimneys (Sinterklaas, however, maintains his pristine robes and snowy white beard). Despite this updated storyline, they are still wanting for political correctness. To this day, in shopping malls and holiday parties all over Holland, Zwarte Piet are portrayed by people painted in blackface. Some have raised issue with the racist overtones of the Zwarte Piet character, suggesting fixes from painting them rainbow colors rather than just black, to ditching them altogether.
krampus
Marc Burckhardt, Krampus, 2011
In the traumatizing lore of some Alpine and Central European countries like Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Ol’ Saint Nick travels with a truly unsavory character, a devilish creature called Krampus. As they go from house to house, St. Nick brings presents to all the good children, but if a child has been bad, Krampus whips him with chains, beats him with a switch, then shoves him in a sack and takes them to his firey, hellish lair. Parents sometimes scare their kids into going to bed by telling them that if they wait up, Krampus will think they have been bad and take them away.
mcarthy
Paul McCarthy, Santa Claus with a Butt Plug, 2007
It’s easy to gawk at the St. Nicholas lore of other cultures, but things aren’t necessarily quiet on the home front when it comes to Santa. L.A.-based artist Paul McCarthy cast the American Santa in a controversial light in Antwerp, Belgium in 2007, when he erected an 80-foot-high inflatable Santa with a Butt Plug, also known as “Buttplug Gnome.” When Antwerp rejected it, it was moved to its permanent location in – where else – the Netherlands, the capital of non-P.C. St. Nick imagery. It now greets commuters at a subway station in Rotterdam. Ho-ho-ho!