Why does Saint Nicholas become Santa Claus?

As is well known, the remains of Saint Nicholas rest in the Cathedral of Bari, and it is equally well known that the myth of Santa Claus was born from some hagiographic elements of the Turkish Saint, which have been stratified throughout the history of Christianity.

Saint Nicholas is a saint who lived in the 4th century. According to hagiographical tales, Saint Nicholas gave a dowry to three poor girls so that they could find a husband instead of being forced into prostitution, while on another occasion he saved three boys from death.

In the Middle Ages, the custom of commemorating this episode by exchanging gifts on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, spread throughout Europe. This custom is still observed in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy (only in Trieste and South Tyrol).

The children of these places wait, on the night of December 5th, for the Saint on his horse. The naughty children have to deal with Zwarte Piet (Black Peter), the Moorish servant of Saint Nicholas, naughty and hairy, who scatters burning coals here and there, while the saint leaves gifts, sweets and fruit in the shoes of the most deserving.

In Protestant countries, Saint Nicholas gradually lost the appearance of a Catholic bishop and maintained his beneficial and protective role under the name of Samiklaus, Sinterclaus or Santa Claus.

Since it was close to Christmas, the celebrations moved to the closest holiday in time. The iconography of the man with the white beard and the sack full of gifts, instead, was born in America from the pen of Clement C. Moore, who in 1822 wrote a poem in which he described him with the characteristics with which we all know him by now. The new Santa Claus was a resounding success, and from the 1950s, thanks to targeted advertising campaigns, he also conquered Europe, becoming, in Italy, Babbo Natale.

But who was Saint Nicholas really? His figure is mysterious and shrouded in a perpetual veil of mystery. It seems he was born in Patara in 270 and was bishop of Myra, in Lycia (present-day Turkey).

He appears in some of the ancient lists of participants in the first Council of Nicaea (325). Biographers have reconstructed Nicholas' life, often filling it with details taken from other lives of saints. The result is the figure of an only child who from an early age showed signs of significant sanctity. On Wednesdays and Fridays, days consecrated by Christianity to fasting and abstinence, he apparently breastfed only once a day.

She died of old age between 345 and 352. A perfumed oil with miraculous powers immediately began to flow from her relics, which were preserved in the cathedral of Myra until the 11th century (and taken away by the people of Bari in 1087).

The figure of the saint remained linked to Lycia and some surrounding areas for many centuries. Between the 7th and 8th centuries, in front of the coasts where the sanctuary stood, Byzantines and Arabs began to challenge each other for supremacy over the sea. Saint Nicholas became the point of reference for Byzantine sailors. His cult expanded along the military and commercial routes of the Mediterranean, reaching Rome and then Constantinople, Russia and the rest of the West.

A biography of him enriched with new hagiographic episodes, including the story of the three girls, spread between the 11th and 12th centuries. The story is very interesting, it seems that Nicholas, moved by the fate of three poor girls that their father wanted to prostitute, throws them, for three nights in a row, bags of gold from the open window (in Christian iconography the bags will be symbolized with golden balls).

The special relationship with children instead comes from a truculent medieval legend. Three boys ask for hospitality in an inn, the innkeeper and his wife welcome them and then chop them up with an axe and put them in brine.

Saint Nicholas knocks on the door and asks for a plate of meat. When the innkeeper refuses, he asks to visit the pantry, where he extracts the three young men miraculously alive from the brine.

The story was especially entertaining and entertaining for students in ecclesiastical schools, where the Feast of the Innocents was celebrated on December 28. On the occasion of this Christianized version of the Saturnalia, students elected the so-called bishop, a figure similar to the god Saturn who bestowed gifts and delicacies. Soon the bishops began to be playfully elected on December 6, coinciding with Saint Nicholas. The Church forbade this custom, but over the centuries the bishops on the day of Saint Nicholas had become an indispensable tradition that had made inroads into the dreams and hearts of all children in the Christian world.