The children's book of Christmas

by Unknown

The Children’s Own Saint

What a most convenient thing it is that good St. Nicholas does not have to keep the Christmas holiday in all the world at once! He has been the children’s own saint, you know, ever since he ceased to be a bishop in far-away Asia Minor. The oldest story we hear of him is that once three little boys on their way to school at Athens stopped over night at an inn, of which the innkeeper was also a butcher, and a robber besides. This wicked man killed the boys in the night and threw their bodies into his salting tub. But the very next morning the saint walked in and asked for them, for though he was only Bishop Nicholas then, he knew all about it in some wonderful way. The trembling butcher took him out to the pork barrel; the saint struck the edge of it sharply with his staff and called the boys by name. Out jumped the three little pickles all alive, and of course the wicked butcher was punished and Nicholas became the school-boys’ saint.

There is also a story that one night Bishop Nicholas wished to carry a purse of gold to a worthy nobleman who was so proud and so unwilling to have his poverty noticed that it was a difficult matter to make the gift without hurting his feelings. When the house was reached the old noble was to be seen through the window fast asleep by the fire, and without disturbing him good St. Nicholas climbed to the top of the wide chimney and dropped the purse, intending it to fall on the hearth. But as the old man’s daughter had hung her father’s stockings by the fire to dry, it chanced to fall into one of them. There it was found the next day and most opportunely provided a marriage portion for the oldest daughter. The story goes on to say that after that whenever one of the noble’s daughters was of marrying age he hung up a stocking,—and St. Nicholas’s gift was never lacking.

They say that all this happened early in December, and in some countries December 6 is the great day for the children. In Holland, on St. Nicholas Eve, December 5, the children go out with their parents to see the brilliantly decorated shops, and in the doorways of many of them stands the saint, gorgeously dressed and handing to every child who passes a tiny toy or a sweet. No wonder the good saint must needs go to the seashore for a day before his next heavy job of being Santa Claus to all America on the twenty-fifth,—to say nothing of merry England!

At any rate, we find that in a certain seaport of southern Italy it is the sailors’ custom on December 6 to take the image of the saint from the beautiful church of St. Nicholas and, with a long procession of boats, carry it far out to sea. Toward nightfall they return and in the glory of the gold and crimson sunset are met on landing by all the townspeople. Hundreds of quaintly dressed pilgrims from the country round join the crowd that welcomes the home-coming saint with songs, bonfires, and torches, and brings him back to his own place.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York

AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS TREE

His next appearance is in those countries where the Greek Church is the national religion. Their Day of St. Nicholas, which is December 6 elsewhere, comes upon what we should call December 19, and the saint is supposed to bring the winter with him. On the frozen river by Peter’s city it is celebrated with a skating and sleighing carnival. Lines of track are laid down on the ice like small-sized street-car lines. Tiny cars run here and there along them, back and forth from the smooth ice-fields roped off for sleigh races or skating contests. Perhaps it was in that cold country he found the high cap, the furs, and the coat he wears for his hard work of chimney scrambling and running the reindeer express on the Christmas Eve we know.

Once more after his strenuous American holiday week is over the hard-worked saint appears again. From the little whitewashed villages of Greece north to ice-bound Archangel and east even to Vladivostok the saint swings wearily on thousands of wax-lighted Christmas trees (their Christmas Eve comes, you must remember, thirteen days after ours). But he is a sadly wasted saint by this time—a mere waxen image a few inches long—able only to dance a little at the tip of a branch of a Christmas tree, and that is all he is asked to do. But in some houses you would find him with a queer cotton tassel in the top of his cap, and what happens then is this: some boy or girl comes by, touches his cotton tassel into flame from a lighted taper, and he burns and melts and grows shorter as if he were just an ordinary wax candle until he is all gone.

But in spite of that, in the next December, when the little children in Holland beg their mothers to take them out to see the lighted shops, there he is again with his bag of sweets. And if you want to know what happens to him after that you will only have to read this story over again.