Among schoolboys the story was particularly well known. It formed the subject of one of the plays performed by them on St. Nicholas’ eve. It, also, more frequently than any other incident in his life story, forms the subject of pictures by Byzantine and early Italian painters. The pictures representing the dejected father and the daughters preparing for bed, one of the daughters sometimes dutifully pulling off her father’s boots, and the youth St. Nicholas on the outside of the house furtively casting through an open window his gifts of gold, inevitably bring to mind the later methods of gift bestowing employed by Santa Claus. That the connection was felt in earlier times is made clear from earlier references to the custom, especially in the form of Protestant objection. For instance, a preacher of Lauban in 1608, referring to St. Nicholas’ gifts to the maidens, remarks: “Hence comes the custom that some parents lay something on the bed for children and say St. Nicholas has given it, which is an evil custom since by it the children are directed to St. Nicholas when we know that not St. Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us everything good for body or for soul.”[42] Another Protestant preacher of the same period makes similar objection, saying: “One had better tell the children that the dear Christ Child sent such gifts; if they shall be good, better ones will follow on Christmas day.” The surreptitious manner of conveying the gifts to the children must have been an old practice as may be inferred from the incident recorded of the young man of the sixteenth century who, in attempting to imitate St. Nicholas, fell through an opening left for grain and nearly lost his life.[43]
L. di Bicci (?). St. Nicholas and the Three Maidens.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
That the association of St. Nicholas with gift giving was known in England in the sixteenth century, is shown by the following lines from Barnabe Googe’s Popish Kingdom, a translation from the Regnum Antichristi by Naogeorgus:
“Saint Nicholas money used to give to maidens secretly.
Who that be still may use his wonted liberality;
The mothers all their children on the eve do cause to fast,
And when they every one at night in senseless sleep are cast,
Both apples, nuts, and pears they bring, and other things beside,
As caps, and shoes and petticoats, with other things they hide,
And in the morning found, they say, ‘Saint Nicholas this brought.’”[44]
Down to within recent times in the church of S. Nicola in Carcere at Rome, the generosity of St. Nicholas was annually commemorated, by the giving of gifts to poor children in the sacristy after the memorial Mass on St. Nicholas’ day. This custom at Rome seems to have been discontinued, but the memory of it, and the attending hopes for gifts, are not extinct, as the present writer had opportunity to observe when attending services in honor of St. Nicholas at this church on St. Nicholas’ day, in 1914. After the Mass a throng of expectant parents and children followed the officiating priest into the sacristy and were permitted to kiss the ring on the hand of the officiating priest, but in their hope for the customary presents, met with keenly felt disappointment.
But although in modern times deprived somewhat of the gratitude once felt for him as a giver of gifts, St. Nicholas for centuries has been honored on account of another phase of his kindly art, the procuring of husbands for marriageable girls. Reference has already been made to the fact that in the Netherlands the special cakes of the St. Nicholas festival are said to perpetuate a custom originated by the three daughters in the story, who on their marriage day are said to have baked such cakes and distributed them among poor children as a sign of gratitude.
Honor paid to St. Nicholas by unwedded maids goes back a great many centuries. Among Normans of the twelfth century he was regarded as the peculiar saint of spinsters, who invoked him in order to procure speedy marriage.[45]