St. Nicholas is the grand patron of the children of France, to whom he brings bonbons for the good, but a cane for the naughty child. In Germany he acts as an advance courier examining into the conduct of the children, distributes goodies and promises to those with good records a further reward which the Christ Child brings at Christmas time. But his own peculiar celebration takes place in a tiny seaport of southern Italy where it is curiously interwoven with ancient usages possibly remaining from some worship of Neptune.
On St. Nicholas's Day, the 6th of December, the sailors of the port take the saint's image from the beautiful church of St. Nicholas and with a long procession of boats carry it far out to sea. Returning with it at nightfall they are met by bonfires, torches, all the townspeople, and hundreds of quaintly dressed pilgrims, who welcome the returning saint with songs and carry him to visit one shrine after another, before returning him to the custody of the canons.
W. S. Walsh quotes a writer in Chambers' "Book of Days" as saying: "Through the native rock which formes the tomb of the saint, water constantly exudes, which is collected by the canons on a sponge attached to a reed, squeezed into bottles and sold to pilgrims as a miraculous specific under the name of the "manna of St. Nicholas."
An Old Saint in a New World
WHILE Catholicism prevailed, St. Nicholas was everywhere the children's saint. In Holland, where his personality was modified by memories of Woden, god of the elements and the harvest, he had a peculiar hold on popular affection which persisted into Protestant times. The children of the Dutch still believe that St. Nicholas brings the gifts that they always get on the eve of his titular day, December 6. In New Amsterdam this day was one of the five chief feastdays of the year. After New Orange became New York the characteristic traits of the Dutch children's festival were transferred to the near-by Christmas festival which was English as well as Dutch. It cannot now be said when the change began or when it was firmly established. It is known, indeed, that by the middle of the eighteenth century St. Nicholas Day had been dropped from the list of official holidays which, religious and patriotic together, then numbered twenty-seven. But, on the other hand, more than one memoir and book of reminiscences says that as late as the middle of the nineteenth century some conservative old Dutch families still celebrated the true St. Nicholas Day in their homes in the true old fashion, then bestowing the children's annual meed of gifts. Nor is any light thrown on the question by certain entries in a local newspaper, Rivington's Gazetteer, dated in December, 1773 and 1774, and referring to celebrations of "the anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise called Santa Claus," for they speak of social meetings of the "sons of that ancient saint" in which children can hardly have participated, and they indicate days which were neither Christmas Day nor the true St. Nicholas Day.
It is clear, however, that on Manhattan by a gradual consolidation of the two old festivals Christmas became pre-eminently a children's festival presided over by the children's saint whose modern name, Santa Claus, is a variant of the Dutch St. Niclaes or San Claas. In all European countries Christmas still means simply the day of Christ's nativity; for the "Old Christmas" whom we meet in English ballads of earlier times, the "Father Christmas" of Charles Dickens, and the "Père Noël" of the French are abstractly mythical figures in no way related to St. Nicholas. But anywhere in our America the domestic observance of Christmas centres around Santa Claus with his burden of gifts. The stockings that our children hang on Christmas Eve were once the shoes that the children of Amsterdam and New Amsterdam set in the chimney corners on the eve of December 6; and the reindeer whose hoofs our children hear represent the horse, descended from Woden's horse Sleipner, upon whose back St. Nicholas still makes his rounds in Holland. The Christmas-tree is not Dutch but German; about the middle of the nineteenth century we acquired it from our German immigrants. But even this the American child accepts at the hands of Santa Claus, not of the Christ Child as does the little German. "Kriss Kringle," it may be added, a name now often mistakenly used as though it were a synonym of Santa Claus, is a corruption of the German Christkindlein (Christ Child).
Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer
From the History of the City of New York
St. Thomas
