Historical Christmas

Rome is an interesting city in which to discuss religion, and particularly the overlap of Christianity and the pagan religions that came before it, and how Christianity often absorbed pagan traditions and named them their own. Given the time of year, I thought it would be interesting to see where theology and history overlap, what truths lie behind modern day religious practices, be they truly religious or more commercial.

The tradition of giving presents around the end of December dates back to 217 BC when the Roman Senate decreed a day of festival in an attempt to raise morale after a lost battle during the Second Punic War. The day was such a success that over time it evolved into a week long event. It was a week in which Rome was largely turned on its head. No one wore togas (removing some level of class distinction), slaves wore freedmen's hats, and gifts were exchanged between friends and family members. Massive feasts were held at which slaves would dine with their masters, or even be served by their masters. The ideas of exchanging gifts and having a large celebratory feast were traditions picked up by the early Christians. It was incredibly convenient to say the birth of Christ occurred on December 25th as the originally festival of Saturnalia ended on December 23rd, making it an easy transition from celebrating one thing to the next.

Jumping ahead a few hundreds years, we discover the origins of an outsider delivering presents, the earliest Santa Claus. St. Nicholas was from Myra, in modern day Turkey, and was a Greek bishop there until he died in 346 AD. He was a very wealthy bishop and did the best he could to help the poor, particularly children. One story goes that he would drop coins in shoes left outside of people's houses. Another, and a more interesting one, involves a poor father and his daughters. There are many versions of this story with subtle variations, I like this one the best.

St. Nicholas heard of this family, a father and his three daughters, who were all one year apart from each other and were coming of age to be married. However, the father did not have enough money to pay for their dowries, and without marriage they would likely become prostitutes for lack of any other way to provide for themselves. St. Nicholas heard of this and wanted to help. He did not want to give the father money directly, and thus make him look bad for needing so much outside help to support his daughters. So the night before the first daughter was to come of age St. Nicholas threw a bag of gold coins through a window in their house. The next year, the night before the second daughter was to come of age, he threw another bag of gold coins through the same window. The third year he came back to do the same, but the father was guarding the window to catch a glimpse of the man who was keeping his daughters out of prostitution. Desiring to remain anonymous, St. Nicholas climbed on the roof and dropped the bag down the chimney instead. The bag opened on the way down and some of the coins landed in the stockings the daughter had hung up to dry on the mantle. Giving us today the traditions of Santa Claus coming through the chimney and leaving gifts, smaller things being put in our stockings, and even waiting up to catch Santa Claus.

Santa Claus as we know him today comes, likely, from a Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas, which, in English was pronounced Santa Claus, as first written in a New York newspaper in the 1770s. The original European version was always dressed in green and white, and it wasn't until the tradition crossed the pond to America that red and white took over. And even then it was only on rare occasions that Father Christmas was depicted wearing red and white. This all changed in the 1930s when Coca-cola used him for an ad campaign, using their colors, and fixed red and white as his colors for the rest of the world. Scary how much power an ad campaign can have, or maybe I've just been watching too much Mad Men...