How old is Santa? He is either 1,753, 500, or 202 years old, depending on how you look at it. Many different traditions have been mixed to leave the Santa Claus we know today.
Why 1,753 years old? Santa Claus is loosely based on Saint Nicholas, a Roman bishop who lived in Turkey. Our name Santa Claus comes from the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. In Dutch, Saint is Sint, and Nicholas is Nikolaas. This is shortened to Sinterklass, which became Santa Claus in English.
St. Nicholas was born in AD 270, giving the age of 1,753 years old. However, Saint Nicholas was not the fat, jolly person that Santa is. In fact, not a lot is really known about him at all. All historical accounts of him were written centuries after he died. St. Nicholas was probably born in Greece in 270. I say probably because there are no contemporary accounts of his life. This is not unusual, as we saw when we looked at the historicity of Jesus. It is strange to us, coming from a heavily documented society, but not a lot of things were written down and written documents don’t always survive the test of time. The stories written about St. Nicholas say that he was a very devout Christian. He lived in a time when Christians were being heavily persecuted and he spent many years in Roman prison for defending his faith.
How did he end up being Santa Claus? He was generous. He was born to wealthy parents and when they died, he gave all of their wealth to the poor. He was also said to secretly put coins in the shoes of poor people. His legend began with two stories that may or may not have a basis in truth. The first is that a man was in too much debt to raise dowries for his three daughters and was going to sell them into prostitution. St. Nicholas gave him a bag of gold for their dowries, thereby saving them. He is also said to have raised three children from the dead when he found they had been murdered. Due to these acts, he became the patron saint of children and the day of his death, December 6th, became St. Nicholas day. The tradition of giving gifts on St. Nicholas day slowly evolved. He was pictured wearing white robes and a red cloak, with a long white beard.
Christmas had been celebrated on December 25th since AD 336 when Emperor Constantine put it there, possibly to coincide with the festival of Saturnalia. St. Nicholas had become a very popular saint and most people gave gifts on his day. Then, in the early 1500s, the protestant reformation swept across northern Europe and the idea of worshipping saints was discouraged. The idea of gift giving to children was kept, but it was moved to Christmas and the gift giver became Jesus.
So, why 500 years old? In the 15th century, Christmas in England was personified as a person called “Father Christmas”. He was merry, liked to sing, and liked to drink. He was a large man and he was usually dressed in green or scarlet robes. However, he was not a gift-giver. He was associated with feasting, and making merry at Christmas. He existed off and on throughout the puritan reformation in England until he was finally merged with the legend of St. Nicholas by the Victorians. We see Santa Claus and Father Christmas as the same person, but there were technically two different people that were merged. Father Christmas kept the idea of being jolly and feasting, which St. Nicholas combined the idea of gift giving.
So, why 202 years old? The Dutch immigrants to America in the 16th century and onwards took the idea of St. Nicholas (Sinterklass) with them. He was a gift-giver, but not an overly cheerful one. He was very big on discipline and Christianity. The idea of being naughty or nice comes from St. Nicholas. The age of 202 comes from when the traditions of St. Nicholas and Father Christmas seem to have become melded. In 1821, in America, a poem called “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” was published in a book called “A New-year’s present, to the little ones from five to twelve”. It is anonymous, but it is the first time that Santa’s reindeer and sleigh are mentioned and the idea that he arrives on Christmas Eve. It mentions gift giving, stockings, and the necessity of being good. Quite scarily, in the houses of children who are bad, this Santa Claus leaves a birch rod, so that their parents can whip them. The poem comes with pictures, which are the first to picture Santa Claus, although he is wearing red and green clothes in different pictures. Then, two years later, in 1823, we have the poem that we know as “The Night Before Christmas”. This introduced a lot of the imagery and traditions of Santa that we still use today. In the 1850s, this new version of Santa travelled back across the Atlantic to England. So, depending on your point of view, Santa is almost 2,000 years old, or only 200. Merry Christmas. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Sean P. Twomey: https://www.pexels.com/photo/santa-sitting-on-a-green-sofa-19425652/
Sources
https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/santa-claus
https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Christmas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Santeclaus_with_Much_Delight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas
https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-christmas-in-december