Searching for Peace, Love and Santa Claus
What’s the truth about Santa Claus? Who is this large, jovial fellow with flying reindeer and hordes of merry elves? If the truth about Saint Nicholas can lay the commercial icon to rest, maybe it can also restore the true meaning of Christmas as a time of peace on Earth, love and goodwill toward all.
The German intellectual, Georg Lichtenberg, once said that “to do just the opposite is also a form of imitation,” but reversing Saint Nicholas’ image is certainly not the most sincere way to flatter it. Santa as a commercial icon undercuts the ideology of benevolence and humble giving. See this video on the chain of consumption for an idea of who gets left out when Santa goes corporate. A truer idea of the real Saint Nicholas and his current image around the world might reconnect us with the greater feelings of compassion and caring that should symbolize this (and every) season.
According to the St. Nicholas Center, Saint Nicholas was actually the Bishop of Myra (now Demre) in Turkey in the 4th century C.E. Before that, he was just an ordinary, well-off, church-going guy. It turns out that when the previous Bishop of Myra died, other bishops gathered to choose a successor, but they had trouble deciding who should take over the role. During the night, the oldest bishop heard a voice telling him that the first person to enter the church the next morning should be the new bishop and that his name would be Nicholas.
The next morning, the bishops asked the first man who arrived at the church what his name was and he answered “Nicholas.” They all decided then and there that he would be the new bishop. The man protested, saying that he wasn’t worthy of the job. However, the other bishops brought him over to the bishop’s seat and sat him in it, insisting that it was God’s will. Saint Nicholas soon became revered for his generosity and caring, but it’s no wonder that what is also remembered about the man is the sense of humility he brought his post.
The good deeds that made the new Bishop Nicholas famous included anonymously donating to worthy causes, fighting poverty and famine, bringing peace and upholding human rights. Pretty decent work. He even rightly demanded of a violent Roman peace-keeping mission: “How is it, if you are to bring peace, that you are stirring up unrest in our town?” This would be a good question for a similarly fated mission in Iraq.
The United States of America has perhaps changed the image of this saintly man the most. In the US of A, Saint Nicholas is thought of as a fat, happy man who lives in the North Pole, flies around with reindeer and has thousands of elves working at an assembly line to produce toys. Ironically, a great number of Christmas toys delivered to the U.S. really are produced in a far off land by thousands of workers at an assembly line. In any case, for this image of Saint Nick we can thank the 1823 poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” popularized as “The Night Before Christmas.” By 1930, artists like Norman Rockwell had solidified the image of a tubby man with a sack of goodies.
Then, in 1931, Coke latched onto Saint Nicholas as a marketing icon. (See this image, for example.) By the 1950’s, the rotund Saint Nicholas icon was serving corporate America’s advertising needs. Increasingly, corporations are exporting this image to countries around the world as a marketing icon.
European countries still have a very different image of the man, though this is changing with greater commercialization of the Christmas holiday. In the Netherlands, he rides a white horse. In France a donkey walks by his side carrying presents. In other parts his sidekicks include angels, a devil, a farmer, or other helpers whose job varries from disciplining bad children to helping to give out treats. The Italians have a weird obsession with displaying bits of dead saints, so in Italy Saint Nicholas is also celebrated at the church that houses his remains in Bari.
In Asia, Christianity was introduced fairly recently and with it the more modern (often American) conceptions of Saint Nicholas. For example, virtually all children in South Korea know Saint Nicholas as the Santa Claus who flies about on a sleigh delivering presents. Today, neon red crosses dot the skies throughout most South Korean cities and Christmas itself is also starting to become a reason to go on major shopping sprees. Still, Santa himself is not yet used as the advertising icon he is in the States.
The idea of celebrating Saint Nicholas is rooted in the belief that by imitating his traits of humility, care and compassion, we can benefit and those around us can benefit too. Maybe we could avoid conflict and war; maybe we could learn to allocate more land to other animals who need its resources. Take the Amazon Rainforest as an example. Instead of buying that expensive Brazilian mahogany furniture as a present, consider the value it has to others in its original form: to the species in the forest it comes from, to the indigenous people living in the area, and to us all for fewer CO2 emissions caused by shipping. Try fitting this example to other seasonal items as well… say, plastic singing Santa Claus dolls in cowboy hats.
So wherever you are this season, it might make a difference in your day and in the days of those around you to forget about the value of shopping and remember the real Saint Nicholas’ values of humility, caring, and compassion.
Any way you go, have a wonderful day tomorrow and every day. If you like, please enjoy listening to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Merry Christmas (War is Over) here.
References and Resources:
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard | Free Range Studios
Photo Source:
Checking in With the Elves | Flickr
