INTERRACIAL VOICE

Essay

Another View:
What's Turkish About Santa Claus?
By Emory Curtis

As you read this piece, Santa Claus has probably already picked your pocket for a few bills and/or left you and yours in good cheer from gifts and happy smiles all around. Ever wonder how Santa Claus became Santa Claus?

It's a long story and quite often I bring a bit of it to you during the Christmas season. In the first place, Christmas (Christ's Mass), 25th of December, is a religious holiday that was started by the Roman Catholic Church in 336 A. D. to celebrate the birth of Christ, not Christ's birthday as so many believe.

As for Christ's real birthday, his followers don't all agree on the date. Besides December 25, there are dates in January, March, April, October and November that various Christian groups celebrate as Jesus's birthday.

His real birthday, birth year, and birthplace are all clouded in the unrecoverable fog of history. Exactitude for his birth date and place are not important. His birth is important; that's what the religious Christmas celebration is about.

However, the religious Christmas is completely overshadowed by the commercial Santa Claus, the gift giver. That's true even though the lineage of today's Santa Claus goes directly to a Catholic bishop, Nicholas of Myra in Lycia (now Turkey), who was born about the end of the third century.

During his lifetime, Bishop Nicholas fought heresy in the church, caused a pagan temple to be burned down, was thrown into a dungeon by Roman Emperor Diocletian, and was freed in the fourth century by the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine.

Because of his deeds and suffering, the Roman Catholic Church sainted Nicholas. His title was that of Confessor, which is just below the top rank of Martyr; had he died in prison, he would been a Martyr.

Legends have Saint Nicholas performing many miracles. He was credited with restoring three little boys to life that a man had killed and placed in a barrel.

A nobleman in Lycia ran into bad luck, hocked the homestead and was going to lose it unless his daughters hit the streets for money to pay it off. Legend has bishop Nicholas coming to the rescue by pitching three bags of gold up to the daughters.

Legend also has that same gold ending up behind the six red balls on the coat of arms of the rich and powerful Medici family of Florence, Italy. With a reduction of the balls to three, it became the worldwide symbol for pawnbrokers.

Because of Saint Nicholas' activities during his lifetime and the legends that grew after his death, he became the patron saint of Russia, Greece, Sicily, various cities as well as pawnbrokers, sailors, bakers, travelers, prostitutes, women of marriageable age, old maids, orphans, thieves, children and, in his Dutch name, Sinta Claes (or Sinter Klaas) entered into Christmas mythology of the Christian world.

In the Dutch legend Sinta Claes and his original elf, Black Peter, a small Moor, leaves Spain in their rowboat on St. Nicholas day, December 6, and heads for Amsterdam. After landing on Christmas eve with gifts, he asks parents if their children have been good or bad. If good, gifts go in their shoes; if bad, lumps of coal go in the shoes.

The Dutch brought that tradition to New Amsterdam (New York) and it was adopted by New Yorkers with a few modifications. Black Peter didn't make the trip and the spelling was changed. In 1773 the press used the name "St A Claus."

The first popular writing about Santa Claus was done in 1809 by Washington Irving, a very popular writer of his day. He took Santa off his donkey or white horse he used in Europe and put him in a horse-drawn wagon that rode over roof tops dropping presents down the chimneys of good children.

Irving's Santa was a jolly fellow with a wide hat and baggy trousers. That Santa's garb and means of transportation didn't last too long.

In 1823 a grandfather wrote a poem about Santa to amuse his grandchildren and that Santa took over. The grandfather was Clement Clarke Moore and the poem was A Visit from Saint Nicholas which began, "Twas the night before Christmas ...."

Clement Moore's poem gave Santa new clothes, new transportation -- reindeer -- and moved his home from the Mediterranean area to the North Pole, and brought him down in size to an elf that could squeeze down a chimney or two.

Santa stayed small until the 1860s. That's when he got fat again.

Thomas Nast, an illustrator for Harper's magazine, pictured a rotund Santa as rotund on Harper's Christmas issues for about 20 years. He also gave Santa a North Pole workshop and a worldwide list of good and bad children.

Santa Claus as we know him now came from Coca Cola ads in the early thirties. In 1939 Santa picked up the ninth reindeer, Rudolph; that red nosed reindeer was created by an advertising writer for Montgomery Ward.

The evolution of our Santa Claus shows that many different people and cultures had a finger or two in the creation. It also shows how dominant cultures can take a custom from another culture, remake and reform it in a manner that erases the original group's fingerprint.

Look at Santa Claus. He came from a Turkish prelate the Roman Catholic church raised to sainthood. Is there a Turkish trace to our Santa Claus? If it is, you need an electron microscope to find it.

Let me hear from you: (916) 988-4439 (V); (916) 988-5928 (FAX); e-mail; eccurtis@email.com. To see back columns http://home.earthlink.net/~gacurtis