Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Little miracles

Since today is the feast day of Saint Nicholas, let’s talk about him a bit.

It’s actually hard to see past the rotund Jolly Old Saint Nick that we’ve had in our minds ever since C. Clement Moore’s “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”, and the Coca Cola adverts from the 40s. The historic Saint Nicholas was a third-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor (now in Turkey). Nicholas was reputed to have performed a number of miracles, including restoring three murdered and dismembered boys to life, and secretly tossing purses of gold through the window of a poor man who couldn’t afford dowries for his three daughters and was about to sell them into prostitution. He’s also known for bargaining with sailors for a portion of their shipment of grain (needed for a time of famine)—they were reluctant to give away any part of their consignment, but he promised they wouldn’t lose by helping those in need. When they arrived at their destination, the weight of their shipment was exactly what it had been before they met Nicholas, and the wheat given him was enough to last Myra for two years.

Nicholas is the patron of sailors, fishermen and merchants (tied to that last miracle); children, brewers and coopers (the dismembered boys had been put into a barrel to be brined); pharmacists, archers and pawnbrokers; broadcasters and the falsely accused (this would be a single group these days); and repentant thieves. He also is patron of Russia, Greece, Liverpool, Moscow, Amsterdam and Aberdeen (among other places).

We of course associate him with gift giving these days. Some traditions receive presents on Saint Nicholas Day, rather than Christmas, but this largesse does not come without a down side. The good saint is typically accompanied by a demon—called Krampus in some places and Zwarte Piet in others—who hands out punishment to the bad children, while the saint gives the goodies.

As Santa Claus (morphed from the Dutch Sinterklaas—Saint Nicholas), he’s the embodiment of our contemporary Christmas machine: we tell kids he has a toy workshop at the North Pole, staffed by elves and with transportation courtesy of reindeer. He holds court at every mall and most department stores in the country, and presides over countless holiday parties where people overindulge in pretty much everything.

In Québec last Sunday I came across a different iteration of him. This guy was parked on a throne in a street with his two dogs and a basket in front full of Canadian five-dollar bills:
  
Saint Nick was open for photo ops:


An hour or two later I happened by again and watched him head home, where I’m thinking he banked a haul that was well into three figures.


It’s hard to find music about Saint Nicholas—Google it and you get 3,478,622 hits on “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas.” No; just no.

What I’m going with is the Dutch song “Sinterklaas Kapoentj”, which featured in one of my favorite Christmas movies. I vastly prefer Miracle on 34th Street over It’s a Wonderful Life, and this is one of the seminal scenes:


If that’s not enough, here’s a different version, by a trio of Dutch puppets; a bird, a mole and what looks like a worm:








1 comment:

The Pundit's Apprentice said...

You didn't warn me about the Dutch girl; I had forgotten the scene, had assumed I didn't need to see the movie again every year, and I cried.