Being the time of the year when people send
Xmas cards and gifts to each other, I thought it might be a good
time to interview one of the mainstays of the season. Father
Christmas himself, the jolly old Ho-Ho-Ho man who has touched
all our lives in one way or another when we were younger.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with the
man in the red suit and ermine trim during a brief stop-over in
Thailand, after he had to change his travel plans when he was
asked not to visit shopping centers in Australia this year, as
some decision makers had decreed that Santa was no longer
“politically correct” being allied to the Christian religion
(even though it is the professed majority religion in that
country). I asked Santa about this and he expressed great
regret. “The decision makers did not consult the children,”
was all that I could get him to say. However, I was able to get
close to him, despite his girth, and unravel some of the
mysteries that make up modern day Santa Claus.
Santa was born around 245 AD (788 BE) in
Patara in Lycia, Anatolia, a province on the southwest coast of
Asia Minor (present day Turkey). He was a good and obedient
student and this is one reason why he has always favoured
children who have been well behaved during the year. He did not
come from a very rich family, and he often had to do without.
This was to have a great bearing on his actions later in life.
Following many years at school where he
studied under the local priests, he felt that his calling was in
the priesthood and joined the church, eventually working his way
up through the system, becoming a bishop. This was when he felt
that he could really begin to help people in the local society.
However, Santa was not one to show his
generosity publicly. He would walk quietly in disguise around
his parish and give gifts and food to poor children. He had the
ability to find out who was suffering, and do his best to help.
It was on one of these trips that he inadvertently started a
legend. A nobleman with three daughters had fallen on hard times
and he was unable to pay for their dowries, dooming his
daughters to spinsterhood. Santa explained reluctantly what
happened next. “I collected the dowry for one daughter and
threw it through the open window one night. The next day I
collected for the second and threw it through the window as
well. After collecting for the third daughter I found the window
had been closed as it was a bitter winter’s night, so I
climbed up on the roof and dropped the sack down the chimney. It
turned out the girls had left their stockings hanging from the
mantle-piece, and some of the money ended up in the stockings.
From then on, people would hang up their stockings at Xmas.”
From events such as this, the legend of Santa
grew, so I took the opportunity to ask Santa about some of the
other pieces of folklore associated with him and Xmas time.
Firstly, the reindeer. “The secret about the way I travel
around the world at Xmas was let out by Clement C. Moore in
1823, who wrote ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’, which told
everyone about my reindeer. Rudolph is the most famous, of
course, but he needs Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet,
Cupid, Donner and Blitzen, to help.”
One of the other pieces of folklore is the
fact that the children should leave out some cookies and milk
for Santa when he calls in the middle of the night. Santa said
there was much more to this than just a snack for a hungry sock
filler! “This came from the Paradise Tree from Western
Germany, where the home would have a tree decorated with cookies
and wafers. I began to get so hungry that I would have one or
two and people eventually heard that I needed something to
nibble, so they would put out a special plate by the fire, just
for me.”
For someone who only comes out once a year
and is seen by so few people, I thought it amazing that everyone
knows what Santa looks like. Santa knows the reason for this
too, “Thomas Nast was the first artist to draw me as a fat and
jolly old man. He was born in 1840 in Landau, Baden, Germany and
became an American cartoonist after arriving in the United
States at the age of six. He must have been hiding in the
kitchen when I came down his chimney and remembered what I
looked like; however, after all the cookies since then, I am
even fatter now!”
Since Santa does not “belong” to any one
country these days, I asked him what other names was he known
by. He replied, “In southern Germany some people call me Kris
Kringle. In France I am Pere Noel and Papa Noel in many Spanish
speaking countries. In Dutch speaking areas I am Sinte Klaas,
while other people call me Sant Nikolaas. In Denmark I am
‘Julemanden’ (Christmas Man), while in Finland they call me
Joulupukki.”
It was all too soon that the legendary figure told me he
would have to go back to the North Pole, where he and Mrs. Claus
and the elves were hard at work finishing off the toys for good
boys and girls. I am lucky that I could catch a glimpse in my
later life of someone who lived in my tender years. I must thank
my mother and late father for helping keep the spirit of Santa
alive during my childhood, a spirit that I passed on to my
children. Hopefully they too will do the same with theirs. Santa
Claus is much too nice a concept, in every way, to be allowed to
die. Australia, you should be ashamed!