Rev Frank Ritchie is a Wesleyan Methodist church minister, a broadcaster, and a media chaplain.
It's the time of year when jolly Santa Claus makes an appearance – robed in red and white, rotund, red-faced, smiling, and handing out gifts to children. He's a strange phenomenon adorning childhood stories, endless cheesy movies, and malls.
He's fun, delightful, inoffensive, benign, and celebrated in many different ways around the world depending on how much the legends of the man behind the sleigh-riding, reindeer-wrangling character of our childhoods is known.
But I wish the man behind the character synonymous with Christmas was a little more known. Why? Because he introduces a bit more grit to balance the Christmas tinsel, fake snow, and pine tree-induced hayfever.
The name Santa Claus is an evolution through a couple of languages from Saint Nicholas. St Nick, the patron saint of almost everything, was a real person who lived in a real place at a real time in history.
Next to nothing is known about him for certain, but over the centuries loads of stories have been attached to his life – and it's these stories that have the ability to add colour and depth to this time of year.
Saint Nicholas lived in a town called Myra (in modern-day Turkey) during the 3rd and 4th Centuries – a significant period in history for the Roman Empire and the Christian faith, both of which he was a part. In the few centuries preceding his time, Christianity had grown from an obscure presence in a dusty little outpost of the Empire to a state-endorsed belief system.
It began with a few rag-tag, unknown Jewish people who followed a carpenter called Jesus (you may have heard of him), who upset some powerful people so much he was put to death by crucifixion. A few days later, his followers reported that he'd begun appearing to them in a new physical and spiritual form.
Whatever happened, it significantly shifted some of their key beliefs. Their commitment to a new way of life had a resounding impact, and even the constant persecution and gruesome executions of early Christians didn't stop their message from spreading.
Initially, Christianity spread rapidly among the poor of the Roman Empire – but over the few centuries following the life, death, and reported resurrection of Jesus, it moved into all levels of society.
By the time it got to the era of Saint Nicholas, even Constantine the Great – the Emperor himself – had embraced the faith. It had moved from being an obscure faith to the central uniting religion of the empire, for better and for worse.
As much as some Christians may roll their eyes at how prevalent Santa now is at the expense of the original tale of Jesus' birth, there are worse figures to have taken the limelight away from the original Christmas story.
St Nick was, by all accounts, an extraordinarily generous man. Born into a wealthy family, he's said to have given his entire inheritance away to the needy, and was particularly altruistic when it came to children. One tale tells of him making anonymous donations to spare three young women from being sold into prostitution.
But there's one legend of Saint Nick in particular that stands out and has relevance to the actual Christmas story.
In 325CE, by invitation of Emperor Constantine, bishops of the Christian faith from around the Roman Empire gathered in a city called Nicaea to settle disagreements about the nature of Jesus. One of the key debates was about whether Jesus was divine in some way, or merely human.
On the side of those advocating that Jesus was only human was a bishop called Arius. Legend has it that while Arius was making his case before the gathered bishops and the Emperor, St Nicholas' agitation grew to the point he could no longer contain himself.
Eventually, in a fit of impulse, he got up, walked across the room, and slapped Arius in the face – much like Will Smith's famous Oscars slap on Chris Rock, and just as dramatic. The story goes that everyone was aghast, St Nick was punished, imprisoned and, upon seeing the error of his own actions, was restored to the good graces of the Church.
Ultimately, St Nick's view was validated by the Nicene Creed – a document that emerged from that meeting that has remained the most fundamental statement of Christian belief and asserts that yes, Jesus was divine.
Regardless of whether it actually happened or is just legend, it's significant that the story has been attached to the person who inspired the character of Santa Claus. It demonstrates that there's something beyond its salaciousness that has enabled it to endure, something that captures the hearts of more than two billion people who claim the Christian faith as their own.
Christians like myself affirm the claim that Jesus was the human embodiment of God – the creator and sustainer of the cosmos. We know this sounds weird to the modern mind, but behind it is an important idea – that in Jesus, God was no longer a distant, mysterious, unknown entity leaving us to fumble along as we try and fail to sort out our own mess and the mess of our broken world.
The story of Saint Nicholas' slap of Arius has resounded through the centuries because it was slapping away an idea that kept God distant and useless. Christmas is significant to Christians around the world because in it, we celebrate the opposite of that flaccid resignation.
Santa Claus is the new face of the festive season, but Saint Nicholas, the man that inspired this beloved character, was a champion of the true Christmas message: that help has arrived and God has come near.
Merry Christmas.
