Who Was St. Nicholas?

 By Jennifer Uhlarik

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Thank you for carving out a few minutes from family, cooking, gifts, and whatever else your Christmas Day may hold to stop by and visit with us here at Heroes, Heroines, and History. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say we wish you the best holiday possible!

 

A few days ago, my husband stumbled across an article that said that archaeologists and researchers have found what they hope to be the real sarcophagus of Saint Nicholas in Demre, Antalya, Turkey. This might be a surprising development to you (just as it was to me), since his bones are thought to be held in the Basilica of San Nicola in Bari, Italy—but they were originally buried in his hometown of Myra and later stolen by Italian sailors and moved to the Bari location. Supposedly, this find in Turkey is thought to be the original sarcophagus he was buried in before his bones were moved. Those connected to the find hope they will see his name written or engraved in the sarcophagus to prove that it was, in fact, his.

 

Anyway, all this got me thinking, and I realized that I’ve long known Saint Nicholas was the inspiration for our modern-day Santa Claus, but I don’t know much about the historical figure of St. Nicholas. So…in case you’re like me, I thought I’d share a few details on this Christmas day. 

Victorian image of Santa Claus,
(Found on: Graphics Fairy)

 

Accounts of Saint Nicholas’s life were not recorded for centuries after his death (thought to be on December 6, 343 A.D.), so most of what we know may be embellishments of the truth. Traditionally, Nicholas was said to have been born on March 15, 270 A.D., in what we know today as the Antalya Province of Turkey. His parents, Theophanes and Nonna, were devout Christians who yearned for a child. One source says they prayed and wept for thirty years before Nicholas was born to them. His parents raised him well and set the example of charitable giving to those in need.

 

His early life, in my findings, is mostly lost to history, although it is known that he had an uncle, also named Nicholas, who was an abbot for the local monastery. Young Nicholas looked up to his uncle and spent much time with him and the monastery monks as they did their daily chants and other religious tasks. It is thought that his parents died of some sort of plague, and upon their deaths (when Nicholas was a young teen), he went to live with his uncle. His parents had apparently left him a good inheritance.

 

Nicholas followed in his uncle’s footsteps by taking a pilgrimage to The Holy Land. He supposedly boarded a ship, and quickly, he had a dream of a storm befalling their ship. He told the sailors of his dream, but they dismissed his concerns. Almost immediately, a storm did arise, and as the sailors fought to keep the ship from ruin, Nicholas prayed for the tempest to be calmed. Miraculously, it did grow calm, but not before one sailor fell to the deck from a mast and died. Again, taking to prayer, Nicholas stormed heaven until the sailor was raised from the dead. They made it to their destination, Nicholas walked the Holy Land, and visited many sites where Christ had been in the gospel accounts, including Golgotha—where Jesus was crucified.

Portrait of Bishop Nicholas,
painted by Jaroslav Čermák

 

Upon his return home, Nicholas became the bishop of Myra, supposedly in a rather miraculous way. The old bishop had died, and the others were seeking God for who should replace him. God spoke to one man and said that the first young man to enter the door for the sunrise service the following morning was the one to replace the deceased bishop. The word of God was even so specific as to include the name of the young man. As it turns out, it was Nicholas. The following day, Nicholas, son of Theophanes and Nonna was the first to arrive and was promptly told that he was to become the next bishop. He insisted he was not worthy of such a position, but the men of God at Myra would hear none of it, and Nicholas became the bishop at a young age.

 

He is best known as the patron saint of children and sailors, but he also was known for secret gift-giving and for miracles that came from his intercession, so much so that he became known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. So what sorts of secret gift-giving or miracles was he known for? Again, these stories may very well be embellishments of true happenings, but they make great stories, even if they aren’t completely accurate.

 

In one instance, Nicholas learned of a man with three daughters. The man had once been rich but had fallen on hard times. So hard, in fact, that he would not be able to pay the dowries expected for his daughter to marry well, leaving the three young women uncertain lives of prostitution or other slavery. Nicholas took some of his own inheritance and threw it into the window of the impoverished family’s home. As chance would have it, the money landed in a damp sock that had been left near the fire to dry. Come morning, the father found enough money to marry off his oldest daughter. Not long after, Nicholas returned to the house and again pitched a sizeable bag of money into the window, affording the middle daughter a dowry and assuring her a good marriage. By this time, the father was determined to know who this secret supporter was and waited days until a third bag of money was tossed through the home’s open window. The father rushed out to find Nicholas and thank him, though Nicholas asked the man to keep the secret of his unexpected provision. (Of course, with the first money landing in the sock put near the fire, it is thought this was the basis for our Christmas tradition of leaving gifts inside of stockings hung near the fire).

St. Nicholas at Greek Orthodox
Church (Photo by Petr Kratochvil)

A second incident tells of a time of famine, when Nicholas was greatly concerned for the people of Myra. In one version of the story, Nicholas was praying for grain for his people, and he appeared to a ship captain’s dream, promising him three gold coins if he would bring his shipment of grain to Myra. When the man awoke, he found the three promised coins already in his hand, and went to provide what was requested in the dream. In another version of the same miracle, Nicholas went to a merchant, asking for grain from each of his ships—but the merchant refused because his grain was already weighed, and he would be held accountable for any shortfall. Nicholas assured him there would be no shortfall if he provided grain for the people of Myra. Finally, Nicholas prevailed. The merchant sold him the grain—a hundred bushels from each ship—and went on to report to the buyer. Upon weighing the shipments, there was no shortfall whatsoever, and the grain sold to Nicholas for Myra lasted the full length of the famine, as well as provided enough to plant a good crop.

 

Nicholas’s life is marked by other such stories of justice, faith, and miraculous happenings, making him a beloved figure in the history of the world—and because of them, it is easy to see how he could have become the model, despite the over-commercialized version of our modern-day Santa Claus figure. No matter what, Nicholas was a man of God we can look up to for his love and giving nature.

 

I hope you enjoyed learning a few small facts about this historical man who became legend. And I hope you will have a blessed and merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! 

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has finaled and won in numerous writing competitions, and been on the ECPA best-seller list several times. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers, Women Writing the West, and is a lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.

 

Available for Pre-Order (Coming April 1, 2025):

 

Love and Order by Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Separated as children when they were adopted out to different families from an orphan train, the Braddock siblings of Callie, Andie, and Rion have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice. When the hunt for a serial killer with a long history of murders reunites the brother and sisters in Cambria Springs, Colorado, they find themselves not only in a fight for justice, but also a fight to keep their newly reunited family intact. How will they navigate these challenges when further complicated by unexpected romances?