Why We Don't Tell our Kids That St. Nicholas is Santa Claus (or vice versa)

A few weeks before Christmas last year I started writing your run-of-the-mill "Why We Don't "Do" Santa" post.  I never finished it.  I kept poking at it and changing it and rewriting it.  Finally it got to the point where I had to stop because I was burning through the precious time I had left to crochet hats and pot holders and slippers for Christmas gifts.  (I mean, it just wouldn't be Christmas without a garish array of mediocre yarn creations by Theresa, would it??)

I started playing around with that post again this year, but even as I was writing and rewriting it, something new occurred to me. Not only do we not "celebrate" Santa, we don't even equate him with St. Nicholas.  

Plenty of people argue that Santa Claus is a harmless modernization of St. Nicholas.  And I've heard the people who preach that we need to redeem the modern-day, commercialized Santa Claus and return him to his Christian roots in Nicholas. But in my home and for my family, I don't want St. Nicholas to be Santa Claus. For secular me, Santa is a waste of energy and misdirected holiday enthusiasm. For Catholic me, I'm pretty into St. Nicholas, and I'm uncomfortable distorting Nicholas so that he can be Santa Claus.  

I don't buy it when people say I can "believe in" Santa Claus because he's really Saint Nicholas.  (I think this is a superb post on it, even though I happen to disagree :) ) I understand that's where the tradition first began, but that's not what Santa Claus is now.   And we live now. 

When the kindly folk in the grocery store ask my children in a sticky sweet voice, "Is Santa coming to your house this year?" they mean this...

They don't mean, "Are you going to honor the fourth century Greek bishop, patron of children and sailors, by hanging your stocking 19 days after his feast day in the hopes over discovering a gift there in the morning?"  

To the grocery store inquiries, I usually offer my own sticky sweet smile (it's really just bits of candy cane stuck in my teeth) and reply, "We celebrated St. Nicholas’ Day earlier this month (the kids leave out their shoes and know that mom and dad leave treats and gifts there in honor of St. Nicholas)  and now we're busy preparing the gifts we'll give to others on Christmas."  And then hopefully my kids launch into a litany of the projects they're working on and the topic of conversation has been totally turned, because most strangers can't wrap their heads around the way we keep Christmas.

My kids don't "believe in" Santa Claus.  Santa Claus plays no role in our Christmas (except in making an appearance in the tune "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," which I love.)  Santa does not come to our house.  Santa does not leave gifts.  Santa is not happily married in the North Pole, nor does he have a workshop there.  We tell our children that Santa Claus does not exist.  (It's ok if you think I'm ruining my kids.  I don't.)   

And Santa is not St. Nicholas.

I believe the person of St. Nicholas would be lost if my husband and I embellished the traditions and legends surrounding that saint into lies we'd tell our children about Santa Claus.  This is not how we honor saints.  It is inconsistent with all the things we ("we" means "husband and I" :) ) teach our children about venerating and honoring the Saints.  Catholics are not required to hold any particular devotion to the Saints, but if we choose to, we meditate on their lives of Faith, strive to imitate their holy example,  and appreciate the goodness and glory of God in His work through them.  We teach our children about the virtuous lives of the Saints, the miracles attributed to them, and the power of their intercession for particular needs.  Many saints, especially those from the early Church, are surrounded by a cloud of legends.  We happily teach our children about these legends, how they may have developed, why they are significant, and how such stories can still bring glory to God even though the truth of the matter is not always clearly defined.  But we don't invent miracles or attribute magical happenings to saints and claim that they are still taking place to this day outside of the approval of the Church.   That is a mis-representation of the Faith and of the honored position of Saints in the Church, and is an affront to the traditions of the Catholicism.

I actually think that it would be better to believe in Santa Claus as a secular bringer of gifts, completely detached from the name, concept, and reality of St. Nicholas, than to tell our children in all sincerity that the 4th century bishop is also a present-day toy maker plying his trade in the frigid north.

It misrepresents the real Nicholas.  The little that is known of him is rich and uplifting.  He deserves, as all Saints, to be honored for who he was - not for what I pretend, or speculate, him to be.   

To attribute gifts and magic to a beloved saint (and to encourage my kids to believe it) would probably also not be a great witness to our non-Catholic friends who may already be scrutinizing our often misunderstood veneration of the saints and our appreciation of our Faith traditions and legends.  And, in my opinion, it just does not give glory to God or credit to the Catholic Faith to fabricate fanciful tales about canonized Saints. But upholding their actual lives and deeds are awesome for our good and God's glory. ("Veneration given to saints is giving glory to God in them and through them; their graces are God's gift to them, and their example is our hope." I found that in Butler's Lives of the Saints, so it must be so ;) )  

So, our children are very familiar with the legends of St. Nicholas that make him a patron of children (you know, like restoring the pickled boys to life) and a generous giver of secret gifts (the old coins-for-the-girls-in-the-stockings story). Our kiddos know that my husband and I give them gifts in honor of Nicholas on his feast day. We certainly invoke his intercession, and while we heartily believe that miraculous events could absolutely occur as a direct result of the intercession of St. Nicholas, we have never told our children that gifts under the tree are those miraculous doings.

There is no other saint that we honor by changing his or her name, insisting that the legends and traditions surrounding him or her are actually going to happen again on a specific night, and celebrate him or her on a day that is not actually their Church-appointed feast day.  It's so absurd that it's hard to even make a decent comparison, so here's a weak one...  St. Patrick is a respected Catholic saint throughout the world.  He's even in good standing among non-Catholics.   He's so much fun we're going to call him Naomh Pádraig (Blessed Patrick) and we're going to say that 19 days after his March 17 feast day, on April 5, he's going to drive all of the snakes out of our backyard (because he did that once in Ireland, and now he's going to do it again.  here.  on April 5.)  It's going to be magical!  And I'm really going to be the one that moves the snakes (or worms, as the case may be in urban Western New York) , but I'm going to convince my children that Naomh did it.   And when my children find out in their tween years that he doesn't really come and rid our neighborhood of snakes each year, they will not mind in the least that I perpetuated this fanciful story to them and they will still be interested in learning everything they can about the real Patrick and they will be drawn into a personal devotion to the real Saint, until they have their own snake-fearing children and realize it's time to resurrect Naomh Padraig.  

See?  It's kind of weird.  It's not really honoring St. Patrick at all.  Calling the modern-day Santa Claus a way to honor St. Nicholas makes about as much sense to me.  My family and I choose to honor St. Nicholas on his feast day with prayer, reading about his life, feasting, and gifts.   My husband and I have not attempted to honor him by telling our kids that he's actually going to show up again, tiptoeing around on our roof a few weeks later.   Nor do we honor any other saint by convincing our kids that he or she is coming to do X, Y, or Z on any given day. So if we were going to insist that Nicholas was going to do the whole roof bit on December 24, we're not really prepared to explain to them why it's just St. Nicholas and why Saints Ursula, Felix, Kunegunda, and Joan of Arc have forsaken our rooftop.

Who knows.  Maybe all of them are up in Heaven now, looking down on poor, misguided me, laughing and shaking their heads at silly little Theresa.  We’ve been on her roof several times and she still doesn't get it! And she's so, so wrong about all of it anyway! Maybe they’ll question me when we finally meet (and Oh!! I hope we do!) as to why I was so Scroogy and unimaginative with making Christmas magic.  Won’t the joke be on me, then!  I’m sure I won’t have any answer than, I love St. Nicholas, and I’m full of the Christmas spirit, but I just never found it necessary to spin tales about the one to enhance the other for myself or for my children.

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My opinions are strong, but they're just that - opinions.  They're important only insofar as they're how I approach holiday traditions and Christmas with my family.  I know a lot of parents (most of them way better at parenting than me) that love celebrating Santa and St. Nicholas, or Santa as St. Nicholas.  Do you believe me when I say, that's ok because it actually has nothing to do with my family?  It's true.  So if you have some different thoughts or opinions or ways you do things with your family, I'm cool with that too, and I'd love for you to chat about them here.  (Except I should clarify, that by "cool" I mean "I can accept our differences"  and you really shouldn't interpret "cool" in the "impressive, hip, or sophisticated" sense.  No one has ever accused me of the second definition ;) )