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LIFE MEETS THEOLOGY: Satan Nicholos
by Greg Williamson (c) 2007
UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS
LIFE: Yesterday my wife and two children visited one of the local shopping malls, now outfitted with a Christmas wonderland display that includes the opportunity -- for a price -- for a child to have his or her photo taken while sitting on Santa Claus's lap. Since there is no charge for just sitting and telling the actor -- uh, I mean Santa -- what you want for Christmas, Timothy and Daniel did just that.
Thanks to the Bible and the Veggie Tales movie The Toy That Saved Christmas, our boys know that God loving the world enough to send his only Son is the true meaning of Christmas (John 3:16). They also know that Santa is a symbol (loosely) based on an actual person who lived a long time ago. In attempting to remind me of this, my three-year-old, Daniel, said that they had seen "Satan Nicholos" in the mall, and that although he is not real, he is based on a real person who "helped poor people and people who don't have anything." Close enough.
THEOLOGY: According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (here summarized/paraphrased except for direct quotes):
Nicholas was the bishop of Myra, in Turkey, in the 4th century, whose "reputation for generosity and kindness gave rise to legends of miracles he performed for the poor and unhappy." His reputation spread and he became well-known throughout medieval Europe. "He became the patron saint of Russia and Greece; of charitable fraternities and guilds; of children, sailors, unmarried girls, merchants, and pawnbrokers; and of such cities as Fribourg, in Switzerland, and Moscow. Thousands of European churches were dedicated to him ..." (Santa Claus is the patron saint of pawnbrokers. That makes sense, I suppose, in light of all those unwanted Christmas gifts.)
The Protestant Reformation brought the end of Nicholos worship to all Protestant countries except Holland, whose 17th century colonists imported Sinterklaas into what is present day New York City. A few "old Nordic folktales of a magician who punished naughty children and rewarded good children with presents," the poem A Visit from Saint Nicholos (1822), cartoon images beginning in 1863, and Coca-Cola's 1931 Santa Claus ads -- all combined to form our present day Santa Claus.
(An interesting side note is that there's actually a town in Indiana named Santa Claus. It's located just four miles from the farm where Abraham Lincoln lived as a boy. Every year the town's post office returns more than one-million letters intended for the jolly old fat man [who, of course, lives at the North Pole]).
I recall from last Christmas an evangelism ministry that uses Santa Claus as a bridge to the gospel. If you think about it, Santa and God share certain key attributes. Like God, Santa is:
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