Santa Claus: Defender of the Incarnation

Even though it’s questionable how much of it is true, I still love the stories about the real St. Nicholas. From Fred Sanders:

St. Nicholas of Myra, a bishop in what we now call Turkey, lived in the fourth century. He must have been quite a guy, because while we have pretty much no reliable documents about him from his own time period, he became very popular in peoples’ memories in later centuries. He’s still a fun and inspiring figure to learn about. He was remembered for acts of generosity (tossing gold in a window to rescue three girls from lives of prostitution), miracles (including flying around like a superhero centuries after his death to rescue storm-tossed ships at sea), and good theology. The best story about him is that he went to the council of Nicaea in 325 and became so incensed with the heresies of Arius that he broke up the good order of the council by crossing the room and slapping Arius in the face. From there the story gets pretty chaotic: he may have been expelled for disorderly conduct, and Jesus and Mary may have appeared in a vision to cause the council to re-admit him. Okay, I admit I doubt most of that, and if it comes down to hard evidence, we can’t even prove that Nicholas of Myra was at Nicaea because his name’s not on the list of attendees. But after all these years of seeing Santa Claus as a seasonal rival to Jesus Christ, it sure is refreshing to think of him instead as a theological advocate of the central Christian doctrine which we remember at Christmas time, the incarnation of the Son of God.

Santa Claus: Defender of orthodox nicene trinitarian theology. It’s an inspiring thought for the Christmas season, and it makes it possible for us to sing all those Santa songs with newly recovered religious meaning: …

He then proceeds to rewrite the Santa-themed Christmas songs, which you should now read. I particularly recommend “Back at Nicaea (to the tune of ‘Up on the Housetop’).”

Comments

[Ken Yarmosh]

What complete nonsense. Christians are disciples of Christ who is the truth. We would do well to remove ourselves from fables and worthless trivia and instead commit ourselves to the sacred doctrines of Scripture, church councils, and creeds of the church. Seven sacred Feast Days in Old Testament Scripture and the modern church clings to the Roman Cdtholic Christ Mass and the fertility goddess Easter. And we wonder why young Christians leave the church once they're exposed to serious secular academia that easily exposes false teachings and worthless traditions.

[Juanita Brazziel]

Umm I'm pretty sure they don't leave the church for those reasons. From talking with young people and being myself not far removed, we leave the church because we aren't taught the character of who God is (too often fed the feel good message of grace and not the responsibility message of grace), why questions aren't answered or attempted to be answered (why did so and so die?), and we are never explained the falsehood of other beliefs in a manner that isn't combative.

Why can't we as Christians poke fun at something so obviously false. Us taking time to enjoy how seemingly impossible Santa aka St Nick is doesn't diminish who we are as Christians or who Christ is to us. Lighten up, being a Christian is a joyous life not a legalistic, unhappy experience.

Oh and I believe people are smart enough to realize the humor in this post and take it as just that,fun.

[Sam Harper]

I also like to think of Saint Nicholas as being a defender or orthodoxy, especially regarding the Trinity and the Incarnation.

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/2d/3b/18/2d3b184e745ee8448ab7fa3c44c74359.jpg

[WisdomLover]

A later biographer of Nicholas (Methodius of Constantinople) stated that there were no Arians in St. Nicholas's See, and it was the only See in which that was true. So even if he didn't administer the holy smackdown to Arius, I think it is still safe to say that he was a staunch opponent of Arianism.

I'm inclined to think that the holy smackdown story is true.

Some argue that there's no evidence that Santa was even at the tho Council of Nicea. But that's probably true of most of those who were in attendance and signed off on the Nicene Creed (and tradition tells us that St. Nick was among those who signed of on the creed). There was no official list of attendees drawn up. Of the nearly 2000 bishops that were invited, about 300 showed up. Someone as obviously invested in Trinitarian theology as Nicholas was probably would have made it a point to be there.

I think the story of his being appeared to by Joseph and Mary and being provided with his bishop's stole (after being stripped of it, and the office, because of the smackdown) is probably false. He probably was briefly de-bishoped because of the brawling, but I suspect cooler heads prevailed and he was simply re-instated.

[Amy]

Thanks for the info, WL.

(And Sam, LOL!)

[Cris D Putnam]

The funny part about Nicea is that the bishop of Rome (the pope) did not even attend. So much for Roman Catholicism revisionism about the existence of the papacy.