The Birth of Conventional Christmas Tradtions

There are a lot of different Christian traditions. Not celebrating Christmas is even becoming a tradition for some.

Even St. Nicholas, Bishop Nicholas, Santa Clause, has become something that separates people into different audiences.

Bishop Nicholas, started as a real man who was kind to the poor at a time when Lords demanded a seven year old boy to swear fealty to him for the rest of the child’s life. This was a time when fealty mean ‘a life of slavery.’ This was a time when a woman had no rights to her body, but if a Lord took her, she and her bastard child would be cast out to die. This was the world that Bishop Nicholas stepped into. The world of Martin Luther, of a new awakening of the bible, that was soon to be squelched and abridged by King James.

Bishop Nicholas was a far cry from the roly-poly red-suited American symbol for merry holiday festivity and commercial activity because society needed an icon.

St. Nicholas lived a precarious existence during the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Thousands of Catholics were murdered at the time. The Guise family in France killed hundreds of thousands of Protestants. King Henry of England killed hundreds of thousands of Catholics. In fact, every decade, every change of bishop, king, or queen, changes which religious group was to be murdered at the time.

Reformers and counter-reformers tried to stamp out St. Nicholas-related customs, they had very little long-term success. Only in England were the religious traditions of Christmas permanently altered. The common people loved St. Nicholas, so he survived in European as people continued to place nuts, apples, and sweets in shoes left beside beds, on windowsills, or before the hearth.

The New York Historical Society in 1804, promoted St. Nicholas as patron saint of both society and city. In January 1809, Washington Irving published the satirical fiction, Knickerbocker's History of New York, with numerous references to a jolly St. Nicholas character. This Saint followed the Dutch tradition of a jolly man.

In 1823, from a poem destined to become a classic, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," now "The Night Before Christmas," captured American’s Hearts.

Traditions changed, first food was left on window sills, then in stockings, now it is more common to exchange food and wine with other adults in the form of Christmas Gift Baskets. Traditions evolve, despite the term’s definition in the dictionary.