Nicholas of Myra, the man that is the basis of the story of St Nick, St Nicholas and Santa Claus (from the Dutch Sinterklaas) was born in 270 and died on December 6th 343. It’s not all jolly happy and ‘Ho. Ho. Ho!’ though; there are some gruesome stories that surround this benevolent and much beloved saint.
Long ago, there was a disastrous famine and the island where Nicholas was Bishop was suffering terribly. People were reduced to desperate measures and committed the most terrible and horrific acts against each other in order to survive. It’s one of the many legends of Saint Nicholas that tells of a man, a butcher by trade, who was not only desperate but it would seem that he also had an evil streak. He took to murder so that he could continue in his trade.
Depending on which legend you believe, the butcher either murdered three clerks who were staying as guests at his house and his wife turned her hand to a ‘Sweeny Todd’ trade in pies or his victims were three boys.
The tale of the boys says that they were playing all day close to their parents who were working in the fields but boys being boys, wandered off and eventually became lost.
Night was drawing in and they were tired, hungry and frightened and they saw a light in the butcher’s house. The boys knocked on the door and told the butcher their sorry tale and asked if they could stay for the night and find their way home the next day. The butcher saw an opportunity and invited the hapless boys in.
That night, the butcher murdered the boys and put their corpses in barrels of salt to preserve the meat.
Seven years later, Nicholas, who was by that time a Bishop, arrived at the little town and he saw the butcher’s evil. He ordered the butcher to open up the three barrels and he brought the three boys back to life and they were reunited with their families.
The cynic in me wonders what the parents thought when their boys came back to them seven long years after they had been lost and they were still the same age as when they went missing. I also wonder how seven years of sitting in a salt barrel would have affected their skin.
Then I begin to wonder why a lot of religions centre on the act of bringing corpses back to life.
George A Romero made a film called Dawn of the Dead and it does nothing to remind me of Christmas...