Did You Know Santa Is From Turkey?
Well… we can all agree Santa is a product of North America… Santa's original ancestor St.Nicholas on the other hand, was a Christian Bishop who lived in Turkey.
Depictions of St. Nicholas vary considerably, but none of them look like the chubby, white-bearded old man we see covered in snow.
In fact, considering where he lived his whole life, Nicholas wouldn’t have ever even seen snow…
Born to a wealthy Greek family 280 years after the birth of Christ, he became the bishop of Myra, a small Roman town in modern Turkey now known as Demre.¹
Interior of St. Nicholas Church, Demre, Turkey
There is no evidence to prove Nicholas was plus-sized, or jolly… on the contrary, history portrays him as a fiery, wiry, and defiant defender of church, who even got imprisoned for his efforts - before Christianity got widely accepted in the region.²
So how did this fiery man became the patron saint of children around the globe? Well, the most common tale tells the story of him saving three young girls from a life of prostitution by secretly delivering three bags of gold to their indebted father… (Unfortunately, we’re unable to hear the story from the perspective of the girls…)
Some versions of this story say the gold either landed in stockings or shoes drying near the fireplace, leading to later traditions of children leaving these items out for St. Nick to fill.³ Who can blame them?
As St. Nick outgrew his realistic capabilities as a human and became more and more of a fictional character, his image had to follow. The 19th century saw Santa appear in different-coloured clothing, in sizes from miniature to massive, and in a variety of different guises, but his reputation as the secret gift-giver and saviour of children stuck.²
The jolly, chubby, grandfatherly face of Santa was largely created by Thomas Nast, the great political cartoonist in an era that featured many.²
Turkish police officers dressed as Santa to spot crime suspects.⁴
Now what we’d like to see is a more realist representation of St. Nicholas as Santa; the Greek patron of children from Turkey, with olive-skin, brown eyes and the grey hair of a 60 year-old-man.
[1] https://www.stnicholascenter.org/how-to-celebrate/celebrate-at-home/ideas-from-books-articles/background-customs/finley
[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history/2017/12/saint-nicholas-santa-surprising-origins-mr-claus
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/06/world/saint-nicholas-day-santa-trnd/index.html
[4] www.hurriyetdailynews.com/dressed-as-santa-claus-turkish-police-nab-crime-suspects-on-new-years-eve-140192
