TELL ME A STORY
Saint Nick first stocking stuffer
"Saint Nicholas and the Stockings" is a Dutch legend brought to America.
Adapted by Amy Friedman
More than a thousand years ago, a man named Nicholas became the bishop of Myra, in Asia Minor, a land now known as Turkey. Nicholas was known as one of the most generous men ever to live.
Nicholas was born to wealthy parents who died when he was still a boy. They left their fortune to their only son, but they also had helped him understand that the family's money was for making the world a better place.
He gave away much of his wealth and devoted himself to his religious studies. He became a bishop at such a young age that he was known as the "boy bishop."
Nicholas took his parents' wisdom to heart. He traveled the world, and everywhere he journeyed, he offered help and kindness. He brought much happiness even to those who never expected his help.
On one of his journeys, Nicholas traveled by ship, and on the journey, a ferocious storm came up at sea. All the sailors aboard were certain they were doomed. Nicholas remained on the deck even as the wind howled, the sails flapped wildly and others ran below for safety. Nicholas simply prayed for the storm to die away.
The men could not believe their eyes when Nicholas' prayers came true and the sea became as calm as glass. The men sailed to safety, praising Nicholas' powers.
When Nicholas arrived in Holland, he walked the streets with his friend, Black Peter, a Moor he had befriended in Spain.
As always, Nicholas wore his long robes and rode a tall, white steed, and Black Peter, dressed in bright red, in the costume of his homeland, walked beside him with a bag of oranges and treats for the children slung over his shoulder.
As they moved through the streets, children who had heard of their generosity stopped to say hello. Those who were good received Nicholas' gifts. But any child who had not been well-behaved knew he must fear Black Peter's switch.
One day in the marketplace, Nicholas heard the tale of a poor man who had no dowry for his daughters. The father wanted them to marry, and in those days all young women needed to have something to give to their suitors on their wedding day.
Without this gift, the women had no chance of marrying. The father worried that his daughters would have no one to look after them when he was gone.
When Nicholas heard that the father was sick with grief that he might have to sell his daughters into slavery, he knew he must help. At first he thought he might offer the man some money, but everyone said this man was too proud to accept anyone's help.
And so one night, Nicholas filled a bag with gold coins, and as he passed the man's house, he tossed the bag into the window. It fell at the feet of the eldest daughter. "Look, Papa," the girl cried. "Gold!" The father ran outside to see who could have lost such a valuable item. No one was in sight. Nicholas had hidden in a dark alley.
The man decided he must keep watch to see who had lost his coins, and so when Nicholas returned a few nights later to toss a second bag into the house, he saw that he could not do it without being discovered. He and Peter came up with a plan.
With Peter's help, Nicholas climbed on the roof of the man's house and tossed a bag down the chimney; the bag landed in the stockings the second daughter had hung in the fireplace so that they would dry. In the morning, when she fetched her stockings, she discovered that she too now had a dowry.
When, a few weeks later, Nicholas returned to try the same trick again, this time to help the third daughter, a neighbor spied him upon the roof.
"Why would you hide yourself?" he asked Nicholas. "I am certain the poor man would want to thank you for your generosity to his daughters."
"I do not want thanks," Nicholas explained. "I wish only for the world to be a better place. I beg you; promise you will never reveal to anyone the secret of the gold bags. Let this be our secret."
The neighbor agreed, and so the poor man never knew who had rescued his daughters, though rumors floated through the land.
Many years later, when Nicholas died on a Dec. 6, the nuns in the convents in Turkey and other lands decided they would imitate his generous acts. They made secret gifts to their parishioners and to their friends. And in the doorways of the convents, the nuns hung stockings, labeled with paper and asking for the spirit of St. Nicholas to come to them. They say that every year, St. Nicholas fulfilled their prayers, and on the morning of Dec. 6, those stockings were full of gifts.
Ever since then, Nicholas has been honored and celebrated, not only in Holland, where he is known as Sinterklaas, but around the world.
St. Nicholas Day is celebrated in many different ways. In some places, sailors carry his statue from a cathedral to the sea so that he can bless the waters and offer sailors safe voyage for the year. In Holland, on the eve of St. Nicholas Day, children leave their shoes in the hallway with a carrot and a piece of hay in them.
This, they say, is for the horse Nicholas always rides. Later that evening, after Sinterklaas visits, they find pieces of marzipan candy or chocolate in their shoes.
They say that Black Peter enters the houses, too, through the chimney, and those children who have misbehaved receive not candy but bundles of sticks known as roe.
The bad children, so the legend goes, must return to Spain in Peter's sack. And there is no hiding from Sinterklaas, for he has many helpers, known as Sinterklasen, who are watching over everyone all the time and discovering who is naughty and who is nice.
