Note: There is a distinct lack of "Lemon" here.
Like many legends and myths, there is usually an inch of truth for every five feet of lies and exaggeration. Those who try to discover the truth are either ridiculed banished or executed, and sometimes all three! However, I found, quite by accident, an ancient tome detailing the true life and times of Bishop Nicholas, later Saint Nick, and eventually Santa Claus. I stumbled across it in a used book store in Holland a year or so ago, and being fluent in Ancient Viking, I decided to translate it. What I found was both shocking and amusing.
Our story begins far away, in a land lost to time, war, and political border shifts. Nicholas was born to rich Christian parents in the 3rd century AD in a village called Patara. It was then located in a Greek territory, but Turkey later swipes it. Now, as a young man, Nicholas’ parents died in a plague. Popular belief is that Nicholas was visited by Jesus and told to give up his wealth. Truth is, his parents were so stingy, that they hid their entire fortune, but forgot to tell Nicholas where they had hidden it.
Penniless, and having lost his home due to it being infected with the plague, Nicholas started wandering. He did odd jobs here and there, mostly involving menial labor such as ditch digging, grave digging, and then later grave robbing the graves he dug. One day he made his way to a small town, called Myra. Located on a scenic stretch of the Mediterranean coastline, it was cool in the summer, warm in the winter and had delicious olives.
However, Myra’s citizens were all sick and weak. Yet no one actually died from the disease which ruled the land, and hadn’t for centuries. The peasants only died of old ages, drowning in the sea, or falling prey to the wicked olive bandits which roamed the country. When Nicholas arrived in Myra, he saw dozens of sick people, and enquired as to the reason everyone was afflicted.
He learned that Myra was ruled by an evil Duke named Jacob, and had been for several generations. Duke Jacob was a mighty sorcerer, and had cast a curse upon Myra and its inhabitants, which made all the peasants sick and weak, and kept him young and healthy. Some myths claim that Nicholas helped the people of Myra out of the good of his heart, but the sad reality is he saved them through a complete blunder.
Nicholas was simply passing through the town, stayed a single night at the Foggy Frog Inn, and was leaving the next morning when fate happened. Duke Jacob was strolling through Myra, accompanied by his relatively healthy guards, when Nicholas tripped over an emaciated dog. The tumble sent his grave digging shovel flying out of his travel pack, and right into the chest of Duke Jacob. The grave-dirt encrusted metal head smashed into a fancy amulet which the evil duke always wore around his neck.
This amulet was made glass, and was the device that maintained the curse upon Myra and sucked the vitality out of the citizens. The force of the blow from the shovel head shattered the fragile glass trinket, dispelling the curse on the town in a flash of puce colored light. The vile spell lifted, Duke Jacob was soon surrounded by a mob of angry peasants. Luckily for the duke, the people were still too weak to do anything other than claw feebly at his clothes, and wheeze out insults. Duke Jacob fled Myra, albeit at a leisurely pace, and left the town for good.
Nicholas was later made Bishop of Myra, simply because the peasants thought †˜Bishop’ sounded like a cool title to give their savior. This would later cause Nicholas problems, as the Roman Emperor Diocletian started to jail Christian clergymen. Fleeing persecution, Nicholas made his way to Spain, which can be considered the Mexico of Europe at the time. There, Nicholas started the first recorded extortion business with his grave robbing savings.
The Spanish soon began sarcastically calling Nicholas †˜Santa Claus’, which meant †˜Saint of Clauses’, as his contracts and legal documents were filled with hidden clauses and fees. There, Nicholas lived a content and happy life. Upon his death, he was shipped back to Myra with a note that said, “Here’s your damn Saint back.” Of course, none of the peasants could read, so they assumed he had done good things.
Several decades after his death, priests came across documents from Myra, which detailed Nicholas’ supposed heroic saving of the town, and files claiming him to be a Bishop. So the Church mistakenly dubs him a saint, and he goes down in history as a nice guy. History once more lost the truth, and decided to make it up as it went.
But how does Nicholas, AKA Santa Claus, become a holiday mascot? Turns out that the Spanish used to celebrate Nicholas’ death with grandiose spending and flamboyant disregard for any concept of money. This continued for decades, until the reason behind it was forgotten, and it had spread to other countries, who twisted it to fit their own cultures. The current image of Santa Claus was created by Norman Rockwell in the 1920’s when he ate some rotten mushrooms and drew a picture of a jolly old man during his hallucinations.
And what happened to Duke Jacob? He managed to sustain himself with the suffering brought on by the Black Plague, and later formed a way to steal the vitality of people through the internet. This was done through a smut website he founded, its name unmentioned for publishing reasons. The Historian in me was shocked, but the Realist was unsurprised. I mean honestly, a fat guy in red giving out free stuff? This is the true origin of Santa Claus, and if I’ve made you question life, that was a bonus.