Nikolaos, being a kind and generous man of God, wanted to save the three girls from the dreaded fate of a life of sin and prostitution, but he was too humble to want credit and he did not want to embarrass the poor man by forcing him to publicly accept charity. Sadly, the man did not have enough money to pay for his daughters’ dowries, meaning he couldn’t marry them off, meaning they would almost certainly have no other choice than to become prostitutes in order to survive. This man had three daughters, all of whom were in their mid-to-late teenaged years, meaning they needed to be married off as soon as possible. This famous legend, first attested by Michael the Archimandrite in the Byzantine Roman Empire in the ninth century, holds that Nikolaos once learned of the existence of a local man who had fallen on hard times due to the plotting of Satan. 842 CE) wrote a work in the Greek language titled The Life of Saint Nikolaos, which contains many of the legends that were popularly told about Nikolaos in the ninth century CE, including the oldest known attestation of what is probably the most famous legend about Nikolaos today. By the ninth century CE, an enormous number of legends had become attached to him.Īt this time, the Byzantine Roman hagiographer Michael the Archimandrite (fl. In the centuries after Prokopios’s time, Nikolaos became increasingly widely venerated in the Byzantine Roman Empire. Possibly the earliest known mention of Nikolaos comes from the Byzantine Roman historian Prokopios of Kaisareia (lived c. Unfortunately, nothing reliable whatsoever is known about his life. Nikolaos was most likely a historical bishop of the city of Myra, which is located on the west coast of Asia Minor in what is now Turkey, who lived in the fourth century CE. Why historical circumstances make the idea of Óðinn as a prototype for Santa Claus implausibleĪs I discuss in my article about the history of Santa Claus from two years ago, the primary source of inspiration for the modern figure of Santa Claus is the Greek bishop Nikolaos of Myra. In this article, I intend to give this misconception the proper, in-depth refutation it deserves-one that fully takes into account Santa Claus’s complicated history. Crawford’s video is excellent, but it is, for the most part, merely a simple comparison of Óðinn and Santa Claus and it does not take into account the history of Santa Claus. Jackson Crawford, who has a PhD in Old Norse studies, spent many years teaching the subject at various universities, and is now a professional public educator on the subject, posted a video on his YouTube channel last year explaining why Óðinn is not Santa Claus. ![]() I already debunked this claim in this article I posted two years ago about the history of Santa Claus, which I highly recommend reading, but I did so only briefly and I feel that this notion is so common that it deserves a more thorough rebuttal. One of the more popular claims associated with this misconception is that Santa Claus is actually somehow inspired by the “pagan” Norse god Óðinn, who is closely associated with wisdom, war, death, and the runic alphabet. My most thorough article on the subject remains this one I originally posted two years ago. I’ve spent a lot of time debunking the perennially popular misconception that modern Anglophone Christmas customs are of ancient “pagan” origin.
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