The Strange Birth of Santa Claus: From Artemis the Goddess and Nicholas the Saint

Yes, Virginia, once upon a time there lived a kindly gift-bringer who sometimes came down the hearth smoke to leave presents, a friend and patron of children and women, especially maidens (Jones 300, 315). And, Virginia, her name was Artemis of Ephesus. Oh, I know what you were thinking, but let me explain and you will learn that the story of Santa Claus reveals more wonderment than you have imagined. This story is for you, Virginia, now that you are considerably older. Please pardon the delay. Long ago and far away, so say the legends, there lived a Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, a bearded Father of the Catholic Church named Nicholas. This Patriarch won his way into the hearts of the people, recently converted from idolatry to Christianity, by destroying the temple of Artemis, a many-breasted goddess of the sea and of grain, a pagan Earth Mother who had a long and distinguished career as a midwife and protector of women. Her story begins when Leto, wived by the great god Zeus, clung to the sacred date palm, the tree of birth and nurturant life, as she bore Artemis without pain. Immediately--and amazingly--the infant goddess arose and assisted in birthing her own twin, Apollo. In later years, Leto and her daughter often went hunting together (Tripp), no doubt a consequence of such early bonding. At any rate, Virginia, you can now understand better the meaning of "long and distinguished career," and you will soon note similarities between Artemis and the precocious Nicholas. Surely it is easy to understand why at the first pangs of labor women might call upon Artemis for relief, or why maidens wishing to marry might offer a lock of hair to this "Nurse of Youths," goddess of fertility, birth, and the many-breasted tree (Zaidman 361). But women who wished to remain virginal or chaste, who did not wish to approach or be approached by men, also turned for protection to this goddess sometimes called Diana. The Cretan goddess Britomartis, pursued by the god-king Minos, escaped his clutches into the sacred precincts of an Artemisian grove. Orion, as he attempted to violate Opis, was killed by arrows of Artemis who, like Hecate, was also a goddess of death. Her "kindly darts" brought sudden but mercifully painless death to women, as did her bother Apollo's to men (Tripp). The greatest of many temples dedicated to this goddess of life and death, at Ephesus on the south coast of what is now Turkey, was inevitably founded by Amazons. Amazons, legendary women warriors, refused to submit meekly to men. If they wished to reproduce, they might take men, but on their own terms and temporarily (Tyrrell). The immense marble temple, a wonder of the ancient world, was gloriously gilded; decorated in cobalt blues, brightest reds, brilliant yellows; overflowing with statuary appropriate to Artemis as Great Goddess, Earth Mother, Lady of the Animals, of Wild Things, the source and sustainer of all life. There were bulls, lions, stags, rams, boars, and wolves; horses and chariots; centaurs and hippocamps; bees, quail, and rabbits; serpents that were emblematic of Artemis, symbolic of wisdom, prophecy, and eternal life; women as warriors and as sirens and sea nymphs; men as warriors and devotees of the goddess (Lethaby). And at the sacred center of this symbolic universe teeming with life stood the golden idol of many-breasted Artemis (although some say her "breasts" were dates or pomegranates or eggs or bulls' testicles or other emblems of cornucopian fertility) (Goodrich 68-70). Her worshippers were not sedate, Virginia. Later commentators, often admirers of the Christian Nicholas, report "orgiastic and lascivious dances," bacchanalian revelry, animal--and intimations of human--sacrifice, temple harlots, self-mutilated eunuch priests in female dress, and Apollo as subordinate to Artemis, perhaps even as a servile lover (Farnell II 445, III 301, IV 173). To become marriageable, prepubescent Greek girls performed a ritual bear dance at an annual women's festival of Artemis Brauronia (Papadimitriou), itself much like the orgiastic rites of spring planting and fertility, the April Artemisia. …