Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-31
THE STORY OF SANTA CLAUS.
Facts of History Concerning Saint Much Mixed
Up With "Criskinckel."

1t is little singular that we should
make connection between the observance
of the day of st. Nicholas and that of the
Nativity, as we do in letting children la
Dor under the pretty delusiOn that the
gifts which come to them fully three
weeks later are the gifts of Santa Claus
a contraction, of course, of st. Nicho-
las, who has his own day in the first week
of December, when he is hOnored by
towns and by nations and by peculiar
classes of the population with an honor
all his own. 1t is not yet fifteen years
since the boys of one of the leading public
schools in England kept the eve of st.
Nicholas with procession which levied
from all passers-by ON a certain spot con-
tributions of money in return for gift of
salt, which money was supposed to be
applied to the uses of the captain of the
band when i'll the university.
Another mode of procedure in,honor of
the saint, although different in form, yet
having much the same motif, was to be
seen until late in the sixteenth century
in the conservation of boy bishop in the
English cathedrals, who, until limo
cents day, some three weeks later, was
allowed to ape and mock the practices of
the real bishop, at first in the serious
contrast of childhood and innocence, but
at last in a bmriesque that caused the
whole thing to be done away with. To-
Cay St. Nicholas is the saint receiving
most honor at the hands of all the Rus
slams; and he is not only the patron saint
of children, but of young women, of
scholars and of sailors. Legend assigns
to him many miraculous and many ben
evolent deeds in behalf of these young
women, and owing to them it early be-
came the custom in conYentual schools on
the European continent to recognize and
acknowledge his benignity, in return for
which homage he was supposed to deposit
in the shoes or the stockings of the young
people candies, fruits and gifts of more
or less yalue-an observance which among
ourselves has been transferred TO another
and subsequent day and date.
The same good St. Nicholas is often
pictured with three golden balls on ac-
count of his supposed gift of three purses
containing dowTies for three maidens;
and although the three balls have become
also the sign of a pawnbroker, yet the
pawnbrokers came from under the reign
of Medici, whose symbol it was, and who
had taken it for their own in remem-
brance of the generosity and the wealth
of the saints. Nowhere, however, is the
festival of st. Nicholas observed with
such splendor and earnestness as in a
seaport of the south of Italy,
where, in subterranean building
of saracenic architecture beneath the
superb Church of St. Nicholas, the
saints bones are tTeasured-a church
where, if the king of Italy himself at
tends, he is a person of less consequence
than the prior of the church, who claims
to rank with archbishOps and cardinals.
Pilgrims to the number of many thou
sands attend the festival. all with slaves
bound with olive and pine, many of them
barefooted; all of them fed, if they will,
at the priory gates; all of them clad in
their picturesque ancient costumes, de-
voted, earnest, fiery and observing a
rite that has been known from time i'm
memorial.
A novel and interesting part of the GER
monies is seen when the sailors of the
port, in memory possibly of some old rites
in honor of Neptune, take the saint
image from the care of the canons, bear
it through the streets and far out to sea,
only returning with it at nightfall, when,
with bonfires and rockets and torches,
the whole population intoning chants and
litanies, they carry it about from shrine
to shrine, and at length restore it to its
keepers under the late stars with solemn
earnestness, and all the wild but half
suppressed religious excitement possible
only to the high-wrought southern tenn
permanent. On the whole, St. Nicholas
has all his share of honor, and we think
he should scrupulously keep his hands
off of observances and honors and cere-
monies that do not belong to him