Here's Why St. Nicholas is Celebrated on Dec. 6

December 6th, 9:30 AM PST

By NEWSnet Digital Team

St. Nicholas is depicted in 2019 in Germany

Photo by Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images

NEW YORK (NEWSnet/AP) — St. Nicholas Day – marked each year on Dec. 6 – honors the life of a generous fourth-century Christian bishop.

The legends of St. Nicholas evolved in America into the secular story of Santa Claus, who delivers gifts on Christmas Eve. But there remain communities where the older traditions remain. In those regions, St. Nicholas is dressed in bishop’s attire and children receive their candy and toys on Dec. 6.

St. Nicholas was a fourth century Christian bishop from the Mediterranean port city of Myra (in modern-day Turkey).

“Much of the rest is legend. There’s not really a lot of hard historical evidence about St. Nicholas,” said the Rev. Nicholas Ayo, author of “Saint Nicholas in America: Christmas Holy Day and Holiday.”

Those stories include how Nicholas spent his inheritance to benefit others, according to the St. Nicholas Center.

Devotion to St. Nicholas — also referred to as St. Nick — spread during the Middle Ages across Europe and he became a favorite subject for medieval artists and liturgical plays, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. He is the patron saint of Greece and Russia, Moscow and New York, as well as charities, sailors, children and pawnbrokers.

Legends surrounding St. Nicholas’ generosity appear in texts ranging from medieval manuscripts to modern-day poems, including how he interceded on behalf of wrongly condemned prisoners and miraculously saved sailors from storms.

Interest in St. Nicholas seems to have faded after the 16th century Protestant Reformation, except in the Netherlands where he was known Sinterklaas. In the 17th century, Dutch Protestants who settled in New York brought the Sinterklaas tradition with them.

Artist Thomas Nast, an engraver in Morristown, New Jersey, who illustrated the front cover of Harper’s magazine for many years, played a key role in the transformation, Ayo said.

“He followed the description of Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas — and Clement Clarke Moore’s ‘Twas the Night before Christmas’ poem,” Ayo says. “So, that’s how that got changed. But in Europe, the bishop shows up in bishop’s clothing at the door sometimes.”