Patron Saint of Children

Why St. Nicholas of Myra?

The patronage rests on rescue rather than on fondness, which is a distinction worth keeping. The story that fixed it: a man in Myra had three daughters and no money for a dowry, which in that society meant they would be sold. Nicholas, then a young bishop, threw a bag of gold through the window at night, three times, and on the third was caught. The point of the story is not generosity but what he prevented. A second, darker account has him restore to life three children murdered by an innkeeper. It is legend and it is medieval, and it explains the images of him with three small figures in a barrel that appear across northern Europe. The gift-giving on his eve descends directly from the first story and is kept across the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Santa Claus is a much-travelled corruption of Sinterklaas, which is why the December 6 feast and the December 25 figure are the same man twice.

Who was St. Nicholas of Myra?

Nicholas was bishop of Myra, in Lycia in what is now southern Turkey, in the fourth century. The historical record is thin: he is thought to have been imprisoned during the persecution under Diocletian and released when Constantine legalised Christianity, and a later tradition places him at the Council of Nicaea in 325.

What is certain is the scale of the cult. By the sixth century Justinian had built a church in his honour in Constantinople; by the tenth he was among the most venerated saints in the East. In 1087 merchants from Bari removed his relics from Myra, ahead of advancing Turkish forces, and took them to Italy, where they remain and where a Greek Orthodox pilgrimage to a Catholic basilica still happens every year.

The stories about him are almost all about intervening: for the three daughters, for three unjustly condemned officers, for sailors in a storm. Whether or not each is historical, the tradition is unusually consistent about what kind of saint he is.

The feast: December 6

December 6. In the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany the eve is the main gift-giving night of the year and considerably more important than Christmas Eve for children. In Italy, Bari keeps the translation of his relics on May 9 as well. The custom of shoes left out overnight descends directly from the bag of gold through the window.

How to ask their intercession

For a child who is ill, frightened or in danger, ask him by name. The Holy Innocents are invoked for children who have died, and St. Gerard Majella for mothers and for children in the womb. Many parishes keep a blessing of children on or near December 6.