Today is the feast day of St. Nicholas (either absorb the shock that it is
not the 25th or join me in the Nicholas Propaganda Force), and I wish you joy of the day! One of the most popular post-biblical saints of all time, and still as an adult, he is one of my all-time favorites. (I'll tease mystics and Jungians by mentioning that I had a big dream in which he appeared a couple of years back.) The guy has a
society, a
center, and a
village in Finland for postal and tourist purposes. The figure of Santa Claus is perhaps the most popular individual figure subject to ongoing mythopoesis, and so I'm with C.S. Lewis here: he could show up in a piece of fiction or game in your future. Did I say could? Should.
A couple of reference entries:
Wikipedia,
The [Old] Catholic Encyclopedia, and the
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious and Ethical Knowledge (which is also old, scans below). Here's a more recent
article and the entry at the
Orthodoxwiki.
Sancte Nicolaë, ora pro nobis.
