St Nicholas

Christmas celebrations in the Netherlands begin on the last Saturday of November, when Saint Nicholas arrives via steam ship from Spain. Sound odd? Dutch Christmas traditions have melded political ideology, folklore, religion and legend into the holiday symbol of Saint Nicholas.

With its long coastlines and flowing rivers, the Netherlands has long been the patron of sailors.

In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas (nicknamed Sinter Klass) is depicted as a tall, slender man wearing a red bishop’s robe and tall bishop’s hat. He carries a bishop’s miter and rides a white horse. His helper, Black Peter, who is garbed in the Renaissance fashion of puffed velvet breeches, rides alongside Saint Nicholas on a mule, his face covered in soot. Black Peter’s 16th Century clothing is a reminder of the Spanish dominion over the Netherlands, which finally ended in 1570. Black Peter was often depicted with horns and red eyes. Dutch children were told he was the devil, whom Saint Nicholas had captured and made his servant.

Children in the Netherlands believe that Saint Nicholas arrives on December 5th (the eve of his saint day) along with Black Peter. Black Peter would jump from roof to roof, sliding up and down chimneys, leaving gifts in the little wooden shoes left by the hearth. Children would fill their shoes with hay and carrots for Saint Nicholas’s horse and Black Peter’s mule.

The idea of good fortune coming via the chimney goes back to pagan days, when people thought good spirits could travel as swiftly as smoke. It was very similar to the German holiday tradition of Heartha, Goddess of the Home. Mothers reinforced the idea of Saint Nicholas and Black Peter by cleaning out their hearths just before December 6th. They told children that cleaning it out would make it easier for Black Peter to deliver presents.

Over the course of the medieval period the legend of St Nicholas continued to develop and spread enormously, especially after the theft of his relics nd their translation to Bari in southern Italy in 1087. Indeed, the cult of St Nicholas eventually rivalled that of the Virgin Mary in many regions, to judge from church dedications. In addition to becoming the patron of sailors as part of this process, St Nicholas also became known as the patron of children. This important development was a consequence of the popular tale of his rescue from death of three children, who had been pickled for eating by an innkeeper. When combined with his reputation as a gift-giver, all the key elements were in place for the transformation of St Nicholas into the modern giver-of-gifts to children. The most significant manifestation of this, from the perspective of Santa Claus, is the Dutch Sinterklaas. Whilst Sinterklaas clearly derives from St Nicholas and his feast-day of the 6 December, he differs from the earlier portraits of St Nicholas in a number of ways, not least in his flying white horse. These differences are usually explained as a result of the legends of St Nicholas being fused in the medieval period with those of the former pagan god Wodan (the Norse Odin, who did possess a flying horse named Sleipnir), although one does have to wonder whether all of the aspects of the legend of Sinterklaas which are sometimes claimed to derive from this fusion really do so. Whatever the case may be, in the Early Modern era there were several unsuccessful attempts to stamp out the Sinterklaas tradition for religious reasons; more recently it has been attacked as a 'racialized tradition', due to Sinterklaas' companion Black Pete, but it remains nonetheless popular in Holland.

The Origins of Jack Frost

Jack Frost is the elfin creature that we say has visited when we see the fine lace work of ice on our windows on a crisp frosty morning. He crisps the fallen leaves in autumn and makes mirrors from the puddles in spring.

The origins of Jack Frost go back as far in time as Viking folklore, the name coming from the Norse term "jokul frosti" meaning icicle frost. He was the son of the Nordic wind god Kari. He was known as an artistic sprite, traveling through villages in the night and decorating them with his ice art. This is the original version of our perception of him as an elfin creature.

Russian folk tales have the frost produced by a smith forging water chains for the earth, and parts of Russia give him a partner, Frostwoman, who with him controls the winter weather and must be placated. The German tradition has an old lady shaking out an eiderdown and in Australia the aboriginal tale is of the seven sisters of the Pleiades throwing ice daggers to the earth.

The depiction of Jack Frost as we in the west think of him was first popularized by the artist Thomas Nast in a picture published in Harper's Weekly in 1864. The picture, Central Park in winter, depicts Jack Frost as a creature covered in icicles, though perhaps not so elfin as we now see him. Thomas Nast is also responsible for many of our popular images of Santa Claus and Christmas.

Jack Frost was never really associated with Christmas, in the way that Santa Claus is, but more generally with the weather. This has been changing in recent years as Hollywood has used him as a character in several films, not always in a complimentary way. He is a serial killer in one (Jack Frost 1996, and a sequel), and in the 1998 film starring Michael Keaton he is the victim of a fatal accident on Christmas Eve. Most recently he appears in a film with Tim Allen (Santa Claus 3) where he attempts to take over the role of Father Christmas. Authors have long been wise to his appeal however, and he appears as a minor character and as a central part of several fantasy books.