Saint Nicholas

When I got engaged, I decided to convert to a Catholic so that my children would not be confused about their religions. I have now found out that my hubsand is confused about his religion anyway. Even though, he has been a Catholic all of his life. He did not know what the meaning of St Nick night was. All he could tell me was that his mother would fill his stocking as a child on December 6th and say that St. Nick had been. As he got older, his mother would give them a gift before. Usually this gift was something that they needed such as a pair of shoes or new coat.

Now, I can understand why she gave the gift because as the winter comes we do need winter stuff. But I was not satisfied this year, I know that in the future my kids are going to want to know what exactly it means. We can not afford to send them to Catholic school.

As I am shopping last year for the stocking supplies, I ran into this delightful woman who started up a conversation with me about Saint Nick. I asked her if she knew what exactly we are celebrating to which she told me no it was just something they always did. As we were talking about, we were interrupted by another lady who wanted to know if we knew the meaning. She didn't either. She had converted and her husband couldn't tell her. Not only that her daughter was now asking "Isn't Saint Nick...Santa Claus?" So its official I knew my kids would ask.

At this point, an older lady told us that Saint Nick was a celebrating of something that we wouldn't do if we knew the truth. She said there was this town that was pretty much broke and that they did not have any food. So this man took three children and cooked them. He then gave this food to the town and they made him a Saint for saving his town.

Now I was hoping that this woman was wrong because I won't be celebrating such an awful thing. I came home and told Kenny about it. He told me that he doesn't think that’s true. So I did some research and here is a synopsis of what I found:

Nicholas was brought up extremely well by his parents. His parents passed away when he was very young. It was his determination to devote his inheritance to works of charity. The first of which was when he found out that a citizen had lost all of his money. This man was going to have to have his three daughters who could not find a husband because they did not have a dowry go into prostitution. When Nicholas found out he threw a bag of gold into the house. The first daughter was married off shortly after because she now had a dowry. Nicholas then followed suit with the other girls until they were married. Now the father did find out who it was and overwhelmed him with his gratitude.

There was a picture on the three purses which came to be mistaken for the heads of three children and so this gave is what the old lady was talking about. These children were not killed by Saint Nicholas but by an innkeeper that she spoke of.

For more information, check out http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=371