by Jeff Guinn
In the morning the village was full of the news that old Shem’s daughters had miraculously received dowries from an unknown stranger who’d somehow gotten into their house during the night to leave his wonderful gifts in their stockings. Almost immediately, it was announced there would be three weddings within the week. Everyone in Patara attended. Phillip wasn’t the priest who married the three girls and their suitors, but I noticed during the service that he was looking at me and smiling with pride.
All three of Shem’s daughters had long, happy marriages. I swore then and there I would find more opportunities to leave presents and make others happy, always coming in secret during the night.
And that’s how my career as a gift-giver began.
“You’re nearing sixteen,” Phillip told me one day, when I’d come to report another successful gift-giving trip, this one to the children of some nomads in a desert camp to the northwest.
“You’re now a man, and a man has to make some decisions.”
TWO
Nicholas, Bishop
It first I confined my gift-giving to Patara. Every hungry family received money for food, every ragged family got money for clothing. This money was always left with children, so their parents would not feel ashamed. Mostly, I visited houses, although sometimes I sneaked into tents if that was where need existed. I always gave my gifts in secret and at night. Not every night, of course, but once or twice every month.
However, I soon found that my simple plan had to be changed. By the time I’d been making my after-dark excursions for six months, everyone in the village knew some mysterious benefactor was entering homes at night and leaving money as a sign of his visit. Some greedy people who hoped to be next began sitting up nights, and sleeping during the day. A few went so far as to spend dusk until dawn in front of their houses hoping to spot the unknown gift-giver passing by, and to convince him to leave his coins for them, whether they really needed the money or not. Too many eyes were watching; I could no longer leave the inn and do my good deeds in secret.
I was frustrated. I consulted Phillip, who said I should simply think about it until a solution presented itself. Soon enough, it did. One evening at the inn I overheard a merchant who was staying overnight talk about a poor teenager in nearby Myra. This girl’s legs had been weak from birth. She lived with her mother, who considered her to be a useless burden. A dressmaker in the young girl’s town wanted to hire her to keep customer accounts, but, despite her spirit and intelligence, she could not walk from her home to the dressmaker’s shop. If she had a stout pair of crutches, however, the girl could manage the short journey. But charity was scarce in Myra, and no one would buy the crutches for her.
“It’s time to take my presents to other places,” I told Phillip. “I’ll go the twenty miles to Myra and leave money in the girl’s stocking. Then she can buy her crutches, go to work for the dressmaker, and have a chance for a better life.”
Phillip said it was a noble plan, and so that day I borrowed a mule from the inn’s stable, telling the man who worked there that I wanted to visit a friend in Myra. I departed early in the morning and arrived just at dusk.
Discreet inquiries helped me learn where the girl lived—in a dirty, one-room house that looked to me like it was infested with spiders and mice. Still, it was easy enough to enter unnoticed after she and her mother were asleep. I left the money in the girl’s stocking, took a room at the nearby inn, and allowed myself the pleasure the next morning of waiting to see the girl buy her crutches and begin her new life. But the girl’s mother took the money from her, and spent it on herself while her daughter remained helpless at home.
“That mother needs to be punished,” I complained to Phillip after returning home to Patara. “She’s evil to deprive her daughter that way.”
As always, my friend the priest was wiser than I. “It’s not your place to assign blame, Nicholas,” he said sternly. “Perhaps the greatest fault was with your plan, rather than with the mother. Did you leave a note with the coins, saying the money was to be used for crutches? No? I thought not.”
“I know that woman would have ignored such a note,” I said peevishly. “Writing it would have been a waste of my time. If you know a way I could have done better, why don’t you tell me? I’m tired from the trip and I don’t feel like guessing.”
Phillip shrugged, “The answer seems simple enough to me. The girl can’t walk from her home to the dressmaker’s shop leaning on coins. If she needs crutches, give her crutches. Her mother can’t spend those.”
He was right, of course. I went to the market in Patara to buy crutches, only to learn none were available. Well, I had some basic skill at carving wood. I simply found a tree with proper-sized branches, cut two down, and trimmed them to the right shape. To make the gift more special, I removed the bark from the branches and spent the better part of a week carving intricate designs into the wood—birds and flowers and people with happy, smiling faces to remind the girl there was goodness in the world.
When the crutches were ready, I rode the mule back to Myra, waited until dark, entered the girl’s house, and silently laid the crutches by her sleeping mat. I wasn’t able to stay the next morning to see what happened next, but a few weeks later the merchant from whom I had first heard the girl’s story returned to our inn and told how she had begun working for the dressmaker. Two months later the story took an even happier turn; feeling proud that her crippled daughter had done so well, the mother also took proper work. Together, mother and daughter earned enough money to move to a better, cleaner house.
I took heart from the experience. At night at the inn I made it my business to listen to the guests as they gossiped over dinner, telling stories about nearby villages and residents there in need. As often as possible, when I heard that someone needed help, I tried to provide it. Occasionally, I’d still leave money with children, but more often now I’d leave warm cloaks for a family in rags, or sandals for parents and children so poor they had to go around barefoot.
As my adventures spread farther and farther from my home village, so did the tale of the mysterious benefactor who left nighttime gifts. As usual, the stories far surpassed fact. I never was able to get much more than fifty miles from home, but myth had it that I’d made visits as far away as the far northern coast. There was immediate benefit; the greedy citizens of Patara stopped watching out for me every night, and I was once again able to make occasional stops in my own hometown.
Yet I still wasn’t satisfied. Rumor had me traveling most of the known world, from Rome to Jerusalem and back again. Rumor or not, the thought intrigued me. My desire to give was unrestricted by borders between countries. I had the money to book passage by ship or wagon train to almost anywhere, and that is how I thought I’d spend my adult life. But, as usual, Phillip found a flaw in my plan.
“You’re nearing sixteen,” he told me one day, when I’d come to report another successful gift-giving trip, this one to the children of some nomads in a desert camp to the northwest. “You’re now a man, and a man has to make some decisions. You need a profession. Otherwise, you’ll gain a reputation as a wealthy, lazy fool. Besides, no matter what good deeds you do at night, you need an honest job for the daytime hours, if only so you’ll better appreciate what other men and women do to earn their daily bread.”
I hadn’t thought about much of anything beyond giving gifts at night. Truly, I didn’t mind the idea of finding a profession. The few people who’d inherited enough wealth to sit home all day were mocked by everybody else, and rightly so. There’s nothing wrong with hard, honest work.
“What should I do?” I asked Phillip.
He replied that I ought to consider my interests and find a job where the work would be both enjoyable to me and helpful to the community.
“I’d like to travel more,” I said. “Maybe I could invest some of my money in merchandise and open shops in all the civilized cities.”
“Suppose your investments were bad and you los
t all your money?” he replied. “How would you give your gifts then?”
Phillip smiled when he said this, so I knew he believed he had a solution. I must have spent ten minutes guessing before he finally said what was on his mind. “Why not become a priest? We’re supposed to be poor, it’s true, but the money you inherited would still be yours outside of the church. You could do good deeds by day as a priest and by night you could continue your other adventures. Besides, nobody finds out more about those in need than a priest.”
I agreed immediately, although I knew the life I was choosing would be difficult. It was a harsh world then, as I suppose it still is today, but Christians might have been among the people who suf fered most. Rome still ruled most of the known world (there were, of course, other countries and cultures, such as China, that dominated other parts of the Earth; those people knew as little of us then as we knew of them). There seemed to be a new Roman emperor every few years, and each had his own opinion about Christians. Some let us live in peace; others ordered terrible persecutions, starting with a man named Nero, who blamed us for burning down part of Rome, although no Christians were involved. Other religions were much more established than the Christian Church, which was still very, very new. Not long before my birth in 280 A.D., for instance, a Roman emperor named Aurelian worshiped Sol Invictus, a sun god, and that became the official religion of Rome.
The Christian Church itself had problems. Some of its leaders lived in Rome and had one idea of what the church should be like; there was another powerful group of leaders in Antioch who thought they were right about everything. Stuck in the middle were the bishops in charge of different regions and the priests who served in villages. Between Roman emperors and their own church leaders, Christians had to endure confusing times.
I always believed the whole purpose of being a Christian was to do good things for those in need, and so I chose to think about that and not about the negative aspects of becoming a priest. Phillip thought I should begin my career by going to Alexandria, in Egypt, where there was a school for priests. One of the school’s first teachers had been a man named Origen, whom I admired for translating parts of the Old Testament into different languages so that more people could read them. Origen died thirty years before I was born, but his school was still open.
I said good-bye to my friends in Patara and sailed to Alexandria, excited about my new adventure. Very few people in my hometown could read, so it was especially enjoyable to be with other students who loved books.
Alexandria was the biggest city I’d ever seen. It had libraries and wonderful statues and marketplaces offering for sale everything I
could imagine and many things I couldn’t. The teachers at the school warned us not to wander around the street too much. They insisted we should concentrate on our studies. But I found I could study hard and still explore the city by night. I enjoyed meeting people from other cultures and listening to them talk about their customs. They, in turn, were curious about Christianity. I had many interesting discussions.
I also learned that the bigger the city, the greater the number of people in need. In Alexandria, I saw slums for the first time. Entire neighborhoods of poor people were always hungry, sick, and dirty. When my schedule permitted, I made some gift-giving trips, although when I did I was always saddened to think that for every child I helped, hundreds of others were still doing without.
It also was at school in Alexandria that I first gave much thought to something very important—how to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The teachers told us it shouldn’t be celebrated at all, that we would insult Jesus if we celebrated his birthday as though he were just another human being. Origen in particular had believed that. It was one of the arguments dividing the church. Despite what Origen believed and preached, many Christians celebrated Jesus’ birth anyway, usually on January 6. They’d have a feast and sing songs in his honor. I’d never seen anything wrong with this. In fact, on that day I usually brought cheese, bread, and wine to share with Phillip and the other priests of Patara.
After listening to my teachers in Alexandria, I still believed Origen was wrong. I was young enough to be very stubborn. I decided that I would find ways to celebrate Jesus’ birthday with as many others as possible. There’s nothing wrong with happiness.
I studied in Alexandria for almost two years. Despite our differences of beliefs regarding Jesus’ birthday, the teachers decided I had learned enough to go out into the world as a priest. I wanted to travel to as many faraway places as possible, but felt I should start my new life back in my home country. I wanted to see Phillip again, and was anxious to get back to my old routine of giving gifts.
The place in Patara where Phillip and the other priests lived was called a monastery. I lived with them there for a year, and when I was nineteen they honored me by electing me abbot, or leader, after the old abbot passed away. Three years later the area’s bishop also died, and I was elected to replace him. At age twenty-two, I was the church leader for all Christians in Lycia.
“I don’t want to be bishop,” I told Phillip one day. I’d had to move out of the monastery in Patara and into a fancy house in Myra, where the bishop was expected to make his home. “I have to spend too much time meeting with other bishops, arguing about church laws. I just want to give presents to children. That’s my real interest.”
Phillip coughed before answering. Lately, he’d begun looking frail, and that worried me.
“Nicholas, I respect you as my bishop. But I’m tired of constantly hearing you say you want to give up every time things get hard,” he said. “Life will always be hard. You chose to become a priest, and you accepted when you were elected bishop. No one made you do these things. Well, I’m a tired old man. Give up, if you must. Otherwise, promise me that from now on you’ll complete everything you start, and that no matter how hard something is, you’ll have the courage to do whatever is necessary. I’m going to die soon, Nicholas, and you won’t have me here anymore to talk you out of giving up.”
I cried out of shame for my weakness and at the thought Phillip wouldn’t live forever.
“I need you, Phillip,” I sobbed. “I can’t manage without you.”
He smiled. “Everyone has his place in this world, Nicholas, and work to do before leaving it. Somehow, I think you were my work. Keep me in your heart and in your memory. And keep doing the work you were meant to do.”
“Do you mean my work with the church, or my work with giving gifts?” I asked.
Phillip just smiled. He never did answer me, but that was his way. He always believed people were better off figuring things out for themselves. When he died a few weeks later, I swore I’d honor him by being the best bishop, and the best gift-giver, who ever lived.
On the night of December 6, 343 A.D.—in my sixty-third year, if you’re counting—I gathered a few things together in a pack, including my red bishop’s robe, picked up the staff, saddled a mule, and rode quietly off to the north.
THREE
Leaving Home
That last chapter was rather sad, wasn’t it? Well, please don’t be unhappy. In that chapter and in this one, I’m telling about the days when I was still a very young man, growing in mind as well as in body. Growing up is never really easy, and we often learn our best lessons from the mistakes we make when we are young. The trick is to learn from those mistakes and go on; this is what I did.
After Phillip was buried, I went back to my house in Myra and did my best to fulfill my promises to him. I worked very hard, during the day as bishop and at night as the mysterious gift-giver. In some ways I was able to keep the two jobs separate. Bishops always had to settle disputes, some having nothing at all to do with the church. If two neighboring farmers couldn’t decide the right dividing line between their properties, for instance, they might come and ask me to pray about it until God told me the answer. I always believed God had more important things to attend to, so usually I’d go out and see the situation for myself, then suggest a co
mpromise. Most often they’d accept whatever I suggested, and afterward there might be a feast to celebrate their agreement. Bishops attended lots of feasts. I began to gain some weight.
Nights usually found me giving my gifts. As bishop, I had to travel, and if, for instance, I visited the small village of Niobrara and heard of a boy there who needed sandals, after my next overnight visit to that town he’d wake in the morning to find the sandals beside his sleeping mat. I was almost always able to get in and out without being seen; the few times I was glimpsed at all, it was by children or parents so foggy with sleep that they couldn’t be sure they weren’t dreaming.
It was inevitable, though, that descriptions of the mysterious nighttime gift-giver would emerge. I was variously described as short and tall, stout and thin, old and young, bearded and clean-shaven. I was said to be able to turn myself into mist and float into houses through cracks in doorways, or else able to fly from one place to another. The few hints I might be a demon were quickly hooted down. After all, it was immediately pointed out, I only gave good gifts, while a demon would prefer causing pain to bringing joy.
One portion of my description was usually the same, and properly so. The gift-giver was almost always described as wearing red robes with white trimming on the collar and sleeves. Well, as bishop I was usually required to wear the red robes with white trim that signified my office. More often than not, I was unable to pack other clothing for my trips, so I wore what I already had on when I sneaked off at night to give gifts.
You might wonder why, if the gift-giver and the bishop wore the same clothing, someone didn’t use this obvious clue to solve the mystery and announce we were one and the same. Also, no one ever wondered aloud why the gift-giver always left his presents in the same villages where the bishop had just visited. Well, here’s my conclusion, based on nearly two thousand years of observing human nature: People look, but they don’t always know what they’re seeing.