THE PRESS MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1981. Above the Christmas muddle

Press, 21 December 1981, Page 18

THE PRESS MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1981. Above the Christmas muddle

Christmas is a muddle. Those who are spending this week immersed in the bustle of last-minute shopping, and of that do not'quite arrange, can at least have the consolation of knowing that Christmas has always been a muddle since the confusion about visitors’ accommodation in Bethlehem 1981 years ago. (Even the year of Christ’s birth is uncertain.) /-■' ” The festival we share on Friday muddles up the Yule-tide feast of the pagan Norsemen, the Saturnalia of the preChristian Romans, and the birth of Christianity. The fixing of the day has been argued about for almost two millenia and the Armenian Church still insists on January 6. Santa Claus, the centrepiece of the whole show for many children, takes his name from a Dutch corruption of the name of St Nicholas, whose feast day is actually December 6. In his deliveries Santa gets muddled about more than the date, for St Nicholas was supposed to distribute gifts only to “good-children.”

St Nicholas is said to have been a fourth-century bishop at Myra in what is now Islamic Turkey. With his generosities, he is one of the most popular saints in Christendom, which has piled'muddle upon muddle because so many different claims have been made for him. He was the patron saint of Russia until he was declared redundant there in 1917. The Russian connection may still be noticed by the neighbouring Poles this Christmas. ■ St Nicholas is still claimed as patron by the citizens of Aberdeen. Scholars, pawnbrokers, and sailors all make special claims to his protection. Pawnbrokers, surely Christmas symbols in themselves as we crowd into debt for our celebrations, derive their own symbol of three golden balls, or bags, from old St Nicholas. There, as Charles Dickens might have said to Tiny Tim, lies a story. St Nicholas once gave three bags of gold to a poor man for his daughters, sb that the. daughters need not earn their dowries in a much less

reputable manner. To demonstrate that no sexist favouritism existed, busy St Nicholas also restored to life three little boys who had been cut up and pickled in a salting tub to be served as bacon. Small wonder that he enjoys a special place in children’s affections.

In the most curious Christmas muddle, the festival was abolished altogether in the name of Christianity. During the English Civil War in the seventeenth century the victorious Puritan Parliament decided that Christmas—rich food, friendship, and general good cheer—was an intolerable show of happiness and frivolity. Those good Christians banned Christmas for more than a decade before King Charles 11, restored to his throne in 1660, celebrated the event by restoring Christmas fun to his subjects. Charles II deserves to creep in here, too, because of the good sense he showed in - reconciling factions among his warring subjects, and for his refusal to seek revenge against those with whom he might have claimed great quarrels. New Zealand has not quite been through a civil war this year, but 1981 has been the country’s most divisive period for many a year. More harsh words have been exchanged and, more unpleasant incidents indulged or suffered than most of us like to remember. Even the recent General Election came close to making a new muddle for Christmas, close to showing us that we did not know our own collective mind about things that matter. . , Christmas as a time of general geniality, and forgiveness towards all, is rather a hackneyed theme. New Zealanders need those kindly sentiments among themselves more than usual this Christmas. Remembering the generosities of St Nicholas (or Santa Claus), and the genial conciliations of Charles 11, would do us no harm. Attention to the central theme of Christmas and a burst of cheerful . friendliness could lift us, at least for a time, above the,,more general muddle of messages that Christmas seems to impose.