A Christmas story that doesn’t make it into the carols.
It is a fact, strange but true, that Santa Claus’ corpse was stolen from its tomb. Though Christmas carols and Claymation specials have for some reason neglected the heist of St. Nick’s dead body, the details of that theft actually can tell us a lot about mythmaking and the power of stories, however bizarre, to shape reality. Plus, it’s just a good tale to tell at holiday parties.
The gist of it is this: In 1087 two Italian cities, Venice and Bari, raced to be the first to steal the bones of St. Nicholas—known to us as Santa Claus—from a basilica in what is now southern Turkey. Why? Because the corpse supposedly wept a magical liquor that would cure all ills if you drank it or rubbed it on your body.
St. Nicholas was a real catch. Forget everything you know about Santa Claus. Almost everything we associate him with—the North Pole, the sled, the reindeer—is a 19th-century confection laid on top of a much older and sterner figure. The historical Nicholas was bishop of Myra, a merchant city on the Turquoise Coast at the edge of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. He was supposedly imprisoned and tortured during the Great Persecution of the Emperor Diocletian. After his death, stories accumulated around him. He had fought demons. He had sniffed out a serial killer who was pickling boys in his meat locker. He had saved three girls from prostitution by throwing bags of gold through their window late at night—a legend that is the origin of his role as a gift giver to children. And he had saved many sailors by flying through the sky to their aid during storms, calming the waves, trimming the sails, grasping the drowning by their hair and teleporting them to land.
For Venice and Bari, coastal cities on the eastern side of the boot in the north and south, respectively, and dependent on merchant ships arriving and departing from all over the known world, it would be invaluable to have a shrine devoted to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors. Businessmen from all over Europe would choose your port to set out from if they knew they could kneel at the altar of this champion of mariners. It was the best of good luck, a guarantee of calm seas and a prosperous voyage.
That was the thinking of a group of grain merchants on a routine run between Bari and the Syrian city of Antioch. Sitting around one blustery day as they crossed the Mediterranean on their three ships, they discussed the idea of stealing the saint’s bones when they passed Myra, where he was buried. It was a good time to do it: the Christian city, located in present-day Turkey, had just been invaded by the Seljuk Turks. The whole region was in turmoil. This was the time to slip in and steal the body.
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