A pilgrimage in Romania became an occasion to think upon the enduring spiritual force of St. Nicholas, as well as the mysterious and magical charm of Santa Claus descended from his memory. It was also a time for me to delve into the mysteries of love, loss, and life.
A Pilgrim’s Progress
Pilgrimages are times to reflect and recharge oneself by means of a sacred journey. As I was on this pilgrimage, I was very much enjoying the postings of a Muslim co-worker who was simultaneously on the Hajj in Mecca. Even if we didn’t share a common faith, I knew how meaningful that experience was to her.
My Romanian-American wife and I travel to her ancestral homeland every summer to visit her mother, who lives in Bucharest. Romania is a majority Orthodox country and, full disclosure, I am an Eastern Orthodox priest. Over the years we have taken part in a great number of pilgrimages organized by the Romanian Orthodox Church. We have thus toured Greece and the Holy Land, as well as numerous pilgrimages to areas within Romania itself. The pilgrimage in question was a four-day tour of various Romanian churches and monasteries in Transylvania. It was obligatory for me to be wearing the traditional black cassock and silver cross identifying me as a priest.
Here Comes Santa Claus…
During one of our many stops, a fellow pilgrim approached me and she asked, “Father, have you been to Bari, Italy?”
“I have not.”
“You must go, Father. They have the relics of St. Nicholas there!”
“I’ve heard this,” I replied. “But we have the right hand of St. Nicholas in Bucharest.”
“Yes,” she said. “But in Bari they have the whole body!”
I heard her words with puzzlement. Well, they have almost the whole body. But they don’t have the right hand.
Some further background here is needed. How did almost the whole body of St. Nicholas end up in Bari, Italy in the first place? And how did the right hand of the Saint find its way to Romania?
Way back in AD 1087, some unscrupulous Italian pilgrims had stolen the skeleton of St. Nicholas from its original tomb in Myra (in modern-day Turkey) and taken it to the Southern Italian city of Bari. Today these relics reside in a cathedral in honor of St. Nicholas.
Then, somewhere in the late 1500s, the Archbishop of Bari apparently sent the right hand of St. Nicholas to Prince Michael the Brave of Moldova and Wallachia, in recognition of that leader’s struggle against the Turkish threat to Europe. A description of this transaction is recorded in a document preserved in a monastery at Mount Athos. The Prince then gifted the relics in 1599 to the Church of Saint George, located in what would evolve to become downtown Bucharest, where they still reside today.
I have venerated the right hand of Saint Nicholas in Bucharest on many occasions, having visited Romania at least once a year starting in 2004. In fact, when I went to that church back in 2014, I found a news team inside covering the story of how church authorities in Bari were denying the claim that the relic in Bucharest was the right hand of the Saint. In response, the Romanian Church announced that they would be open to subjecting their relic and those in Bari to DNA testing in order to establish their connection.
Bari did not agree to the test. And I think that’s a shame. It would have been scientifically fascinating to obtain the genetic sequencing of a known figure from ancient history. The tests would also have definitively established whether the relic in Bucharest comes from the same skeleton as that in Bari.
An examination by anthropologists of the relics in Bari in 1957 had already confirmed that neither hand was among the bones at that site. And the paper trail for the right hand in Romania seems pretty solid. Putting all this together, the skeletal hand in Bucharest has as reasonable a claim to authenticity as any ancient relic can expect.
Waiting in Line for Santa Claus
This conversation with the Romanian woman sent me into a reminiscence of an earlier time in my life in which I would regularly go to venerate, as it were, something I knew wasn’t “the whole body.”
I am speaking of the times when, waiting in a line of other eager children at the mall, I would await my chance to speak with Santa Claus. Now, we understood and accepted that this wasn’t the REAL Santa Claus. The actual Santa Claus was at the North Pole preparing for his upcoming Christmas efforts. This man at the mall was one of Santa’s helpers. He could be black, white, it didn’t matter—just so long as he was otherwise dressed to resemble THE actual Santa Claus. And when I told him what I wanted for Christmas, I fully believed in my heart of hearts that Santa’s helper would convey my request to his boss.
As we were getting off the bus to visit yet another monastery, I recalled how I personally had held on to my belief in Santa even after my mother thought she had told me otherwise.
In mid-November of my 5th grade, my late mother noticed that I was talking excitedly about Santa and the upcoming Christmas. She pulled me aside and asked, “Do you remember last Spring when I told you there was no Easter Bunny?”
“Yes,” I answered earnestly and honestly, unaware of where this conversation could be going.
She sighed and smiled slightly, with the compassion she always exuded. “I thought you would understand then that I also meant there was no Santa Claus.”
I absorbed it and I pretended I already knew this. But, in fact, I was shocked. I felt as if Santa Claus had just died.
“I know, Mom. I just like playing along that I believe in Santa. You know, for Joni’s sake.”
My mother saw the tears in my eyes. She knew I was lying. But she also played along.
“We’ll still let Joni have a fun Christmas with Santa,” she said.
Christmas with Joni
As we were once again on a long bus ride to the next monastery, my thoughts continued to travel to childhood Christmas time. We were five kids–the eldest Mike, followed two years later by Scott, then six years later came my identical twin Kevin and I, and finally Joni two years later as the youngest of us all.
One Christmas, when she was maybe just five years old, Joni surprised us all with a secret project. She had made handmade Christmas cards for the whole family, brightly colored with crayons, in which she wrote the message: “Merry Christmas and have a nice dinner.”
Christmas dinner was indeed always a special thing. In her childhood innocence, she wanted to recognize that and celebrate it as an integral part of the holiday. This immediately became a greeting that we shared as a family and would continue to do so.
At some point, there must have been a final Christmas dinner with all of us five kids, and our Mom and Dad. I don’t know exactly when that was. I do know one thing for sure–we did not know then that it was to be the last. But on that last full family Christmas, we undoubtedly quoted again Joni’s treasured Christmas wish. “Merry Christmas and have a nice dinner” has endured as a memory of an idyllic time.
Christmas without Joni
Our mother passed away in 2006. Our father would follow her in 2009. At just 41 years old upon his death, I was certainly younger than most people are when they become bereft of both parents. Facing the eventual death of your parents is considered part of life. Losing a younger sibling is another matter.
Joni died on December 10th, 2020. She had been in and out of alcohol treatment programs a number of times. It was not always easy having a relationship with her, especially when she was out of a program and using. But I tried my best. We shared with each other recommendations for shows to binge and discussed episodes.
She stayed in her last program for six months. I was so hopeful that this time she really would keep things on track. She left the program in late November and I knew from conversations with her that she was using just a week later. In our final conversation, she expressed despair about whether she could ever get better. My last words to her were, “I love you, Joni.” I am possibly the last person in our family to have spoken with her.
Because of COVID, there could be no normal funeral. I delivered the eulogy at a Zoom service.
And so began that litany of dates you pass by for the first time without the loved one. The first Christmas without Joni came quickly. Her first birthday after her passing would wait until July 28th. But I also had the bittersweet experience of watching further seasons of shows the two of us had shared and discussed. “Joni would have loved this” became my constant thought as I both smiled and wept my way through episodes.
Waiting in Line for Saint Nicholas
I spent the day after that pilgrimage physically recovering from the sometimes long and grueling days of the trip. But I resolved that the next day I had to make a visit to the relics of St. Nicholas. I had spent so much of the pilgrimage reflecting, not so much on the places I had visited, but on Santa Claus and that Saint.
A twenty-minute trolley bus ride dropped me off downtown. After a walk of just two blocks, I arrived at the Church of St. George.
I was trying not to put too much pressure on myself that this visit to the relics needed to elicit any profound religious experience in me. There had been previous visits in which it did—and visits in which not so much. And that’s always okay.
I headed in. As my eyes adjusted to the darkened space, I saw the spot where I knew the relics resided.
There was no line. How could there be no line? There were perhaps twenty total people inside the church, busy with prayers and other venerations. No judgment, likely every person there had venerated St. Nicholas before I arrived. But at the current moment, the right hand of St. Nicholas was quite available. No waiting. No line.
I walked slowly deeper into the church. The relics are housed in a silver reliquary in the shape of a hand; this is situated under a wooden canopy a full foot above floor level. I stepped up and gazed upon a bone of the hand visible through a circle of glass over the middle of the hand. I leaned over and kissed that spot.
I put my hand on the reliquary and looked up at an icon of St. Nicholas on the wall above the relics and asked him for his intercession.
And I didn’t know what exactly to do now. I turned and saw that a young woman was waiting behind me for the chance to venerate. So I leaned over and kissed him again and stepped down from the platform to give her room.
I stepped backward and leaned against a wall opposite the reliquary. Despite all of my reflections on the saint during that pilgrimage, I did not feel anything profound in this visit. I wished I had. As I said, during past visits I sometimes did. But not now. Not this time. And so, I bowed in the direction of the reliquary, made the sign of the cross, and left the church.
There’s Something about St. Nicholas
Arguably, the only Saint revered more greatly than St. Nicholas is the Mother of God herself. After the historic meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill in Cuba in 2016, permission was granted for the relics of St. Nicholas to travel to Russia. Thousands upon thousands of people waited in line for long hours for the chance to venerate the Saint. They waited in line much longer than I had ever waited to see Santa’s Helper. So deep is the devotion among Russians to St. Nicholas, that they have a remarkable saying: “Если Бог умрет – его место займет святой Николай.” (“If God were to die, Saint Nicholas would take his place.”)
Obviously this is hyperbolic, but I would suggest that it is not much beyond what a typical child has for Santa Claus. Many children interact with Santa Claus on the level of a minor deity. Santa is invested with powers approaching omniscience and omnipotence. “He knows when you’ve been good or bad so be good for goodness sake.” And he is envisioned as capable of visiting every home in the world on a single night aboard a sleigh with flying reindeer.
As I continued reflecting on all these matters, I wondered if possibly the spiritual power of the actual St. Nicholas himself was somehow finding a second outlet into the world via the persona of Santa Claus. You may know roughly how Saint Nicholas turned into Santa Claus. The tradition that he secretly threw gold through the window of an impoverished man with three daughters (who might have ended up in prostitution without dowries to marry) turned into Santa putting gifts in stockings. (The more interesting legend that he punched the Heresiarch Arius in the face at the Council of Nicaea is late and spurious.) By the time I was watching the likes of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” on TV in the 70s, Saint Nicholas the Bishop had become a jolly old elf with a wife named Mrs. Claus who for no good reason lived at the North Pole. But Santa Claus is still very clearly a derivation from the historical St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra.
Back to that Russian proverb for a moment. “If God were to die, Saint Nicholas would take his place.” Might it just be that this proverb was, on some level, prophetic? As Western English-speaking lands secularized, a deep spiritual longing for the Divine found expression in the pop culture version of the Santa Claus that I was raised with. Maybe it is not a coincidence that a figure revered to such a degree in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches would later generate a doppelgänger of sorts within a majority Protestant culture that is otherwise squeamish about ecclesiastical hero worship.
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, lend your ear this way…
I imagine St. Nicholas is amused by the cult of Santa Claus. And he hopes and indeed prays that it all somehow leads people eventually back to the God he loves and served in his earthly life.
The famous editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church entitled “Is There a Santa Claus?” (The Sun, New York City, September 21, 1897) speaks ultimately to the human yearning and hope, not just for Santa, but for the existence of something beyond this mortal shell.
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to our life its highest beauty and joy.”
“Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond.”
Ora Pro Me
My wife was going to spend two extra weeks in Bucharest with her mother. I needed to return because I only had permission from my Bishop to be away from my parish for three Sundays. Even when I had booked my flights, I knew that my date of departure, July 28th, was Joni’s birthday. Were she living, I would have called her to wish her a happy birthday.
As I sat alone at the gate, waiting for my plane to board, my mind coursed again through all of these reflections from that pilgrimage.
I smiled and prayed. “Happy birthday, Joni. I sure do miss you. Pray for me. And pray for me, St. Nicholas.”
And to all of you, I say, “Merry Christmas, and have a nice dinner.”