Yes, Virginia

One of the books I received for Christmas was Bill Bennett's latest, The True Saint Nicholas: Why He Matters to Christmas. It's a short book tracing what we know about the historical Nicholas through the development of the legends of Saint Nicholas after his death and onto the conversion of Saint Nicholas into Santa Claus. There are larger, scholarly tomes on these questions, but I have never read one of those, so I knew almost none of the details in this book. As a result, I thought the book was great.

I'd never known, for example, that Santa Claus was so uniquely American. Almost everything about the modern Santa is an American creation, and then he was exported all around the world. I suppose this is yet another example of what an awesome country America is. Indeed, it was Americans who first united Saint Nicholas and Christmas--Nicholas' feast day, is December 6, and for most of history that was the day he showed up to drop off gifts in stockings.

The book also hits on one of the things that really annoys me about Christmas these days. Christmas is a wonderful time to give gifts--after all, the whole story starts with a gift to mankind, and one of the details of that story is Magi bearing gifts. Giving gifts at Christmas is fun. Christmas is the only time of year that I enjoy shopping and going to the mall. Yet, I constantly hear people complain about the "commercialization" of Christmas, lament about being "required" to buy presents and agonizing about the "perfect gift." It saddens me a bit that so few people seem to have realized that the whole point is the joy of giving and receiving gifts with cheer and goodwill. Saint Nicholas understood the joy of gift-giving. Santa understands the joy of gift-giving. Why is it so hard for everyone else to get it?