Abseiling Santa!

With thanks to Amalarian for inspiration, to Ann who is the writer and storyteller in our household and Peter for keeping Santa hanging outside his bedroom window.

One story of St Nicholas, as told to a class of Year 5 children in Australia

His parents die when he is quite young and as a young man he inherits money. He's not sure what he wants to do with it but knows he doesn't want to live the life of a spoilt man. He walks the city at night - the city of Myra in Lycea (Turkey), listening to people's voices in their houses and listening to their problems and miseries and he hits on the idea of doing something about these problems. One night, he hears the voices of a man and his wife talking about their finances. The husband is a merchant and has lost all his money so he'll no longer be able to pay out big dowries to marry his daughters. It's so bad that the daughters will have to go out to work. He hears the girls crying in their bedroom so he goes home and fetches three bags of gold. He returns to the house, climbs onto the roof and drops the bags down the chimney. The girls have washed their stockings that evening and hung them on the fender to dry, so the bags of gold bounce into stockings. When the family gets up on Christmas morning they discover the presents that will save the three girls from poverty and misery; hence the chimney and the stockings and presents to children. This is why St Nicholas is the patron saint of children and pawnbrokers (among other things).

A group of Australian schoolchildren really enjoyed this story and enjoyed spotting the connections with modern Christmas celebrations. One bright boy observed, "If Saint Nicholas was a real person and he was born he must have died." The story teller agreed but also pointed out that saints are believed to do miracles long after their deaths. The children were happy with this comment and spent the rest of the lesson discussing saints, miracles, life and death. The following morning the school had a visit from a deputation of parents protesting that it was not the job of the school to tell their children that Santa Claus was dead.

Isn't it interesting how children are often capable of far deeper and more complex understanding than adults!