December 6 · Catholic · traditional calendar

St Nicholas Day 2026 (December 6): the real bishop, the legends and Santa Claus

St Nicholas Day is December 6, a Sunday in 2026, when the Second Sunday of Advent takes the Catholic Mass. What is known about the bishop of Myra, which stories are legend, how he became Santa, and why some Christians object.

Patronage: children, sailors, merchants, travellers
Era: 4th century

December 6, 2026: a Sunday, and why that matters

St Nicholas Day is December 6, and in 2026 it falls on a Sunday: the Second Sunday of Advent. What that changes depends on the tradition. Catholic: Nicholas is an optional memorial, and the Table of Liturgical Days ranks the Sundays of Advent near the top (no. 2) and optional memorials near the bottom (no. 12), so the Sunday wins. The US bishops' calendar for 2027, which begins with Advent 2026, lists Sunday, December 6, 2026 only as the Second Sunday of Advent, with the readings Isaiah 40:1–5, 9–11, 2 Peter 3:8–14 and Mark 1:1–8; Nicholas is not kept at Mass that day. A parish named after him keeps its title as a solemnity (no. 4), which still gives way to an Advent Sunday and, under norm 60, moves to the closest day not ranked in nos. 1–8. As we read the table, that is Monday, December 7, which holds only the memorial of St Ambrose. Anglican: in the Church of England's Common Worship calendar "Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c.326" is a Lesser Festival, and a Lesser Festival that falls on a Sunday is normally omitted for that year, though a minister may, where there is sufficient reason, keep it on the nearest available day. Orthodox: he is commemorated on December 6, and the Orthodox Church in America's calendar lists him on Sunday, December 6, 2026. In churches that keep the old Julian calendar that date falls on December 19 of the civil calendar, a Saturday in 2026. In the home: the Dutch parcels evening on Saturday, December 5 and the German boots on the night of December 5 to 6 are customs, not liturgy, so no ranking rule moves them.

What is actually known

Very little can be proved, and Catholic scholarship has said so plainly for more than a century. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 found "scarcely anything historically certain" about him except that he was bishop of Myra, in Lycia on the south coast of Asia Minor, today's Turkey, in the fourth century. Even the year of his death is unsettled: the Encyclopedia gives December 6 of 345 or 352, the Cult of Saints database at Oxford lists 343, and the Church of England's calendar says about 326. No biography from his lifetime survives. What survives is the evidence of a cult. According to the historian Jona Lendering, Proclus of Constantinople praised him in a speech in 440, and that speech already contains legend. The earliest surviving text of his hagiography, the Oxford database says, is a Greek miracle account known as the Praxis de Stratelatis, written probably at Myra in the late fifth or early sixth century: Nicholas calms a riot at the port of Andriake, stops the execution of three innocent men as the sword is about to fall, and rebukes a governor who had been bribed. The same database finds his cult at Myra mentioned in a late sixth-century Life of another Nicholas, the abbot of Sion, and the Catholic Encyclopedia reports a church built for him at Constantinople by the emperor Justinian. A continuous account of his life does not seem to have been compiled before the eighth or ninth century, the date range the Oxford editors give; the Life by Michael the Archimandrite belongs to that stage, though scholars place it anywhere from about 700 onward. Not everyone is so sparing. Fr Gerardo Cioffari of the Centro Studi Nicolaiani at Bari argues that his birth at Patara and his popular election as bishop have a historical basis. So we have a real bishop, a real and early cult, and a gap of centuries before the stories were written down.

The legends, labelled

Three stories carry most of his fame, and each needs a label. The dowries: in Michael's Life, a ruined father is about to give up his three daughters to prostitution, and Nicholas throws a bag of gold through the window at night, once for each daughter, until the father catches him and is made to promise silence while Nicholas lives. Cioffari holds the story to be historical in its essentials because its versions are ancient and differ; it cannot be proved, and we would call it a possible memory told as a legend. The sailors: Nicholas is the sailors' patron, yet Cioffari thinks the story of his rescuing them fits a different man better, a later abbot, Nicholas of Sion. The three boys: the tale that he raised three murdered boys from a pickling tub is the most famous and the least historical. It is not in Michael's Life or the other earliest Lives, and Adam English, as Wikipedia reports him, treats it as a late medieval addition. An early form may be the three scholars of a liturgical play in the twelfth-century Fleury manuscript. Lendering calls the pickled-boys story without historical value, while noting the argument that it grew from a misunderstood picture of the three daughters. It still matters, because Lendering credits it with making Nicholas the patron of children. One thing that sounds like legend is history. In 1087 merchants took his body from Myra to Bari in southern Italy; the Catholic Encyclopedia says plainly that they stole it. The bones reached Bari on May 9, and the main relics remain in the church of San Nicola.

The slap at Nicaea: a late legend

Every December the internet shares a picture of Santa hitting a heretic. The story says that at the Council of Nicaea in 325 Nicholas lost patience with Arius, the Alexandrian priest who taught that the Son was a creature, and struck him. This is a late legend. Whether Nicholas attended at all is uncertain. According to Lendering, the list of bishops survives in eleven medieval copies and only three name him. Theodore the Lector reported him there around 515, but the Catholic Encyclopedia doubted it because he is missing from the old lists, and Cioffari thinks the name probably came from a Life. The blow has no early witness. Candida Moss, writing in The Daily Beast on December 11, 2022 and following the researcher Roger Pearse, traces it to Petrus de Natalibus, a late fourteenth-century bishop near Venice, who says only that Nicholas struck "a certain Arian" in the jaw. Arius himself appears as the target in a sixteenth-century compilation. That puts the first report about a thousand years after the council. Writers from several traditions agree: Philip Kosloski at the Catholic site Aleteia says the story cannot be traced before the fourteenth century, the Reformed writer Wes Bredenhof finds no evidence for it, and Cioffari counts it among popular developments, though he finds it in keeping with Nicholas's temper. Aleteia also notes that the medieval versions have a slap, not a punch. Lendering takes the other side, arguing that nobody would invent something so embarrassing to a saint. The Orthodox Church in America's Life still tells it, adding that he was stripped of his bishop's emblems until a vision restored him. We think a gap of a thousand years outweighs the argument from embarrassment.

Proverbs 19:17 and Matthew 6:3–4: what they say and do not say

Two passages suit his day, though neither has anything to do with him. Proverbs 19:17 reads: "Kindness to the poor is a loan to the LORD, and He will repay the lender" (BSB). The King James Version has "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord". This is a proverb about God's regard for the poor. It names no sum, no date and no earthly return, and it is not a promise that giving makes anyone rich. Jesus takes up giving in the Sermon on the Mount: "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matthew 6:3–4, BSB). The King James Version ends "shall reward thee openly"; the word is not in the BSB, the American Standard Version or the Douay–Rheims, which has the same verse numbers here. Three things are worth noticing. The context is giving "to the needy", set against those who sound a trumpet to be honoured (6:2), so it is about charity, not presents for one's own family. The secrecy guards the giver's motive; it does not forbid every visible good deed, since a chapter earlier Jesus tells the same hearers to let their light shine (5:16). And the Nicholas of the dowry story fits the passage closely, with his bag through the window at night and his demand for silence. That is a reason the story was loved. It is not evidence that it happened, and the passage says nothing about Nicholas, December or shoes.

Shoes on the doorstep, by country

The custom of leaving out shoes is not in Scripture or in Michael's Life, where the gold goes through a window and no footwear is mentioned. A University of Hamburg article featuring the lecturer Jan Gehm says children received small presents on December 6 from the twelfth century, and a history published by the St Nicholas Center credits nuns of that century with first putting gifts in children's shoes; the exact origin is hard to pin down. The practice differs by country. Germany: according to the public broadcaster WDR's Planet Wissen, children put polished shoes outside the door on the night of December 5 to 6 and find apples, nuts and sweets; since the seventeenth century Nicholas has often come in person too, sometimes with a frightening companion such as Knecht Ruprecht. The Netherlands: DutchNews reports that Sinterklaas arrives on a Saturday about three weeks ahead, and that the feast has shifted to the evening of December 5, pakjesavond or "parcels evening", with shoes left by the fire or radiator for a small present or chocolate. It also reports the Meertens Institute's date for the first public arrival, at Zwolle in 1873. So a Dutch family and a German one are keeping the same saint with different evenings and different habits, and neither habit is a church law.

From Sinterklaas to Santa Claus

The Reformation took a dim view of saints, and the gift-bringer began to change. The Hamburg article says the Christ Child, the Christkind, emerged in Protestant regions as an alternative to Nicholas and that the main giving moved to Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Luther is often credited with this, but the article calls that "disputed and not proven"; Luther's writings mention both figures as gift-bringers, and from 1531 giving in his own family was reportedly linked to the "Holy Christ". In the Netherlands, according to the St Nicholas Center, after the Calvinist Reformation his observance was outlawed, and the Alteration of 1578 banned public Catholic worship; Protestant clergy ordered his fairs closed, but parents kept going. The usual American story then says Dutch settlers carried Sinterklaas to New Amsterdam. The evidence is thin: the Center says scholars find scant evidence of such traditions in New Netherland, and the earliest reference it knows is a 1675 baker's receipt from Albany for Sinterklaas goods. The clear trail starts in New York after 1800. Washington Irving's satirical History of New York (1809) gave readers a jolly, pipe-smoking Nicholas. John Pintard, founder of the New-York Historical Society, promoted him as patron of the society and the city, and commissioned a broadside of him for a dinner on December 6, 1810. Tom Jerman, author of a history of Santa Claus, cautions that Irving's 1809 book never mentions Santa Claus and that its midwinter gift-giving first appeared in the 1812 edition. The Children's Friend (1821) brought "Santeclaus" by sleigh with a flying reindeer on Christmas Eve, not December 6. The poem now called "The Night Before Christmas" appeared anonymously in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823; it is credited to Clement Clarke Moore, though the descendants of Henry Livingston dispute that and the question is unresolved. Thomas Nast's first Santa, "Santa Claus in Camp", came out in Harper's Weekly on January 3, 1863, and his "Merry Old Santa Claus" followed on January 1, 1881, both printed in black and white. Coca-Cola's paintings by Haddon Sundblom began in 1931; the company itself says it did not create Santa, and The Ferret's fact check found red-suited Santas well before then. The name, Lendering says, blends Sinterklaas and the German Sankt Niklaus. Not much of the bishop is left in the man in the red suit, but we think the line from one to the other is real, though Jerman argues that Santa comes more directly from the frightening gift-bringers who replaced Nicholas in Protestant Germany.

How Christians see St Nicholas, and the Protestant objections

Catholic: Nicholas is a bishop kept with an optional memorial and invoked as a patron of sailors, merchants, travellers and children; the Baltimore Catechism teaches that by honouring the saints, as the chosen friends of God, Catholics honour God himself. On Santa, Joe Heschmeyer of Catholic Answers argued on December 16, 2025 that lying is always wrong, but that telling the true story of Nicholas and playing Santa as make-believe are fine. Orthodox: he is Nicholas the Wonderworker, kept on December 6 and again on May 9 for the coming of his relics to Bari; the Catholic Encyclopedia itself notes how old and strong his veneration is in the Greek Church and in Russia. Anglican: the Church of England keeps him as a Lesser Festival, which a parish may observe or not. Lutheran: the Augsburg Confession (1530, article 21) allows saints to be remembered so that believers may imitate their faith and good works, but says Scripture does not teach calling on them for help. The Protestant objections come in two kinds, and they should not be confused. The first is to the saint's day. Reformed churches following the Westminster Directory for Public Worship (1645) hold that no day but the Lord's Day is commanded under the gospel; for them December 6 is a date, not a feast. The second is to Santa, and it is about truth. The Baptist pastor John Piper, answering a mother on the Ask Pastor John podcast (December 12, 2018) who quoted "Do not lie to one another" (Colossians 3:9), said the myth cannot be kept up as fact without misleading children, and that it obscures a more thrilling truth. Kenneth Berding of Biola University, citing Ephesians 4:25 (December 18, 2014), adds that Santa borrows divine traits such as knowing everything and can blur a child's picture of God, and he advises parents who have played along to apologise. Not every Protestant objects: Stephen Nichols, writing for the Reformed ministry Ligonier, tells the story of Nicholas with appreciation and turns it toward the incarnation.

Our take

This is our own view, not a ruling for any church, and some readers will disagree with it. Telling children about the real Nicholas beats both pretending and banning. On pretending, we side with Piper and Berding on the narrow point: if a child sincerely asks whether Santa is real and a parent answers yes as plain fact, that is a false statement, and Colossians 3:9 has no December exception. But we part from anyone who turns that into a ban. A game the whole house knows is a game is no more a lie than a bedtime story, and a family that throws out Santa altogether loses the easiest opening it will ever have to talk about a real bishop whose people remembered him for mercy. Tell children there was a real man, that the red suit came much later, and that adults still enjoy the game. Second, label the legends. "The story says" costs nothing. The slap in particular should be dropped from history: it is a fourteenth-century tale, and the Church did not answer Arius with a fist. It answered him with a creed. Third, if your family keeps the day, do what the texts actually talk about. A shoe full of chocolate is a fine pleasure, but the legend is about gold given so that three women would not be sold, and Matthew 6 is about giving to the needy in secret. Let the children choose one gift for someone who needs it, and tell nobody. Fourth, the Catholic calendar is right to let the Sunday win in 2026. That day's Gospel has John the Baptist saying, "After me will come One more powerful than I" (Mark 1:7, BSB), and a saint remembered for a hidden hand can stand aside for that without any loss.

Over to you

Did your family keep St Nicholas, Santa or neither when you were young, and what would you keep or change for the children around you now?

Sources and references

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