Nicholas- the Fantastic Origin of Santa Claus

by Cody W Urban

  The third lesson Kenalfon had in store for his pupil was archery. Not only was it one of his favorite activities, it was actually a vital element of their culture. Nicholas had taken some tutorial in archery in the Roman training camp, and while he had some skill at it, it wasn’t necessarily his proficiency. In fact, none of his supervisors found him very proficient at any form of combat, only good at taking stock and keeping others adequately supplied.

  A group of Elves took Nicholas out to a field for a lesson in archery one autumn morning where they met Kenalfon, Nisse, Tomte, and Hugin, a mature looking Elf with raven-black hair, and a handful of others. A little distance from them stood a row of trees wearing targets. After the other Elves launched a volley of arrows into the targets, not one missing the center-mark more than an inch, Hugin turned to address Nicholas. “Verily, this is simple! Let the bow be an extension of one arm and your arrow an extension of the other.”

  “Now that you are on the mend,” Tomte chimed in. He looked about as youthful as Nisse and was nearly as enthusiastic. “There’s never a better time to learn archery, eh?” Tomte, with simple ease, shot an arrow past the trees into another target several yards beyond the front line of targets. Nicholas sighed, not sure about the fool he was going to look like in front of all these talented Elves. However, this training was going to be another tool in his sack for his own devices and that encouraged him to carry on with it.

  “Truth be told,” Nicholas said awkwardly raising his bow and arrow, “I was a swordsman and not much of one at that.”

  “Give it a try, Nicholas!” Nisse popped in with her perpetual zeal.

  Nicholas released the cord and the arrow wavered about in the air, at times heading for the tree, but inevitably missing the target, and the tree entirely. “You see,” Nicholas grumbled.

  “As was expected,” Kenalfon assured him. He then stepped closer to whisper a deep and profound secret to him. “Focus, Nicholas, on exactly what it is you aim for. Let nothing else distract you. Focus, and do not over-concentrate. Relax and see the arrow strike the eye ere even releasing the cord.”

  He had heard instruction similar to this from Lysander, though not as eloquently stated. He’d often say things in the nature of “see the blade block the enemy’s before you even swing” and other such obscure statements. But now having lived among the Elves for a spell, he was getting the knack of feeling the rhythm of the world around him, channeling that flow of energy and concentrating it into a goal-oriented needlepoint.

  The goal: vengeance against his betrayer.

  The goal: justice for the evils done unto him.

  The goal: returning to Nysa and living happily.

  He released the cord. The arrow streaked through the air heading right for the bull’s-eye. Well, it didn’t strike the center, or the target for that matter, but it stuck into the tree just outside of the target. Compared to his last shot, this was a tremendous improvement.

  “Instant progress!” Hugin said with subdued encouragement.

  “It shall take practice,” Kenalfon reassured him. “All goals worth achieving do. You’re not going to compare with those who have been arching arrows for centuries within the hour.”

  The Elves chuckled. Nicholas smirked. “So, I gain a hunting skill from this, aye? It has been too long since sinking my teeth in some meat for a change,” Nicholas remarked.

  The amusement departed from every face around him—even Nisse’s. Nicholas looked at them in a perplexed squint, not sure how his comment could remotely offend them. “What say you?”

  “You see,” Tomte proceeded to clarify awkwardly, “it is not our way. We do not eat meat.”

  “Say again?” Nicholas responded. In an already novel society he was growing accustomed to differences and changes, but a wholly vegetarian lifestyle was still shocking.

  “Forsooth,” explained Kenalfon, “ere the fall of man did all creatures only partake of fruits, vegetables, or the grain. We continue in such a tradition.”

  “How could you deny the right to partake of meat? Even beasts consume other beasts!” Nicholas disputed.

  “We are not saying that man’s choice to eat meat is wrong. Let us say that we feel it is more right to not ingest what once belonged to another living creature,” Kenalfon said with a smirk. “Fear no judgment, Nicholas. Only know that as long as ye remain among us, that will not be a dish served.”

  Nicholas could even feel his stomach rumble. “Alas, for my cravings!” he sighed looking downward. There he noticed the bow in his hand. “What do we use the arrows for then?”

  Hugin drew his bowstring and launched an arrow up, through an apple and the arrow carried the apple from the tree and struck a trunk at a lower, within reach, area. With a grin, looking at his feat, he said, “They have their uses.”

  Nicholas couldn‘t slow the rolling of his eyes. “What an absurd use for archery,” he noted. “You undoubtedly jest! You mean to tell me that you train in this skill for picking fruit?”

  Kenalfon sighed and placed his hand on Nicholas’s shoulder, “Peace, son,” he said with a sigh. “For you are in a land of the light. There is a darkness, of which ye know not, that would seek to destroy all that is pure.” With that, he said no more on the subject, no matter how often Nicholas would interview him, Kenalfon would restrain. He bent down, raised another arrow to Nicholas, and said, “Again.”

  Chapter Three

  From Highest Heaven I Come to Tell

  From highest Heaven I come to tell

  The gladdest news that ever befell.

  The next lesson was crafting. Now, Nicholas couldn’t quite figure a way this could work into his tactics, but he found that he thoroughly enjoyed it. He felt profoundly serene working with his hands, fervently keen when taking a chunk of clay or a block of wood and transforming it into a tangible vision that previously only existed in his mind. He would craft different types of animals, like figurines of people and Elves, and then stare at them for hours marveling at his creation.

  One night while Nicholas carved a little rabbit, a small Elvish tot—who looked four-years-old in human reckoning—tripped beside Nicholas. She had been running and playing with some larger more mature Elven children when she found it beyond her capabilities to keep up with them and in her haste, her foot met a rock in the dirt. She pouted and whimpered a bit until Nicholas took her by the hand and lifted her to his knee.

  “You know what you do when you fall?” Nicholas asked. She looked at him with a delighted wonder. “You just bounce right back up and keep going!” he exclaimed jubilantly. Inwardly, he loved the proverb he manifested off the cuff like that and after recalling the little rabbit he just finished carving, he handed it to her. “Just like bunnies.”

  She smiled in amazement, Nicholas set her to the ground, and she scampered off. He had always found a fondness in his heart for children, ever since his younger twin brothers were killed—a sorrow inspiring him to deeply appreciated youthful innocence. As he sat back up, his gaze met that of Munin’s. She was another Elf with raven-black hair who was married to Hugin, and was normally quite an agreeable sort of person, but now she looked at him with disdain.

  “Those are not for children,” she told him.

  “What, then, are they intended for?” Nicholas asked, taken aback. Kenalfon approached from behind her and laid his typical fatherly hand on Munin’s shoulder, conveying her need to stifle the needless anxiety.

  “The Yule Festival,” he told Nicholas.

  “Then, please elaborate on this beguiling celebration,” Nicholas requested, rather weary of the world around him shrouded in mystery.

  Kenalfon smiled, beaming with the joy of anticipating an exceptional day coming at last. Nicholas had not thought this question through for this was the main lesson of lessons Kenalfon wished to teach him if it wasn’t for Nicholas’s negative reaction toward any mention of destiny. With the Yule only now days away, it was perfect timing for Kenalfon to instill in this young man the celebrati
on and understanding of the night of grace and hope.

  Kenalfon lead Nicholas back to the plaza where the Great Tannenbaum stood, fully adorned in colorful decorations. On the branches now perched lit candles making the whole tree glow brilliantly. And now on the highest bough, the tip of the pine, was an emblazoned star. Around it some Elves knelt in reverent worship, others sang joyfully, and others laughed with each other, all enjoying the merriment of the festivity. Kenalfon, holding a package wrapped in colorfully died linen and ribbon bows on top, stepped toward the base of the Tannenbaum, guiding Nicholas to follow.

  “As written in the tales that have been made known to the hidden folk,” Kenalfon began to enlighten, “the night the Creator became flesh, brought into this world in a lowly manger, did a star shine ever so bright above. It was a brilliant beacon of hope, even to be seen as far as we are north. That star harkened the greatest gift the Creator has yet to bestow upon the land.” Kenalfon lead Nicholas’s gaze up toward the star. “And so we place a star in remembrance that the universe, even the stars in the sky, was overwhelmingly affected that very night.”

  Kenalfon then touched the green needles on the tree as caressing the hair of a lover with a grin as nostalgic as an old man recalling his happiest childhood memory. “The hope brought to the Earth was a life everlasting. So, the focal point of the tree is its unyielding green—eternally emerald.”

  Then, motioning toward a lit candle, he said “And that night of nights, the light of the world entered into darkness. It is no small thing, Nicholas. There is but one weakness to the darkness and no matter what blackness infects the hearts of men, even the smallest spark can diffuse its power.”

  Nicholas gazed upward, enjoying the sight, pondering the deep-rooted symbolism in the seemingly innocuous tree donning overly glamorized embellishments. Of the merry-making Elves, Boyce, a blonde, rather fair male Elf, holding a lute and a ladle of punch, cried out to Kenalfon, catching their attentions. “Wassail, Lord Kenalfon!” Boyce lifted the ladle in a saluting fashion and then drank a draught.

  “Wassail to you, Boyce!” Kenalfon replied.

  “Wassail?” Nicholas questioned.

  “A toast and cheer to good health and prosperity,” Kenalfon explained. “I believe when—er—the Yule Man is manifested among us, these traditions will spread over the whole world spreading joy and camaraderie wherever they go.”

  Kenalfon stepped forward and placed the wrapped boxes at the foot of the tree. When Nicholas followed likewise, he noticed hundreds of Elves, in long white vestments, bringing gifts to the tree base as well. In fact, the trunk of the tree could no longer be seen with all the flamboyantly adorned items set beneath the Great Tannenbaum. “And for whom did we strive and make such crafts?” Nicholas asked.

  “For the Initiator,” Kenalfon replied shortly, giving reverence to the package he just deposited. “As I am sure ye have heard, magi and shepherds brought the newborn great gifts on that night of nights. Kingly gifts for the King of kings, and so we continue that tradition.”

  Tithes were nothing new to Nicholas, though he really hadn’t told Kenalfon of his religious past, and this was nothing else but a tithe. But tithes went to support charities where Nicholas was from, he had to ask, “And what of their use?”

  “A great fire,” Kenalfon said. He then turned a bit more warmly to Nicholas. “To be a sacrifice is their fate.” Not only were the words Kenalfon spoke repulsive to Nicholas, but the fact he said it with gladness stole from Nicholas any inkling that he had previously known who this silver-haired Elf was.

  “I have wasted my time here,” Nicholas said with a heavy heart after waiting a moment for the news to manifest in his mind. He thought he could glean from the citizens of this realm techniques, skills, virtues, and a maturity that could help him right the wrongs in his life. Truly, he was rather happy here and didn’t wish to leave if not for his burning quest. If he could retain the welcome, he’d even supposed the prospect of returning to Myra and whisking Nysa back up north to this woodland paradise. He’d then have Kenalfon wed them and they would live happily for the rest of their days.

  But after years of an aching heart for the impoverished and homeless people to see a race of such greatness in wisdom and natural abundance, peace and harmony, waste the talents and their efforts on a bonfire of crafts and gifts was practically an apostasy. To him, at this moment, the elves could keep this lifestyle. It was not for him.

  “What do you mean by that?” Kenalfon asked.

  “To labor hard at something and see the work lead to ash?” he retorted. “It’s a useless nonsense, Kenalfon, and I’ll be damned to hear that this is beneficial to the world.”

  “It is a sacrifice offering of fealty and devotion, young one,” Kenalfon explained. Kenalfon’s gaze then hit him like daggers piercing all flesh to the soul. “Yet you know of offerings. You pretend a self-righteous indignation to our custom, while assuredly there may be some validity to your resentment, yet I know there is something beneath wearing this pretentious mask. What is it you truly seek, Nicholas?”

  Nicholas took a deep breath and heaved a sigh. Kenalfon was half right—Nicholas both felt working so hard for a pyre sacrifice was useless when their efforts could feed the hungry, but it was simply a moment of revelation to Nicholas that he didn’t belong there any longer. “To return home,” he replied.

  2

  These tidings true to you I bring,

  And gladly of them say and sing.

  Back at the wood hut that had been Nicholas’s residence for over a month now, Nicholas packed his belongings into a sack and sheathed his sword to his side. He stared down for a moment at the red ribbon tied to the hilt, encouraging himself with the refreshing reminder of who waited at the end of the long and arduous journey home. When he moved to leave, he found a wall named Kenalfon in his way.

  “Please, do not become my uncle to me, Lord Kenalfon. For he too tried to stand in the way of my autonomy, and it only spurred me further from him,” Nicholas said firmly.

  “Nicholas of Myra, though I have come to regard you as my friend, do not insult me by presuming me a weak-willed, emotionally-driven, flawed mortal whose perspective is not further than the reach of his arm. I remind you that I have endured more winters than this giant tree in which ye stand and have journeyed more times around the sun than ye can count,” Kenalfon stood at the full of his height, which seemed two feet higher than ever before. His childlike persona was nowhere to be found in him. “I have rescued you, healed you, and mentored you for only a fraction of the time you require. If you wish to accomplish your journey home, a feat in itself ye may not survive, what then shall you find when, and if, you arrive?”

  “What do you mean?” Nicholas asked intrigued.

  “You will come with me and find out, if ye think yourself ready,” Kenalfon replied with strength.

  And surely, Nicholas did think himself ready—whether or not he was, remained to be seen. He did not realize that coming with Kenalfon on that night would be a three days’ hike through dense forest, crossing rapid rivers, and scaling the side of a mountain. Fortunately, half way up the mountain the rocks were carved into stone stairs by Elven hands centuries before. While mountain climbing, stairs are better than fifty degree grades, better than finding yourself on a rock face unable to find your next foothold, and better than not having enough rope and dangling there with wobbly, weak arms. But, when the number of stairs increases beyond measure at one thousand five hundred thirty-nine and you clearly have thrice as many to cover, stairs still aren’t much of a convenience.

  Anytime Nicholas would dare question, dare desire to turn back, or dare defy Kenalfon’s wisdom in this mountaineering venture, Kenalfon would simply say “Would you rather die trying to return home knowing that your friend Kenalfon told you he had a life altering truth for you and you’ll never know it?” With all the regrets piling up in the back of Nicholas’s mind, he’d never let himself forget about this one. From shear curiosity a
nd dread of remorse, he pushed his tired legs to continue one stair at a time up and up.

  They made the climb, a three days’ journey to a mountain summit laden in snow save for a large crystal platform, that was as translucent as glass, which mysteriously retained no snow drift at all; not even a flake was found upon it. Nicholas looked at it, huffing and puffing, his lungs not only exhausted from the hike, but also weak from lower oxygen. The sky was dark from clouds and the wind blew ferociously. Nicholas was ready to collapse, ready for a break, ready for whatever gift Kenalfon had in store for him to draw to a close.

  He was not ready for a swift kick through his legs, slamming upon the crystal platform, and then Kenalfon’s foot thrusting him to slide away ten feet. “Here, Nicholas, is where you finally become a man!” Kenalfon drew his sword, a curved blade that may have been secretly lying in wait within Kenalfon’s robed sleeves for a long time.

  “Ugh! What? Why did you-?” Nicholas tried to say, flabbergasted by both shock and weariness.

  “Have at me, Nicholas of Myra! One who falls and never has the courage to rise up! One who fears the future, fears responsibility! Who would rather stay a child forever and never stand upon the thin line of adulthood and make your place in the world!” Nicholas, shivering, and now queasy, tried to stand and Kenalfon attacked. Nicholas dodged his blade strokes as best he could, knowing this must be some kind of test, waiting for the charade to end. Kenalfon tripped him again, and again Nicholas tasted the pain of crashing into an immovable object.

  “Give me a break! I am exhausted!”

  “You will never reach your truest potential if you keep pitying yourself!” Kenalfon attacked and Nicholas rolled away, drew his sword, and then blocked Kenalfon.

  “Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, it is not worth your effort, nor mine!”