Nicholas- the Fantastic Origin of Santa Claus

by Cody W Urban

  3

  See the blazing Yule before us,

  Strike the harp and join the chorus.

  “Ho, ho! Merry Yuletide to all!” Hákon announced, laughing and cheery after several draughts of mead. Nicholas walked in behind, after leaving Sleipnir and Juno tethered outside, and looked at the crowd of merry drunkards. Drunkenness was not part of the Elven celebration nor was it an activity he was wont to participate in, but he reserved no judgment at all and still enjoyed himself and the company of fools who tossed worries like ashes to the ocean.

  Kaupang’s eminent chef slammed a great roasted boar down on a table and greedy hands began to pull chunks of meat from it. The traditional Yule Log burned upon the fire warming the hall. Vats filled with mead were placed at the center of the room beside hanging cauldrons filled with stew that were suspended over unlit fire pits. It was tradition for the great lords to light the fires, and currently, Hákon was highest. Tryggr had explained that this was one day going to be the honor of the king, when they could establish a kingdom.

  Nicholas caught sight of a young boy racing past wood pillars bearing several steins of mead and then he set them at the table where Nicholas and company took a seat. Snorre, who didn’t receive one, stood angrily, grabbed a stick and tripped the boy. “I ordered a mead stein! Wherefore did I not receive it?” Snorre whacked the boy with the stick until Nicholas snatched it from him. He was used to Snorre’s unruly attitude toward young ones like Pete, and this seemed excessive—even for him.

  “Harm not this child, Snorre,” Nicholas said unwaveringly.

  Snorre grunted, somewhat annoyed, somewhat bemused. “Spare the rod then spoil the child,” he said gruffly.

  Nicholas lifted the boy to his feet and said, “Please, when you have a moment, bring the rest of us the steins, lad.” The boy smiled warmly and then ran away into the crowd of partygoers. “Aye, discipline is a paramount necessity. Yet, use wrath, spoil the purity and innocence. Of all mankind, are not children the highest in esteem? For they know not evil lest adults shove it down their throats!”

  Snorre stood and moved into Nicholas's face, looking ready to fight, and Nicholas wasn’t sure what would come next and then mentally ran through possible outcomes based on Snorre’s next move. Of all things, he didn’t expect Snorre to laugh, which was what he did instead. Following the chuckle, Snorre smacked Nicholas on the back. “Come, Nicholas! Merriment tonight!” Snorre seized the stein that was given to Nicholas and shoved it into his face. “Pour it down; there’s more comin’!” Nicholas took a small sip, licked his lips, and smiled. “That’s all? Ye cannot see the bottom of your cup yet!”

  “I do not wish to intoxicate myself,” Nicholas replied.

  “Intoxicate yourself?” Snorre replied as though he just heard the most absurd joke ever told in Kaupang.

  “Why would a warrior willingly dull his blade?” Nicholas asked and then took another tiny swallow and sat down. He made his point, for the first time publicizing his reservations about drunkenness.

  “Oh, the great proverbial philosopher,” Snorre grumbled and snatched Nicholas’s stein. “I see no need to be a warrior this night. Yet I will be a man!” Then in one gulp Snorre downed the entire stein and belched.

  The rest of the gathering took their seats just as Hákon rose up on a bench, gaining height over the gathering, bearing a large stein to give a toast. “Here we are my faithful friends,” he said wobbling, a bit inebriated already, “I am back from expedition and the bounty is plentiful. And so let us celebrate. I presume from the many of you swaying about ye started the celebrating early. We are home, and it is good to be!”

  He drank a hefty gulp and mead dribbled down his chin.Nicholas watched a group of girls walk out the front holding large carrots and barley as Pete set food down before him. “Here, Master, please enjoy.”

  “Will he ever be over this?” Nicholas thought. He had now been with this band for nearly a year and still this youngster was thinking like a slave, though he was free. “Your master, I am not, my friend.”

  “That I shall call you ‘til a more suitable title comes to mind,” Pete replied and was off before another word could be spoken. Nicholas sighed and then noticed another group of children dashing outside with vegetables and large boots.

  “Drink, eat, Nicholas,” Tryggr encouraged happily.

  “What did those younglings bear as they dashed outside?”

  “Treats for Odin’s steed when he comes to give gifts.”

  “He brings gifts?” Nicholas asked, even more interested in the customs of this lot. He had made a large amount of carved animals only to find that there was no sacrificial pyre of presents unto heaven in the traditions of Scandinavian Yuletide.

  “Well-“ Tryggr began, searching for the words.

  “The great Odin is far too preoccupied, this we know,” Hákon clarified as he strut over to their table. “Yuletide is about the great hunt of Valhalla and the hunt many men went on to catch the feast for tonight. The legend was as Odin went out on the hunt, should people leave treats for his magnificent steed, he would return gifts for the favor. Being too preoccupied, as I told you that he is a great king, parents give the gifts in his guise.”

  “You lie to them?” Nicholas replied inquisitively.

  “I would not look at it that way, Nicholas,” Tryggr began.

  “Would it not be better to tell them the truth rather? Let the gift-bearer be more... tangible?” Nicholas said.

  Snorre grunted and slid a stein closer to Nicholas. After releasing a hefty belch, he said, “You philosophize too often. Drink hearty, will ye? At least to shut your yap!”

  “A better idea has struck me,” Hákon said with a scheming expression. “You already sacrilegiously named your mount Sleipnir, ought not you go in guise of Odin and give presents? Did I not see ye carving foxes, fowl, and forest creatures the past week?”

  “Have I not been clear about my stand on deception? Why should I pretend to be Odin?” Nicholas replied, almost with a laugh that he was trying to reason with mead-stained minds.

  “As your captain, ‘tis my order that you give gifts this night!” And with that, Hákon began laughing and sloshing his mead all over his bib of a beard and regardless of his jovial inebriation, his word was a command.

  4

  Don we now our gay apparel,

  Troll the ancient Yuletide carol.

  It wasn’t long after he had finished his meal when his drunken friends whisked him out of the hall into the snowy town and toward a longhouse. Ranveig even got wind of the plan and was soon a part of it. Not only a part, but demanding to be in charge as such a project would need a woman’s touch. She took a burlap sack and punched holes in it for the eyes and mouth. Then using the royal armor of the Roman official, they decorated Nicholas to look like a shining godly king. Hákon placed a scepter in his hand and Tryggr adorned Sleipnir in all sorts of garlands and colorful linens until the two were unrecognizable.

  “Sir,” Nicholas muttered, “If I may protest, I-“

  “Nay,” barked Hákon. “I have spoken my order!” After he and the others could contain their laughter, he continued, “Ye have sworn to do my bidding while under my command and besides, ye are already disguised! Think of the wee lads and lasses this night.” They all continued to hoot, only seeing this as some big joke. But the last line struck Nicholas profoundly—of course he thought of the children.

  Back within the hall, where the families were gathering their younglings from the children’s tables to pack them and send them off to bed, Hákon burst through the doors. “I have an announcement!”

  All turned to silence. The minstrels and bards stopped their music. All ears turned to Hákon darkly expecting grave news. “Children, come outside! We have a terrific visitor!” Everyone filed out, not sure of what to expect based on the ambiguous statement. As the children stepped into the cold their eyes lit up as they beheld under tall torches mounted on his splendid beast sat a kingly looking charact
er holding a sack full of things. “Lo! Odin has come to thank all who offered his steed treats by granting the children gifts!”

  Nicholas watched them—their eyes piercing him, their expectations growing—and he was at a loss. They fell for the charade as young naïve children tend to and none considered that this being before them was Nicholas surreptitiously disguised as their sovereign deity. Beside him he heard Ranveig whisper, “Say something, Odin!”

  “Aye!” Nicholas blurted without thought and was at a loss for words. He tried to impersonate a kingly, generous man and Hákon with his boisterous laughter was the only thing that came to mind. “It is I! Ho, ho, ho!” They all stared at him like he was mad for a moment and Nicholas was sure the farce was exposed, but when a small dove of a little girl chuckled in wondrous mirth, an outbreak of gleeful chortles followed by everyone before him.

  Nicholas then slid off Sleipnir and set his sack on the snow. “Come younglings,” he said to them embellishing a deeper voice. “’Tis gifts I bring unto ye all!” With that, all the children dashed from the porch of the mead-hall and began to grapple the little trinkets and carvings within the sack. This delighted Nicholas’s heart and he preferred this action with all the presents on the Yule rather than a sacrificial pyre by a long shot.

  “How neat!” a little boy exclaimed. “I got a fox!”

  “I got a wolf,” said a girl.

  “I got some kind of deer!”

  “I got a bird.”

  “I got a wolf too!”

  Nicholas at first was overjoyed at the happiness he gave these younglings and was ready to admit that Hákon had a wonderful idea, until his bag’s supply was spent. Children began tugging at his costume, pulling at the decorations, and begged for more. “I want a fox too!”

  “Give me a bird, he got one and I didn’t!”

  “Not fair, I wanted the deer.”

  “Children, please. One gift for each person. That is enough!” Nicholas tried to reason with them. It was to no avail. The children began to tug and pull at the costume and overwhelmed him. Soon, his disguise would be removed and he would be exposed. That wasn’t such a bad idea to him, but he loathed the notion of betraying their trust. Should Hákon later tell them something he wished they would believe him on faith, and they still lamented in their hearts the ruse of this would-be Odin, they may not find it in their hearts to trust him. Nicholas didn’t like this idea at all and had to think of something quick to salvage the situation and found no parental help seeing how the intoxicated parents were only laughing at the situation.

  “Halt!” Nicholas commanded. The severity of his tone instantly hushed the children. “I have yet one more gift for all!” he said, concocting a devious retribution against the one who put him in this situation. He let the children wait in suspense a brief moment and just when they began to beg and claw at him once again he declared, “Lord Hákon has a story to tell you all if ye would return to the great hall. By the cozy fire, he shall tell you!”

  As the younglings cheered and departed, Nicholas caught eyes with Hákon who turned white as a ghost. First, his face turned sour and then he began to laugh his typical laugh and smiled at Nicholas and said, “Lucky for you, I happen to have a story in mind!”

  Hákon retired to the hall with the crowd when Ranveig came and took Nicholas by the hand. “Well done, Peacemaker.”

  “It was not so bad,” Nicholas sighed. “A lesson I learned, however. Should I do this again, maybe in secret would be best. Leaving a child a gift leaves that child nobody to beg and should hopefully learn to appreciate what he or she has received.”

  “Yea, not a bad plan,” she said as she began to walk away from the mead-hall.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Nicholas asked.

  “I was going home,” she said, taken aback by his attitude.

  “I ask you go nowhere until Sleipnir and I are rid of these ridiculous garments!”

  5

  Fast away the old year passes,

  Hail the new, ye lads and lasses.

  Sun rises and sets, winter turned to spring, and as the weather warmed, it was time to set sail and depart from the village of Kaupang. Nicholas made many friends during his stay there and strengthened bonds with others. For as much as he would have liked to stay, the river of life he was traversing carried him on the lifestyle of a nomad. He bid the residents of Kaupang farewell, and to his surprise, a few of the children came and said, “Goodbye, Odin,” and chuckled.

  “How did ye know?” he asked.

  “Your accent and your smell,” said a little girl. “Ye do not sound quite like all of us, and ye have the clean, warm smell of cookies.” This was the first Nicholas had heard of this and wondered if it was another charm of his Elven robe.

  And then they were off at sea, aboard The Dashing Dancer, with the wind pulling them away from the cheery town Nicholas had grown rather fond of. On the way, Hákon divulged the schemes he had plotted during the secret meetings. They had hoped that the winter was enough time for the Romans to stop their search and let their guard drop a little. With that, spies had carried the message that Flavius Constantine’s father had elevated to a high rank in the Empire and had placed his son, the sworn enemy of Nicholas, in command of the armies in the southern regions of Britannia.

  Hákon was keen on revenge for the destruction of The Dusk Tracker and all his kith and kin aboard who were lost at the hands of the Romans. Nicholas noticed toward the north on their starboard side a few Norse-striped rectangular sails traveling parallel with them, braving the seas to venture on toward the west. Hákon then explained his kinsmen were going to join in their raid. They rode the mighty ships The Prancing Comet, The Daring Dunder, and The Serpent’s Blixem. “Dunder” and “Blixem” were terms for “thunder” and “lightening” respectively in the Norse tongue. All together, they planned a strike upon the fortress of Eboracum on the coast of Britannia, a fortress where Flavius now dwelled.

  Chapter Eight

  Silent Night

  Silent night, holy night,

  All is calm, all is bright.

  The knarr had a small cabin just abaft of the mast that had three main rooms: the Captain’s quarters where Hákon and Ranveig slept, dined, and plotted. There was also the mess hall which was a crammed little kitchen where the crew would grab their gruel or what other meal was served. Then there was the bunk filled with hammocks where the twenty-some expeditionaries crammed together and kept each other warm through body heat and close proximity. There Nicholas swayed in his hammock, gazing out at the almost full moon through a crack in the hull. The moon’s brilliant bluish-white light shone through the crevice and gave a small amount of illumination to the bunk of noisily sleeping sailors.

  Nicholas had forgotten how difficult he found it to sleep among so many snoring and groaning gruff men after being ashore for the entirety of the winter. Although, he couldn’t blame his insomnia entirely on the cacophony of sleepers; he was dreadfully anxious about the day that awaited him. He looked to his side and there swaying in his hammock slept Pete. As Pete had told Nicholas, he was waiting for something. He was waiting for fate to knock on his door and for the universe to open it wide and say, “Hark! Thus have you been wronged, Nicholas. Thus you shall have revenge!” It seemed that knock was heard on that door, and Nicholas had become so accustomed to waiting for it over the past years, that he felt ill prepared for the arrival.

  Nicholas knew he was not bound for even the slightest spiritual revelations while lying there, nor was he bound for much sleep, and so he rose and stepped out onto the deck. There Juno woke instantly, wagged her tail, and nuzzled up against his leg. He pat her and then he made his way to a strung line where his Elven garment tussled in the wind. He felt the soft white trim, the rest of the garment excluding the white trim was now a rich dark red. He dyed it dark red to match and blend the stain and also because it didn’t stand out as much on a nightly raid.

  After that, he found his way to the bow, w
ith his canine companion close behind who promptly curled up at his feet as he gazed off into the night and watched the reflection of moonlight dance upon the ripples in the tide. The Dashing Dancer anchored only a league off the eastern shoreline of Britannia, about as north as Eboracum, and he could see the black mass in the distance that was the island country where his betrayer resided.

  “The unwise man is awake all night,” came Hákon’s voice from behind. “He worries over and again. When dawn breaks, he is restless still and his burdens as afore,” he quoted one of the Scandinavian proverbs he was wont to reciting. As he approached the bow, he passed by the red robe and took note of it. “Ye colored the rest I see?”

  “Aye. A darker red is less likely to be seen, I figure.”

  “And what say you of the white trim? Would attract attention, me thinks,” he critiqued.

  “I keep the white to remind me of the good I still carry,” Nicholas confessed. “That I do not make war for bloodlust. That and I hope the clandestine folks who fabricated this charmed it so that I would be stealthy nonetheless.”

  Hákon strutted forward, looking up at the starry night, looking as though he was searching his mind for words more than he searched the heavens for sights. “I presume ye are out here with a lot on your mind?”

  Nicholas sighed with a nod. “He is out there.”

  “The one who betrayed you?”

  “One of two who betrayed me,” Nicholas replied somberly. Considering what he had resolved to do he turned and faced Hákon, also searching for the words. “Captain, I must ask.”

  “Ye need not ask, my friend,” Hákon said and returned the serious look. “Tomorrow night, we shall wait while ye sneak in alone and slay your foe. Your skills have proven worthy of my trust, lad. I am disconcerted to send our healer alone, yet I cannot keep one from such a destiny.”