I Don't Like John Howard But On This I Do Agree

George

Actually, there are a couple of things wrong with this

1. St Nicholas was not typically represeneted with a red bonnet. In most of the iconic images, he has no headwear at all, and when he does, it's in the more saintly genre..

Here are some typical examples:

This one is interesting because it mentions Barium, whereas originally, the story runs that he came from a place called Myra, (now in Turkey). For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church traded in his relics, after ripping off the adventurers who nicked the bones of the man from their resting place in Lycia, Asia Minor, but none of these relcis included a red bonnet. At Vatican Council 2 in 1970, the Catholic Church disowned him saying there was no such bishop. We'll never know for sure whether he existed or not.

The Catholic church was very kjeen to supplant paganism though and just as they took over the hedonistic pagan festival of Saturnalia run in the weeks leading up to Winter Solstice, for Christams, the decision to create "saints" was undoubtedly an attempt to supplant the other pagan deities. St Nicholas, who watches over thieves, sailors, children and prosbreastutes was probably Neptune-Poseidon reworked.

2. The main figure with a redbonnet connected with St Nicholas is the Dutch Sinterklaas, who has a red mitre:

His story goes something like this:

In the Netherlands Sinterklaas arrives in his steamboat from Spain on the 17th of November. There are many songs about his arrival. After he arrives with his white horse and his helpers he goes all over the country and is televised as well. Normally when Sinterklaas arrives in Amsterdam, he begins his tour at the Dam square. All the children gather in the square and Sinterklaas shakes their hands and his helpers throw lots of sweets into the crowd.

Along with his friend "Dark Pete" Zwarte Piet he distributes gifts. How Dark Pete came to be dark goes back to pre-christian pagan legend, and if you're interested, you can check on that at the link above. He's probably based on the "Dark Helper" Pan of greek mythology, but the link above suggests he was some sort of pre-Christian moon god.

Apparently, Zwarte Piet is around to knock the rough edges off Sinterklaas, as having the elfen equivalent of the man from ASIO on your doorstep just messes with some kids' heads.

The red bonnet is probably a development of the Pere Noel of the French tradition or possibly of "Ded Moroz" from Russia (Grandfather Frost) who delivers presents to children and has a red coat, fur boots and long white beard.

But even here, the image does not always bear the red bonnet.

And there are some that are scarcely recognisable.

There's the Pere Noel tradition in France, or possibly the image produced by Thomas Nast of the Alpine goat-like gnome, either of which probably was the basis used by Haddon Sundblom of the most popular image whose brief for Coca Cola was to design the contemporary Santa to match the Coke livery and have children serve up Cokes to the rotund smiling figure.

All in all, the whole thing is a cultural hodge podge, and being too prescriptive about what is kosher and what is not is almost certainly at odds with whole history of Christmas.

Fran