Should Christians Families Celebrate Santa?
Tis the season for Santa Clause my friends! Many of you listening may be wishing that your boys could just forget about Santa and focus more on their Savior this Christmas. But I’d like to argue that there may be some value for Christian families to celebrate Santa.
- But What if Saint Nicholas helped our boys understand what real manhood looks like?
- What if this Christmas, our boys learn that real heroes make sacrifices?
- What if stories of Santa could point our boys to the true meaning of Christmas?
Welcome to The Sword and Story Podcast—where we help Christian families find exciting, faith-filled books for their boys.
Our mission is to raise strong, courageous warriors for the Kingdom of God. Join us on a quest to discover stories that inspire our boys to grow into godly young men.
I’m your host, Laurie Christine. I’m an author, bible teacher, wife, and mom to four wild, wonderful, boys. I’m the author of the Dragon Slayer Bible Series, adventure-packed biblical fiction and devotions for middle-grade boys.
Our guest author today is Matt Mikalatos
Matt Mikalatos is an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays. He loves fantasy novels and he used to work in a comic book shop. He’s the author of the family devotional book: Praying with Saint Nicholas. He lives in the Portland, Oregon area with his family and a giant rabbit named Bruce.
Praying with Saint Nicholas by Matt Mikalatos
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year―but how much do you know about the real story behind Saint Nicholas?
We love Christmas. Not only because of the carefully wrapped presents and the twinkling lights, the loving family, the holiday parties, the singing. We love Christmas because we’re hungry for miracles.
For Christmas this year, discover the history as well as the origins of the myths and the legends of Saint Nicholas―a man who was hungry for miracles too. Nicholas made children feel seen, and he let them know they were loved. He paid attention to the people around him and asked how he could help. If they needed money, or a protector, or a prayer, Nicholas provided it for them as a servant of God. He showed them the miraculous love of the Father.
In Praying with Saint Nicholas, you’ll find twenty-five devotions with readings sharing a glimpse into Nicholas’s life and prayers for insights that will bring us more deeply into the Advent season and help us be transformed to see the world through God’s eyes, just as Nicholas worked to do.
Why Christians Should Celebrate Santa
More Books for Boys by Matt Mikalatos
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW
Praying with Saint Nicholas: A Christmas Devotional
An interview with Matt Mikalatos
SHOULD CHRISTIAN FAMILIES CELEBRATE SANTA?
Laurie Christine:
Thank you so much. Well, our episode today is gonna look just a little bit different than our traditional book discussion because we’re going to talk a little bit about St. Nicholas. We’re gonna talk about Matt’s book, Praying with St. Nicholas, a little bit later in the episode. But first, I just want to have a discussion about Santa Claus.
So, disclaimer: if you are a family that emphasizes a strong belief in Santa for your young children, you may want to put in some earbuds or listen to this episode while your children aren’t around.
For decades, Protestant Christians have been divided on this topic of Santa Claus, ranging from one end of the spectrum where Santa Claus is a taboo word in their house and kids are not allowed to watch movies or read any books about Santa, to the other extreme where parents go to extensive efforts to make sure their kids believe that Santa is real.
Personally, I don’t believe that either extreme is helpful, but we are going to discuss some of those different experiences. So Matt, I’m curious, what were some of your family traditions as you were growing up regarding Santa Claus? What did your parents tell you? What do you remember believing about Santa? Those sorts of things.
Matt Mikalatos:
My mom—and let me just say, I think parents know best, right? So I’m not suggesting this is the way anyone else should do it. My mom, when she was a kid, had been told, “Santa’s a real person who lives in the North Pole, brings all your gifts,” et cetera, et cetera. And then when she discovered that maybe there were some other ways of looking at that, it actually shook her feelings about God.
Because she said, “Well, you’ve been telling me that there’s this good person that lives out there that loves me, and now I’m hearing that you’re saying maybe he doesn’t exist, or it’s just a nice thought,” and it made her think, “Is that true about Jesus too?”
So with our family—I have two little sisters that are twins—what we did was my mom and dad sat us down when we were pretty young and said, “Santa Claus is this beautiful idea, this wonderful game that people play at Christmas based on a real person. He’s real in that sense. And in our home, we’re really upfront about that. In other homes, they just like to play the game without talking about all of this. So don’t mess up the game for other families.”
And then in our house, we still got gifts from Santa that you didn’t know who they came from. It still said “Santa” on the tag. Our stockings magically filled overnight on Christmas Eve. I was going to say that we put out milk and cookies; we might have sometimes, but it wasn’t an every-year thing.
One year—this is like family legend—my dad got coal in his stocking because apparently he had been bad. But he looked so sad that the whole family felt terrible. It was a horrible thing. It still gets talked about, and I think whoever filled that stocking has some regrets about that now.
But we also did stuff like my mom every year would make a birthday cake for Jesus and put candles on it and the shepherds and all that. We would sing “Happy Birthday,” and we always read the Nativity story before opening gifts and those sorts of things as well. So Santa, like a lot of people’s Christmas, I think, was one aspect of a lot of different things mixed in. There were just different traditions and faith pieces and not-faith pieces all together.
We had mistletoe a lot of times in the house. That’s not like a Christian thing necessarily. We had a tree. So we kind of mixed it all together, but with a constant reminder that the main thing about Christmas is the birth of Jesus.
Laurie Christine:
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think I had a similar experience growing up. I remember we would read books and we would watch movies about Santa Claus. I don’t ever remember a time in my life when I actually believed he was real. I don’t remember my parents sitting down with us, like yours did, and saying, “Here’s the truth.” But I don’t ever remember believing that he was real or a time that I had this realization like, “My goodness, he’s not real.”
My mom and dad would kind of joke about it, like, “Better get to bed early because Santa’s coming,” and we were like, “Ha ha, we know better,” that kind of thing. And yes, there would be presents under the tree that would say “from Santa,” but we knew. We always knew it was from Mom and Dad. It was just a fun part of the celebration.
But always, always, the emphasis was on Jesus and that he was the reason, he was the meaning for the season.
I also wanted to comment on your mom’s experience when she was growing up. I think that is one of my biggest fears, or has been one of my biggest fears. When we raised our children—and we are still raising our children—when my husband and I made a decision, “What are we going to do about Santa Claus?” there was no question in my mind. I was like, I don’t want my kids to be confused about what is true and what is not true, right alongside Jesus, because it’s right there alongside Jesus. Jesus is the reason that we celebrate Christmas.
But then there’s also Santa Claus, who’s also “real.” And then finding out Santa isn’t real. That’s such a natural response that your mom had: “Well, what about Jesus? Is he real too? Was he all just a lie?” I would never want my children to question that at all. So I think that is a risky thing to do in your family.
Matt Mikalatos:
Yeah, I think it’s really tempting as a parent—especially when kids are young—that it’s so hard to explain complex things to them. Sometimes we simplify things to the point of it being untrue to try and get them to do things, or just because we need to quickly. There are lots of examples for most of us.
My wife and I, pretty early on with kids, said, we just can’t lie to the kids ever about anything. We just need to be really honest with them, because in the long run, we think that’s going to pay off. So we never told them, “You have to eat this because it’s good for you,” if that wasn’t true. Those sorts of things. Yeah.
Laurie Christine:
Sure. Although I do tell my kids, “If you swallow an apple seed, you’re going to have an apple tree grow out of your ear.”
Matt Mikalatos:
My grandfather was the kind of guy that was always telling tall tales, and I legitimately could not tell what was true. He’d tell me, “Yeah, cows have longer legs on one side so they can walk up hills, and that’s why it’s easy to tip them over if they’re on a flat place.” I was like, “Really?” But you know, I’m six or five or something. I’m like, “Really? Interesting.” And then later you’re like, “Wait a minute…”
Laurie Christine:
That’s so funny. That was my dad. That was totally my dad, with those stories. That’s funny.
Well, with our family, with my boys now—we have four boys—I think we’ve adopted a similar approach as I had growing up. My kids know that Santa, the modern magical myths of Santa, are not real. He’s not the one bringing presents. He doesn’t ride a sleigh.
But I do love emphasizing that St. Nicholas, the man from which the legends originated, was a real person. I do need to be careful there, too. With my kids I’ve talked different times, and said, “Just a reminder, Santa’s not real,” and they often respond with, “That’s right, he’s dead.” And then I’m like, “Well, yes, but don’t announce that to your friends at school, please, because I might get some phone calls from other parents.”
Matt Mikalatos:
“Really, seriously, please don’t.” That’s so painful.
Yes, and what’s really fascinating—and I’m sure we’ll get into this a little bit, Laurie—is that when you look at the best Santa Claus stories that we tell now, whether it’s The Night Before Christmas or Elf or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, we see that somehow this guy who lived so long ago, there are things about his life in those days that are reflected in the stories we’re still telling, which I think is a really beautiful testimony to the life he lived.
Santa Claus loves children. He gives gifts to people. He sees people’s needs and takes care of them. Those are all things that were brought over from St. Nicholas. So I actually love a good Santa Claus story. We watch Elf every year. We watch a variety of Santa Claus stories every year. And I think it’s really fun to see the echoes of the historical person that are still there.
Laurie Christine:
Yeah, I love that too. We definitely enjoy fun movies and stories. But I love learning and teaching about the real St. Nicholas. I think a lot of families don’t really know a whole lot about what he did or who he was. So we’re going to dive into that a little bit because I know that you have done quite a bit of research for your book, which is called Praying with St. Nicholas. It’s a short devotional, but it’s great for Christmas. It’s 25 devotional readings that I think would be a great resource for families to read together this Christmas.
So tell us a little bit about the book first of all, before we get into the life of St. Nicholas. Tell us about the structure of the book and how it’s meant to be used.
Matt Mikalatos:
Yeah, so the way the book is written, it has 25 entries, which you can guess why that might be. It’s to make it easy, if you would like to, to start on December 1st and every day you’ll have a little insight into St. Nicholas.
Every day you get a little biographical story, a little piece about St. Nicholas or his life or an event that happened. Then there’s a reflection where we kind of step back and pray—not together with St. Nicholas, not meaning that we believe St. Nicholas is praying with us, but that we look at Nicholas’s situation, what he was in, what was going on, and we look at our own lives and say: what is similar? What is different? What is a prayer that we might bring here? So there’s a little suggested prayer at the end of each one.
So they’re little devotionals. You absolutely could do these with a family. I think there’s a lot of things that would be fun to discuss. It talks about spiritual adversaries, Bethlehem and Israel and Palestine and that whole land. What does it mean to be godly or holy or generous? These are all things that come through in Nicholas’s story that are great springboards for family discussions.
Laurie Christine:
Yeah, I think it is, like you said, a springboard. The devotions are short and brief, but it’s a great way to start a discussion or to even dive deeper into some of the topics in the life of St. Nicholas.
For those of our listeners who think, “Yeah, I know St. Nicholas was a real person. I don’t know anything about him, maybe a couple of stories here and there,” can you give us a brief overview of his biography? When did he live? Where did he live? What kind of family did he come from? Who was this real person, St. Nicholas?
Matt Mikalatos:
I think for most people, if I forced you—you’re on a game show—and we said, “Tell us everything you know about St. Nicholas,” you probably would say something like this: “I think he lived in medieval Europe, maybe, and there was something with putting money in stockings for some family, and he was maybe a leader in a church or something.” That might be what you know. Especially if you’re Catholic, you might know that we still have his bones, which are now in Italy.
But that’s probably the sketch most of us have. And almost all of it is wrong—not wrong, some of it’s actually correct—but here’s the thing: Nicholas did not live during medieval times and he didn’t live in Europe.
He was born in AD 270. So that’s when the Roman Empire is still in existence. He was born on the coast of the country we today would call Turkey. It wasn’t called that at that time. His family was Greek, and they were wealthy. So he comes from a wealthy Greek family. They were Christians.
You have to understand that in 270, Christianity still was kind of this weird minority religion that not very many people followed and that a lot of people associated with Judaism. They saw it as like a cult of Judaism. So this is where Nicholas was born.
We don’t know tons about his family. We do know there’s a famous story where his parents weren’t able to have children, and they prayed and prayed and prayed and asked God for a baby. God gave them Nicholas, and so they said, “We’re giving Nicholas over to God to be God’s person on earth,” which is actually a pretty common story throughout history.
Nicholas had an uncle, also named Nicholas, who he was most likely named for, who was a priest—one of the early leaders of the church. So that’s kind of cool, and we’ll see he eventually follows in his footsteps. And we’ll get to that story about the stockings, but I want to give you the bigger overall picture.
Nicholas’s parents die when he’s pretty young, because it was just a difficult time. The Roman Empire was on the verge of possibly collapsing. There were famines. There were raids. His parents died as some disease came through. They both died when he was probably a young teenager. Then he gives up all his wealth eventually and becomes a priest himself. He becomes a full-time minister for God.
By the time he’s 30, the Christian persecution is starting in the Roman Empire, largely led by a guy named Diocletian in the area that Nicholas lives. Nicholas’s church is shut down. All the Bibles and other things are burned—hymnals, or the equivalent of hymnals. He goes to jail for probably about five years.
His nose is broken maybe during this time. We’re not sure. We know that because we have his bones. He’s in jail for probably about five years because he won’t—Diocletian wants him to say, “The Roman gods are also good,” and do a sacrifice. Nicholas says, “I won’t do that.” So other priests are getting out of jail or not going to jail, but Nicholas stays for the whole five years.
What eventually happens is he’s released and a guy named Constantine becomes emperor of the whole Roman Empire. He brings it back together and keeps it from collapsing. He decides that the religion of Rome is now going to be Christianity. It becomes the state religion, and all of a sudden Nicholas, as a priest, is really important.
He goes and visits Bethlehem for a few years, so we associate him with the birth of Jesus in a variety of ways. He lives there for three years, right outside of Bethlehem, living in a little cave with some monks, basically. A lot of people lived in caves. It wasn’t like a weird, “You’re in a cave,” thing. They made a home in the cave.
He ends up becoming a bishop in the church, still in the area he was. There’s a big church gathering called the Council of Nicaea that Constantine puts on. Nicholas goes to that. If you’re a theologian kind of person, you may have heard a story about Nicholas slapping a heretic at this meeting. It looks like that is pretty likely to be historical. We have pretty early stories about it. We could talk about that. It’s an interesting moment.
Then he goes on and he has a really successful career as a minister. He saves a lot of people when there’s a famine by praying and miraculously finding some grain for everyone. Some of our oldest historical stories about him are about his interactions with the Roman Empire that are very interesting. Then he dies when he’s 72 years old.
He is universally beloved. No scandals. No people who said anything negative about him. He was just a guy who saw people in need, took care of them, loved them, prayed for them. It’s an amazing story. The more I looked at it, the more I read it, I thought, okay, I want to have a legacy like this guy, where over a thousand years later—almost 2,000 years later—what people say about St. Nicholas is: he loved kids, he loved orphans, he took care of people that were in need. That’s a pretty good legacy. If you can get 100 years into the future and people are saying that about you, you lived a pretty amazing life.
Laurie Christine:
Yeah, I thought it was so interesting. I really enjoyed reading through some of the devotions and learning about his life, things that I never knew. I studied the Bible in college and I also went to a Christian high school. So I had studied a little bit of church history and I had heard of Diocletian and Constantine and the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed and all of these things. But I didn’t realize Nicholas was right there. He was part of all of that.
He saw that whole transition of the persecution of the Christians throughout the Roman Empire and then that change when Constantine became leader and the unification of the empire. He saw all of that, which was pretty amazing.
And then the part of the history that he—
Sorry, are you still there? You just froze. Did you… are you gone?
I lost you.
We’ll pick up where we just were in a minute if you come back.
Hello, hello… or maybe am I frozen for you?
I think I’m still recording, but I don’t know where you went.
Matt Mikalatos:
Hey. Hey there. Can you hear me?
Laurie, can you hear me?
Hey, can you hear me?
Hey there, can you hear me? Oh my gosh. I don’t know why—
Laurie Christine:
Hey, yes, now I can. And… you’re gone.
Matt Mikalatos:
Hey. Can you hear me? Oh my gosh. I think someone in my family might have reset the router. I’m not sure what happened, but my internet went completely out. I was like, “No, what is happening?” I’m so sorry.
Laurie Christine:
I can hear you, yeah. Oh man. No, that’s okay. That has happened to me before as well. And I’m like, “Boys, who just turned off the internet?”
Matt Mikalatos:
Ugh, so embarrassing. I usually can’t get them to reset the router. They’re like, “Dad, can you reset the router?” So, well.
Laurie Christine:
Mm-hmm, yeah.
I don’t see you, but—oh, there you are. I was gonna say, if you think that the video was putting a strain on your internet access, do you think that was the case or no?
Matt Mikalatos:
I mean, it was completely gone, so either we had a brief outage or someone reset the router. Yeah. So I’m so sorry. You were right in the midst of saying something interesting too.
Laurie Christine:
Okay, yeah. Okay, no problem. We’re good. No, it’s fine. Not a big deal. It happens.
I was—I’m sure it was so interesting. I don’t know what it was, but no.
Matt Mikalatos:
You were talking about how was it… yeah, yeah.
Laurie Christine:
Oh, I was just reflecting on how he lined up with all those different aspects of history. So I think I’m actually still recording. I didn’t stop it. So I’ll just pick up there and finish that thought and then ask another question.
Matt Mikalatos:
Great.
Laurie Christine:
So I thought it was so fascinating that Nicholas was part of the Nicene Council and he had a big part in helping to determine the outcome of that council. For those of you listening who are not familiar with church history, the Nicene Council was focused on: who was Jesus? Was Jesus God? There were some people who were trying to convince the church that Jesus was just a man. He was a good man, he came from God, but he was not actually God.
Nicholas really stood up, and what you said, Matt, about when he slapped the guy—it was because this guy didn’t believe Jesus was God. He was like, “I am absolutely standing for this truth. I will not budge.” And then he slapped him, which obviously, the way he went about that may not have been appropriate. But yeah, go ahead.
Matt Mikalatos:
So it’s really interesting. You have to remember, we’re coming out of this moment where—this is one of the first what we call ecumenical councils. What that means is all of the church leaders were invited, and it was mostly the Eastern Church, meaning people that were closest to Constantinople, because it just took forever to travel. Nicholas was very close. It probably only took him a few days to get there.
These are all people that had just lived through some pretty harsh persecution. Some of them had stood up and said, “Yeah, Jesus, no big deal. I’m going to just keep ministering, but Jesus is one among the gods.” That’s what they said. They didn’t ever believe that, but they said it to avoid the persecution. Then there were people like Nicholas who were harmed in some way.
There were guys there who had their tongues cut out. There were guys there that had been in jail. There were guys there that had been beaten, which Nicholas probably was. And now we’re having this meeting to talk about: what does it mean to be a Christian?
Can you deny Jesus and still be a leader in the church? That was one question they were asking. Another was: can you believe that Jesus is not God but still be a Christian? They’re fighting this out.
This is really fascinating as far as history in the church goes. In the Roman Catholic Church and in the Eastern Orthodox Church there’s this thing called confession, where you go to your priest and you tell them bad things you’ve done and then they pray for you and tell you how to get right with God. This is where that started, because the men who had denied Jesus would go to someone like Nicholas and say, “I’m so sorry. I ran away. I abandoned my people and ran somewhere safe, and you went to jail. How can I overcome this?”
Nicholas would listen to all this and then pray for them and say, “Jesus forgives you. Don’t do that again, but serve God.” That’s where the tradition of confessors comes from. People like Nicholas were called confessors.
So be in Nicholas’s shoes for a second and realize he spent five years in jail. His people suffered. The building of his church was still there, but they burned all their Bibles. Now he’s sitting there listening to a guy saying, “Yeah, it’s not a big deal to say that Jesus isn’t God.” And he’s thinking, “I went to prison for that.”
So you can imagine emotions were high. It wasn’t just, “Is this true or not?” It was also, “What are you saying to those of us who have suffered for this truth that’s clearly in scripture?”
What happens is Nicholas does hit someone. It might have been a guy named Arius or it might have been one of his followers. Immediately—Constantine is there. The emperor is there, which has never happened before. The head of the Roman Empire is in the room. It’s illegal to do an act of violence when you’re standing near the emperor. So he’s immediately arrested.
Constantine says to all the gathered people, “Well, I guess we have one more thing to put on the agenda for while we’re here, which is: what are you going to do about Nicholas?” There are a bunch of stories about what exactly happens, some of which involve visions or miracles or other things, and some of which are more pragmatic. But what does end up happening by the end is Nicholas is forgiven. He’s reinstated as a bishop and allowed to continue as a minister despite punching a dude in a meeting. It’s pretty good.
Laurie Christine:
There are just so many things that are inspiring about his life. One of the things that we love to talk about on this podcast is how books that we’re reading can help boys to become strong, courageous warriors for the kingdom of God. Since your book is all about St. Nicholas, I want to focus specifically on his life. What are some ways that emulating his life could inspire our boys to become strong, courageous warriors for God’s kingdom?
Matt Mikalatos:
Yeah, let’s look at the most famous story that has become many versions of the same story of Nicholas, because it happens when he’s still a teenager. His parents have died, a lot of people have died, and the economic world around them is collapsing. People who were very wealthy aren’t anymore, and people who were poor are in radical danger of a variety of things—death, being sold into slavery, things like that.
There’s a family that Nicholas hears about. We don’t know if it’s because they were in his church or probably his uncle’s church. The father doesn’t have enough money to pay for food for his kids. He has three daughters, and what he’s planning—because back then the way you got married was that your father and mother would give a dowry, a money gift, to the husband so you could go start your own life. He thinks, “I don’t even have money for food. I definitely don’t have money to get my daughters into another family. There’s no way to do it.”
So he’s going to sell his kids into slavery because he figures at least then they’ll have food. They’ll live. That’s something.
Nicholas hears about this, and he has a bunch of money because he inherited all of his parents’ wealth. He’s probably 16 or 17, an orphan. What he does is he sneaks out there at night, he gets a bag of money, and he throws it through their window. By medieval times, the story is told that he puts it in their shoes, or he drops it in their socks that are drying, or he drops it down the chimney. But in the original version, he throws it through a window.
The father sees it and says, “This is enough to marry off one of my daughters.” And so he does, or he plans to. Then the second night, Nicholas comes again and throws in some more money for the second daughter. On the third night, he comes again, and this time the father is waiting out in the darkness outside his house. He sees the guy throw the money and he runs over and tackles him because he wants to thank him.
He starts saying, “Thank you, Nicholas, thank you for what you’ve done.” And Nicholas says, “Please, please, please don’t thank me. This was God. God provided for you, not me. I don’t want to be thanked. Please don’t tell anyone this story,” which we know he did, because I know the story somehow.
What I love about this, what I think this says to boys and to all of us, is: this is a 16-year-old kid. He’s a young man. What did he do? He saw a need in the world around him. He looked at the resources he had, whatever those were, and then he took care of the people around him. I think that’s really beautiful.
You don’t have to be rich to do stories like this, because we have stories about Nicholas later when he’s not rich, when he’s still taking care of people who have less than him, which is really beautiful.
Throughout Nicholas’s life, we see this over and over—that he sees the people around him that are in the most need, often impoverished people, orphans, children. Sometimes it’s people that society looks down on in some way, the elderly. We have a great story about him taking care of an old couple when he’s in the Holy Land.
All of these times, what he has developed is this godly ability to see the needs around him, and then to have compassion and to care for people with needs. It’s a discipline that you have to grow in your life. Some people more naturally do it than others, even when they’re kids, right? But it’s something all of us can grow in, especially when we have the Holy Spirit helping us grow and become more Christlike.
Laurie Christine:
I think that’s such a good lesson for our boys—to show them that the strong, courageous warrior doesn’t always look like the person on the front lines of battle getting all of the victory or getting all of the honor or the awards or the accolades. It’s somebody behind the scenes who is serving and who’s being compassionate and who’s just seeing the needs of others, not looking for the reward or the affirmation or the spotlight, but serving those around him in love.
That’s such a great example that Nicholas set, that we can talk to our boys about and show them: look at this, look at how he was serving God in this way.
Matt Mikalatos:
Let me say this. I think for sure there are boys who are looking for places to show their courage and strength and use those things. What our culture sometimes teaches is that the best places to use strength and courage are in defending yourself. That is occasionally true. But what is often true is that there are people around you who are in need, who are marginalized, and you can enter into their lives and show strength and courage protecting others much more easily and much more often than you can if you’re focused on taking care of yourself.
We see this throughout Christian history. Even as you do go into medieval times, what was a knight? A knight was someone who went out from their homeland looking for people in need to help. I think that learning that skill of seeing the people in need around you lets you move into those spaces that I think a lot of us desire—“How can I be heroic? How can I be kind-hearted? How can I take care of others?” That does let us do really difficult things in the service of other people.
Laurie Christine:
Yeah. I often tell my boys, “You are strong, and God has made you strong, but you need to use your strength to do good things. You need to use your strength to help people, not to hurt people. You need to use your strength to defend others, not to attack others.” Such a good lesson.
And then also, just what we mentioned briefly earlier, how he took a stand for his beliefs about Jesus as well. He stood very firmly on who he knew Jesus to be. He sacrificed. He knew that he might go to jail by taking this stand. When everyone around him was denying Christ, he took a stand and he said, “No, I’m not going to deny the Lord. I’m not going to deny that he is God and he is who he says he is.” He went to jail multiple times for that.
So there are so many things that we can point out to our boys.
Matt Mikalatos:
I think if you prefer the idea of actual, “I wish I could go to war,” kind of thing, this is kind of funny. I didn’t make a big deal about this in the book, but as the Roman Empire became in charge and ministers became more and more important in the official Roman government, Nicholas would get money from the emperor to take care of poor people. The emperor would send him a budget: “Use this for the poor people in your city, fix up the streets.” Nicholas was in charge of defending his city from pirates, because they were on the coast.
So it’s kind of funny to think about St. Nicholas going, “I’ve got to take care of these kids, and I’ve got to fight these pirates.”
Laurie Christine:
That’s amazing. I love it. I want to, for Christmas this year, have my nativity scene and my Santa decorations and then a pirate—and Santa fighting the pirate. Yes.
Matt Mikalatos:
Yeah, St. Nicholas with his sword going out there: “Hey, pirates! It’s the birth of Jesus. Stop doing that. Be kind.”
Laurie Christine:
Yeah, that’s amazing. I love it.
Well, I think this resource, in addition to being a great devotional resource, would be really good for homeschool families to use as kind of a special Christmas unit. I know a lot of our listeners homeschool their kids, and I homeschool one of my children. I think it would be really fun, just as I was reading through it, to give your kids an assignment about researching the life of St. Nicholas and then brainstorming as a family: how can we put into practice some of these things that he did? What can we do as a family to put into practice some of the things we talked about that Nicholas did in his life?
I love that there are a couple things specifically in the book, in the back matter, that I think are really helpful as well. One of them is a timeline, which just talks about his actual life—what happened. He was born on March 15, AD 270, and where he was born. That’s really helpful, just to look at that timeline. That could definitely be used in a homeschool setting.
And then the other thing that I really like is in the very back of the book. It’s kind of like a “fact or fiction” section. My own books actually have a fact or fiction section in the back. I love that this is the “100% true, completely historical story of St. Nicholas,” and then it gives some paragraphs. Then it says, “These are things that are historically accurate, or pretty close anyway.” Then, “These are things that seem very likely to be real.” Then, “Here are some things that seem more likely than not.” Then, “Here are some things that are probably not true.” And then, “Here are just some things that definitely didn’t happen.”
I love that you break that down, because we do have some historical evidence, but then there’s also a lot of oral tradition and stories that have been elaborated over the years. I think about other famous historical figures like St. Patrick or Paul Bunyan. They were actual historical figures, but the stories have been exaggerated over time and blown up into all of these… you’re never quite sure.
Matt Mikalatos:
Right. There was another Nicholas who was a bishop in the church at close to the same time, called Nicholas of Sion, and some of their stories get mixed up. It’s messy.
Sometimes we’re looking at how a story is told over time. The oldest, most accurate stories we have about Nicholas—we know because they don’t take place in medieval times. They take place in the Roman Empire. We’ll see him talking about Constantine. We’ll see him interacting with historical figures that were leading the city he was in. Some of those stories are in the book.
Obviously, this had to be a Christmas book because we also strongly associate him with Christmas. But for me, as I was reading the source materials and learning more about him, I realized that he was becoming a hero of the faith to me. He’s not someone I just think about at Christmas anymore. He’s someone that I go, “Man…”
This goes to the idea of sainthood. I just want to mention this. For Protestants, we don’t really think of saints the same way that Catholics or some others might. We say all believers are saints. That’s part of what it means to follow Jesus.
But in the early church and in Nicholas’s time, there was no sainthood path. Now, in the Roman Catholic Church or in the Orthodox Church, there are rules: you have to do X number of miracles, you have to be dead, all these things. In Nicholas’s days, people started being called a saint by something they called “acclamation,” which was just people around you saying, “Hey, that’s a person who lived a good life, and it would be good to follow them.”
I feel like he’s become that to me. He’s a person that I look at and I go, “Here’s someone who followed Jesus well and did some amazing things in his life, and I would love to have a life and a legacy like his. What do I need to change to become more like Jesus and more like Nicholas?”
So for me, it’s not just a Christmas book. If you’re homeschooling and say, “Hey, we’re talking about the Christianization of Rome,” it would be super fun to look at that through the lens of Nicholas. I think it’d be really interesting.
Laurie Christine:
Yeah, absolutely. Do you know if he was called a saint during his lifetime, or did that happen afterwards?
Matt Mikalatos:
Not during his lifetime, no. It was after.
He was well regarded, but he wasn’t even famous in his lifetime, really. That came as we move into the medieval period, as people are looking back for stories about Christian people that are inspiring, and they start finding Nicholas. That’s actually how Nicholas’s bones end up in Italy.
In the medieval period, some guys came to the monastery—or to the church where his bones were—and they were asking about Nicholas: “He’s an amazing guy.” And they said, “Yeah, we have his bones downstairs.” The visitors were Italian traders. They went in and stole the bones and took them home to Italy and said, “Now we have a tourist attraction,” and they built a church in Italy, in Bari.
So you can go see his bones today. He’s still there. They’ve studied his bones. We learned some interesting stuff. That’s where we learned that his nose was broken, and by the end of his life he apparently had very, very bad arthritis in his back and in his arms and legs.
I love the picture of slapping somebody at a meeting. I love the picture of Nicholas sending gold in through a window. But I really, really love the picture of Nicholas as a 72-year-old man getting up in the morning and his bones literally hurt, and the bells are ringing to pray, and it’s Christmas morning, and he’s excited to see the children come into the church. That’s where I want to go. That’s when I say “hero of the faith.” I’m like, can I get there? I want to be that guy.
Laurie Christine:
Yeah, that’s so cool.
So I’m gonna read the back cover of the book Praying with St. Nicholas so you all can hear what this is all about, and then we will wrap up.
Here’s what it says on the back of the book:
“Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. But how much do you know about the real story behind St. Nicholas? We love Christmas not only because of the carefully wrapped presents and twinkling lights, the loving family, the holiday parties and singing. We love Christmas because we’re hungry for miracles.
For Christmas this year, discover the history as well as the origins of the myths and the legends of St. Nicholas, a man who was hungry for miracles too. Nicholas made children feel seen and he let them know they were loved. He paid attention to the people around him and asked how he could help. If they needed money or a protector or a prayer, Nicholas provided it for them as a servant of God. He showed them the miraculous love of the Father.
In Praying with St. Nicholas, you’ll find 25 devotions with readings sharing a glimpse into Nicholas’s life and prayers for insights that will bring us more deeply into the Advent season and help us be transformed to see the world through God’s eyes, just as Nicholas worked to do.”
Be sure to check out Matt Mikalatos’ new book, Praying with St. Nicholas.
All right, Matt, before we go, I know that you’ve written several other books that I think would appeal to boys and to our families listening. Could you just tell us briefly about some of those other series that you’ve written?
Matt Mikalatos:
Sure. I’ve got a graphic novel called God With Us, which is the story of the Emmaus road where Jesus is walking with some disciples. They don’t recognize him, and they tell him stories about Jesus and he tells them stories about how scripture in the Old Testament was always talking about him. In our imagined version, we also have two kids tagging along and asking questions. So it’s a really beautiful, wonderful graphic novel called God With Us: Bible Stories on the Road to Emmaus.
Then I have a fantasy trilogy that starts with a book called The Crescent Stone, which is the story of some teenage kids who get drawn into another world—kind of a Narnia kind of world—where they are promised their heart’s desire in exchange for fighting in this eternal war for a year. But once they get there, they realize that maybe they’ve made a deal with the bad guys. So then they have to decide, “Should I give up my heart’s desire and fight for the good guys, or what should I do here?”
It’s a really fun trilogy. Those are probably the first ones I would suggest, especially for young men.
Laurie Christine:
For boys, yeah. Awesome. Those sound really good. I will definitely have links to those in the show notes. I also have on my website a library of all the books of authors that I’ve interviewed, so I will include those books in my library there as well.
Is there anything on the horizon for you as far as books you’re working on or what’s coming next for you?
Matt Mikalatos:
Yes. Praying with St. Nicholas just came out. I have some secret graphic novel projects I’m not allowed to talk about. They’re adaptations of things you might already know and love, so that’s nice.
I also write in TV and movies. I have a movie about Hudson Taylor, who was a missionary to China in the 1800s, that is going into production this next spring, is the plan. That should be in the next year or two that the movie will be available. It’s a really beautiful story.
There’s always stuff. You never know. We’ve got some TV shows out there floating around, some movies. We’ll see what gets made.
Laurie Christine:
All right, so where can our listeners find out more about you and all of the things that you’re involved in?
Matt Mikalatos:
Probably the easiest thing is to learn how to spell my name and go to mikalatos.com. So it’s M-I-K-A-L-A-T-O-S. It is not updated as often as it should be because I’m off writing things, but there’s a way to contact me there, and I’m glad to send you emails and fill you in on things if you’re interested.
Laurie Christine:
All right, sounds good. Well, Matt Mikalatos, thank you so much for joining us on the Sword and Story podcast.
Matt Mikalatos:
Thanks, Laurie. This was super fun, actually. I love talking about St. Nicholas.
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