This
is St. Nicholas Day, a day when
children in the Netherlands and
across much of Northern Europe awake
to find their stockings or shoes
filled with candy, nuts, oranges, and small toys left behind in the night by
the sanctified Bishop. It is also still
observed in some American families,
though the practice seems to be fading. Our three daughters always found their stockings filled until they were
adults. It is also a good day to trot
out Jolly
Old St. Nicholas, America’s
oldest secular Christmas song—if you
discount Jingle Bells which was not intended to be linked to the
holiday.
A
traditional Catholic Feast Day in
the West, it celebrates the day Nikolaos
of Myra, the Greek Bishop
of Myra in Asia Minor died in 346.
He is one of the most important Saints in the Orthodox tradition
as well and is venerated in Greece and especially in Russia
where he is the national patron.
But in the West Nicholas was celebrated as a patron
of children and gradually morphed into the lanky, bearded
Bishop in a red miter or cowl dolling out the goodies. In America he was ultimately transformed into
Santa Claus with a workshop full of elves at the North
Pole, a jolly cookie baking wife, and a sleigh pulled by
flying reindeer. And he makes his
rounds on Christmas Eve, not on the Feast of St. Nicholas. Quite a transformation.
St. Nicholas came to North America with the Dutch
settlers of New York and the Hudson Valley. He was alien to the rest of the colonies,
especially in New England which frowned of Christmas and all
things smacking of Bishops, Saints, and Popery.
By
the post-Revolutionary era he had
passed on to English residents of
New York. Washington Irving, who preserved the old Dutch folk tales—and made more than a few up himself—noted that at
some point prior to the 1820’s, St. Nicholas had shifted his gift giving to
Christmas in areas of the Hudson Valley.
In
1823 a newspaper in Troy, New York published
an anonymous poem titled A
Visit from St. Nicholas that
was later attributed to Clement Clark
Moore. Within years it was being re-printed annually in newspapers
across the United States. In the poem, Moore invented many of the “traditions” associated with St. Nicholas’s
visit on Christmas Eve, including
his reindeer and sleigh transport and a physical description of the jolly old elf that strips him of his Bishop’s regalia, dresses him in fur, and transforms him from a tall, regal figure to a rotund, bearded little man.
This
new character was called Santa Claus,
derived from the Dutch Sinterklass
regionally, but remained better known as St. Nicholas through most of the
following century. Thomas Nast’s mid-century cartoons
helped define his appearance, including the fur trimmed cap instead of the miter, top hat, or cowl depicted in earlier
illustrations. There was not much
agreement on the color of his
outfit, which was often pictured as brown
fur trimmed in ermine or as green or blue, until the spread of cheap
popular color lithography in which
artists used the bishop’s red of Europe because it showed up so brilliantly.
Enter
Emily Huntington Miller who
submitted a poem called Lilly’s Secret to The
Little Corporal Magazine in December 1865, just as Nast’s drawings were
cementing the new vision of St. Nick
and a war weary nation was eager to
devote time and love to their families and children.
In
1867 John Piersol McCaskey, a school principal and former Mayor of Lancaster, Pennsylvania adapted Miller’s words with a few changes
to music. McCaskey included the song and
his songwriting claim in his 1881
book, Franklin Square Song Collection, No. 1 and noted that it had previously been published in 1874 in School
Chimes, A New School Music Book compiled by hymnist James Ramsey Murray. McCaskey,
by the way, is a direct ancestor of
the Chicago Bears team owners family. Make
of that what you will.
By
the late 19th Century the song was a
parlor piano sing-along favorite and
was a staple at the Christmas pageants
that were becoming a fixture in public schools.
St.
Nicholas, St. Nick, and Santa Claus were all commonly used, with St. Nicholas
holding the edge until Santa Claus won out sometime around 1930 and popular magazine cover art and commercial art by the likes of Norman Rockwell and the Saturday
Evening Post and Haddon Sundblom
for Coca Cola firmly fixed the modern image of the gift giver.
The
song has been recorded many times beginning with Edison cylinders and early RCA
discs. Among the more notable
versions were by Ray Smith in 1949, Chet Atkins in 1961, Eddy Arnold in 1962, The
Chipmunks in 1963, Andy Williams
in 1995, Anne Murray in 2001, and Carole King in 2017. Perhaps the most commonly heard version was
included in the Ray Conniff Singers 1963
album We Wish You a Merry Christmas.
But
today we are listening to a version by the popular
quartet the Ames Brothers
recorded in 1951 on Coral Records. Siblings
Joe, Gene, Vic, and Ed hailed from Malden, Massachusetts. Their surname at birth was Urick
and they were the sons of were Russian
Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. During World War II the three youngest brothers and a cousin entertained at Army and
Navy bases then were booked into The Fox and Hounds nightclub, one of the fanciest night clubs in Boston under the name the Amory
Brothers.
As their local post-war popularity grew, older brother Joe joined the group replacing the cousin. In 1948 they signed with Decca Records in New York but could not record for a year when American Federation of Musicians (AFM) President Joe Petrillo imposed a ban on commercial recordings to improve royalty payments to musicians. When the ban was lifted the group, renamed again as the Ames Brothers, was the first act to record on Decca’s new Coral label.
The Ames Brothers in 1955--clockwise from top:
Ed, Vic, Joe and Gene
They
were swept into national top billing with their first hit record, Rag
Mop, in January 1950. Over the
next 13 years until the group broke up,
the Ames Brothers reached the charts 49
times, were featured regulars on Arthur Godfrey’s radio show, and were
one of the first acts on Ed Sullivan’s
Talk
of the Town TV show, and frequent guests on other shows on both media.
After the group broke up Ed Ames went on to even greater fame as a solo artist with hits like Try
to Remember from The Fantasticks and portraying side kick Indian Mingo on Fess Parker’s TV series Daniel Boon.
The version of Jolly Old St. Nicholas feature an orchestra directed by Marty Manning.
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