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 Nikolas, 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.
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But in the West Nicholas was revered 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 ownership of the Chicago Bears. 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 in 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 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.
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 sidekick Indian Mingo on Fess
Parker’s TV series Daniel Boon.
The
version of Jolly Old St. Nicholas features an orchestra
directed by Marty Manning.
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