A saint's day
St Nicholas the Wonderworker
St Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, gave away his whole inheritance to the poor, always in secret; most famously he threw gold through a poor man's window by night so that his three daughters could marry honorably. He snatched the sword from an executioner's hand to spare three innocent men, stood against Arius at the First Ecumenical Council, calmed storms and fed his city in famine. After his repose his relics flowed with fragrant myrrh, and in 1087 they were carried to Bari in Italy.
The dates
- Kept on
- 6 December (19 December on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Orthodox Christians everywhere call him their “speedy helper” and pray to him before every journey, for their children, for their daughters' marriages and in any hard hour.
Greek fishing boats carry his icon with a lamp, and Russian sailors called him “Nikola of the Sea.”
Slavic families call this feast Nikola Zimny, Winter St Nicholas, to tell it from Spring St Nicholas, the translation of his relics to Bari, which is a feast of the Slavic churches. The Greek Church did not establish that feast, since Greeks regarded the loss of the relics as a sad event.
Santa Claus grew out of the Western memory of St Nicholas; the Orthodox Church honors the real bishop of Myra.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast:
The saint
Icons for the feast
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