Jolly Old St. Nicholas — oh yes, he was a bishop — wasn’t having any of it. He tried to listen patiently, he really did, but Arius’ speech was just so wrong, that he was compelled to get up in the midst of it and, yep, punch him in the face.
BOOM! YOU JUST GOT KRIS-KRINGLED SON!
I hold that this
is the image of Santa Claus we need to reclaim. Because when you think
about it, this was the original campaign to Put the Christ Back in
Christmas. Arius would have made the nativity a non-event. He,
majestically prefiguring the various sects of Happy-Holiday-ers, Winter
Solstice-ers, and it’s-actually-a-pagan-holiday-ers (that’s the point,
you muppets!) denied that Christmas need be a celebration of substance
at all. So when the modern world promotes the consumerist image of Santa
Claus over the image of Christ, it is not so much the wrath of Christ
they should fear as it is the wrath of Santa Claus. He may very well
climb down the chimney and wup you.
Christmas
is about this singular, terrible reality: That the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us. In the spirit of St. Nick; accept no substitute.
Perhaps our Christmas carols need to be
rewritten in light of the Grand Punch of St. Nicholas. It wouldn’t be
too hard, we could sing:
~~> Jolly Old St. Nicholas/Lend your fist this
way . . . .
~~> I saw Dawkins rocked by Santa Claus/flying from the podium last
niiighht . . . . .
and of course,
~~> He sees when you’re dissenting/he knows when
you’ve blasphemed/he knows your schismatic doctrines/and so he’s gonna
punch your face/Oh, you better not doubt/You better not divide/You
better not bring scandal to the Holy Roman Catholic Church/I’m telling
you why/Saaaanta Claus is smacking you down . . . .
etc. etc. etc.
So
thank you St. Nicholas, for your inspired punch. Oh, I almost forgot the
end of the story. I’ll let Taylor Marshall, who writes over at Cantebury Tales tell it:
Now if that were the end of the story, we probably wouldn’t know about Saint Nicholas, and our children wouldn’t be asking him for presents. However, after Nicholas was deposed, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary visited Nicholas who was being held in a prison cell for his fist-fight with the heretic.
Our Lord Jesus Christ asked Saint Nicholas, “Why are you here?” Nicholas responded, “Because I love you, my Lord and my God.”
Christ then presented Nicholas with his copy of the Gospels. Next, the Blessed Virgin vested Nicholas with his episcopal pallium, thus restoring him to his rank as a bishop.
When the Emperor Constantine heard of this miracle, he immediately ordered that Nicholas be reinstated as a bishop in good standing for the Council of Nicea. Today we recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday so we know how the controversy played out. The bishops at Nicea sided with Saint Nicholas and Saint Athanasius and they condemned Arius as a heretic.
To this very day, we still recite in the Creed that Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
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