Originally published at National Catholic Register
Meet the layman and the priest who bore St. Nicholas’s name and defended the faith with ingenuity and grace.
There is a magic about the name of St. Nicholas. His feast day, celebrated during the Advent season, is a little foretaste of the Christmas to come. In many cultures, there is the giving of gifts on the feast of St. Nicholas as there is the giving of gifts at Christmas. And, of course, St. Nicholas, as popularized in metamorphosed form as Santa Claus, is inseparable from the celebration of the Christmas season in many people’s eyes.
And then there’s his manifestation as Kris Kringle in which he seems to blend with Christ himself, Kris Kringle deriving etymologically from the German, ChristKind, meaning Christ Child. In this etymological sense, we can even say that St. Nicholas has become more Christ-like than all the other saints, his spirit melding with the gift of the Christ Child himself.
It would be odd to begin a series on the Unsung Heroes of Christendom by singing the praises of such a saint. It would be so odd that we’re not going to do it. The unsung St. Nicholas is not the St. Nick who
