Christmas Carols and Their Stories
Puzzle 79 · Christmas Customs and Traditions · Page 109 in print
Saint Nicholas
Thomas Nast, illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, made 33 pictures of Santa Claus, some inspired by “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” and may have been the first to place Santa’s workshop at the North Pole.
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The words
Asia Minor
Region of Nicholas’s birth and bishopric.
Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition (opens a new tab) · St. Nicholas Center (opens a new tab)
Bari
Italian seaport where the saint’s relics lie.
Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition (opens a new tab) · St. Nicholas Center (opens a new tab)
Boy Bishop
Chorister elected on St Nicholas’s Eve in medieval England.
Clement Moore
Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed the poem in 1844.
New York State Library: Revisiting ‘A Visit (opens a new tab)
Livingston
Major Henry Livingston Jr., whom some credit with the poem.
New York State Library: Revisiting ‘A Visit (opens a new tab)
Myra
City in Asia Minor where Nicholas was bishop.
Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition (opens a new tab) · St. Nicholas Center (opens a new tab)
North Pole
Where Nast placed Santa’s workshop.
Patara
Village in Asia Minor where Nicholas was born.
Reindeer
The team named in the 1823 poem.
New York State Library: Revisiting ‘A Visit (opens a new tab)
Sinterklaas
The Dutch St Nicholas, celebrated on 5 December.
Speculaas
Dutch spiced biscuits baked for St Nicholas.
Stockings
Hung for St Nicholas’s gifts, after the story of the bags of gold.
Thomas Nast
Cartoonist whose drawings shaped the American Santa Claus.
Troy Sentinel
Newspaper that first printed A Visit from St. Nicholas, 23 December 1823.
New York State Library: Revisiting ‘A Visit (opens a new tab)
White Horse
The horse Sinterklaas rides in the Netherlands.
Sources
- Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (London, 1912), Project Gutenberg ebook 19098Project Gutenberg
- St. Nicholas Center (Holland, Michigan), ‘Who is St. Nicholas?’stnicholascenter.org
- Revisiting ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’: Seventh Floor Exhibits: New York State LibraryNew York State Library, exhibit ‘Revisiting “A Visit from St. Nicholas”’ (December 2015), retrieved from the Internet Archive capture of nysl.nysed.gov/collections/stnick/
- Santa’s Christmas EveMacculloch Hall Historical Museum, Morristown, New Jersey, ‘Santa’s Christmas Eve’
- St. Nicholas Center, ‘Netherlands’ (Customs Around the World)stnicholascenter.org