The Real Story of the “American St. Nick”

5th December 1944

There are countless theories about the gradual blending of three cultural icons, Father Christmas, St. Nicolas and Santa Claus over the centuries to become the jolly, beloved figure who crams his prosperous girth down our chimneys every Christmas Eve.

From his earliest days until the 19^th Century, Father Christmas was a strictly emblematic figure, a merry old Falstaffian cove who, far from being a giver of gifts to mannerly children, instead was synonymous with the supervision of festive gatherings for adult disciples of the epicurean and Bacchanalian feast. The celebration of Christmas in Britain came under attack however from the Puritans during the 17^th Century and, in 1647, Parliament in London passed an Act banning Christmas altogether, along with Easter, Whitsun and many other traditional holidays only to be overturned in 1660 following the Restoration.

—

Not celebrated in the United Kingdom, most continental Europeans are however familiar with the Catholic tradition of the Feast of St. Nicolas. This happens each year on 6^th December to honor the memory of a Turkish bishop of Greek descent named Nicolas who had a reputation for secret gift-giving who died in 343AD and was beatified nearly two hundred years later.

There are many legends surrounding St. Nicolas of Myra who became the patron saint of, amongst countless others, sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, coopers, fishermen, merchants, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people and students. For those that follow the tradition of placing an orange in our Christmas stockings for example, as the story goes, St. Nicolas heard of a poor man who could not afford dowries for his three daughters and was on the brink of selling them into slavery. The legend has it that Nicolas went to the man’s house and anonymously threw three bags of gold down the chimney to provide dowries for the girls. The gold landed in their stockings that were drying by the fire. The oranges we find in the bottom of today’s stockings are meant to be symbols of that gold.

Another legend sees Nicolas placing money inside shoes which are left out for him, resonating with a tradition performed in the Baltic States today that sees parents place a shoe on the window ledge of their children’s bedroom each night in December. If the child has been good that day, custom sees the child awaken the next morning to a sweet placed inside the shoe. When my own children were small, I shamelessly ‘adopted’ and ‘adapted’ this custom and ‘bought’ myself some peace during the twelfth month. I would tell them that Santa kept a ledger for each child and his decision about whether or not to visit on Christmas Eve would be determined by the number of empty shoes over the course of the month.

Over the centuries, St. Nicolas’s fame spread throughout medieval Europe and tales of his gold-giving exploits gave rise to a tradition of leaving gifts for children on the night before 6^th December. In the Low Countries, markets emerged in the weeks before the festival to sell toys and treats for the occasion, and St. Nicolas – or ‘Sinterklaas‘ – impersonators would dress up in bishops’ vestments, donning a mitre and carrying a crook – or crozier – to delight onlookers. A tradition also evolved that saw the red-robed bishop entering houses by passing through locked doors or descending chimneys to leave gifts in shoes and stockings for the children.

Much like Father Christmas in England, the celebration of St. Nicolas came under attack around the same time as the newly emerging Protestant movement in Europe was moving away from the veneration of saints. Sinterklaas markets were banned, as was the baking of speculaas biscuits – containing a number of different spices – made in the shape of a bishop. It is perhaps interesting to note that, in the Middle Ages, the word ‘speculator’ was often used to refer to bishops.

The eagle-eyed here will spot the spelling mistake and ponder on the difference between the Dutch speculaas and perhaps the better known Belgian variant, the speculoos biscuit that emerged in the 19^th Century that contains only one spice, cinnamon. One version has it that, as Belgium sought to break-away from the Low Countries, the Dutch heavily taxed the export of spices to its neighbors meaning that manufacturing costs of the popular biscuit went up leaving bakers to resort to the use of “less” spices.

—

However, back to the Protestants. In their quest to shift the narrative, it was the commemoration of the birth of the infant Messiah that became more associated with the giving of gifts to celebrate the Nativity. In Lutheran Germany, this became known as ‘das Christkindl’ which became Anglicised as ‘Kris Kringle’.

As more and more Dutch families began to emigrate in the early 17^th Century to the American colonies, they bore with them the tradition of celebrating the feast day of St. Nicolas introducing other colonists to Sinterklaas which of course evolved amongst the English-speaking majority to become Santa Claus. Out of this melting pot of humanity, emerged a fusion of the kindly old bishop who, it was said, would fly over the land in a wagon and climb down chimneys to deliver presents blended together with old Nordic folk stories of a magician who punished the naughty and rewarded the good.

In the early 19^th Century, articles in New York began to appear about these traditions that seemed to be an effort to offer a gentler, more family-oriented custom in a city that habitually descended each year around Christmas time into drunken mob violence. By 1821, an anonymous illustrated poem – not a celebrated fizzy drinks company as marketing gurus would have you believe – called ‘Old Sante Claus with Much Delight’ cemented the idea of a red coat, reindeer and sleigh, and placed Santa Claus’s arrival on Christmas Eve rather than St Nicolas’s Day. In 1823, the legend was further concretized by the publication of the poem, ‘A Visit from St. Nicolas‘ – perhaps better known as ‘The Night Before Christmas’- by Clement Clark Moore, a professor of Hebrew.

—

It is believed that Santa Claus first soared over English airspace in 1864 following the publication of a story by an American author in England that places Father Christmas and Santa Claus alongside one another. Quite from which postal address they emerged from before taking to the skies seemed never to be questioned.

With a strong focus during the Victorian era on morality and the ‘family’, there evolved the need for a strong figure to embody the spirit of Christmas and the values that the Victorians evoked. For the Victorians, the burlesque figure of Father Christmas, morphed into a benevolent soul who possessed the power to keep unruly children in check, sat comfortably with the range of other Christmas traditions that were being imported, invented and refashioned like gift-giving, the Christmas tree, Christmas cards, carol singing and the Christmas cracker. Wrap all of this up alongside the popular social commentaries being peddled by the celebrated Charles Dickens and the British imagination was captivated just as the Americans had been half a century before.

—

For hundreds of years in the Luxembourgish town of Wiltz, well known in the region as a center for tanning and brewing, a celebration had occurred on the 5^th December, the eve of St. Nicolas Day – ‘Kleeserchersdag’ in Luxembourgish. A man dressed as Sinterklaas – known locally as ‘Kleeschen’ – would parade through the town and give sweets to the children.

Following the country’s occupation by the Nazis in 1940, for almost five years under Nazi rule though, Luxembourgers had been forbidden from celebrating Kleeserchersdag, an important local tradition, especially for children. The war had also taken a heavy toll on the town as Wiltz became a center of resistance, suffering brutal reprisals by the Nazis. People were shot in the town square and men were forced into the German army or sent to concentration camps.

When it was liberated by the Allies in September 1944, Wiltz became a rest and recreation site for Allied units recovering from the bloody battles taking place seventy miles to the north in the Hürtgen Forest.

One such unit which came to Wiltz was the U.S. 28^th Infantry Division. Back in August 1944, with banners waving and Parisian crowds cheering their passing, the men of the 28^th Infantry Division had marched in unison, twenty-four abreast down Paris’ most famous avenue, the Champs-Elysées in a parade to celebrate the city’s liberation.

Hours before the parade, these men of Pennsylvania’s ‘Keystone Division’ – also known as the “Bloody Bucket” Division because of its distinctive insignia – commanded by the hero of Omaha Beach, Brig. Gen. Norman Cota, had been in heavy combat. Ordered to disengage from the fighting, they were shuttled to Versailles, given fresh uniforms and preparations made for the parade. They marched straight through Paris and out the other side, barely pausing before the war for them resumed.

In September 1944, the Division became even more celebrated by becoming the first Allied soldiers to set foot in Germany. In early November 1944, the men of the 28^th fought valiantly in the “Green Hell” of the Hürtgen Forest, notably along the Kall River trail in one of the most terrible and brutal actions of the Second World War. Following their withdrawal from the line, this battered unit had suffered 36% casualties and was sent to Wiltz to rest and recuperate.

A few days before Thanksgiving that year, a young Jewish Corporal called Harry Stutz, after learning about the tradition of Kleeserchersdag from the local priest Father Wolffe, convinced his roommate, twenty-two year old Corporal Richard Brookins, of the need for a St. Nicolas Day celebration for the children of Wiltz. Both men were part of the 28th Division’s 112th Infantry Regiment, garrisoning the town.

The idea of the celebration was eventually approved and all the excited townspeople invited to enjoy the revival of this custom. Many of the children were too young to even recall it as being an event in the Christmas calendar. In what became a Divisional effort, the American soldiers billeted there donated all the candy and chocolate from their rations and even some of their gifts from home. The field kitchen made donuts and baked cakes for the party. Tall and gangly as he was, Dick Brookins agreed to play the part of St. Nicolas even though he had no clue who the man was.

In the afternoon of December 5^th, 1944, Dick Brookins was taken up to Wiltz Castle, where Nuns dressed him in Father Wolffe’s vestments, his cassock, surplice and cape. A rope beard tied on with a ribbon topped by an ill-fitting Bishop’s mitre and a broken Bishop’s crozier held together by tape completed the costume. Notwithstanding a crippling headache sustained by the tight headware, Dick Brookins persevered so the children could enjoy their ceremony. Two young local girls, dressed in white with angel wings, were St. Nicolas’s angel helpers. Before they departed, Father Wolffe made the sign of the cross over them, giving a blessing, “May God and the spirit of Kleeschen be with you.”

Leaving the castle, they were paraded through the streets in the back of an American jeep as locals lined up and all the children came forward to receive their gifts. Women and children lined the streets—the only men present were men from the 28^th Division. A soldier played the guitar while children sang and danced. When they saw Kleeschen, everyone cheered. Many recalled being bemused by this silent, saintly figure who spoke no Luxembourgish but managed to communicate in the few words of German he knew.

Walking about as the saintly bishop, Dick made the sign of the cross, blessing children as he passed. After about forty minutes, they all climbed back in the jeep and drove back up to the castle, where more children were waiting.

At the castle, Dick Brookins blessed the children waiting there while his ‘angels’ carried his train. A newsreel filmed at the time shows Dick being escorted to a large chair inside the castle’s main hall where the children lined up to talk to Kleeschen, sit on his knee and tell him what they wanted for Kleeserchersdag. The newsreel shows Dick nodding wisely, repeating some of the words so that anyone who heard him would think he really understood. In the meantime, G.I.’s from the 28^th Division were at tables, handing out treats, while the nuns served hot chocolate to the children made from the soldiers’ melted chocolate bars. The townsfolk also celebrated with songs and dances celebrating the first time, for years, the traditions of Kleeserchersdag.

After the last child had hopped off Dick’s knee, the Mother Superior stepped forward and thanked him, saying, “The children are very happy. They will remember, as will we.” Dick Brookins then thanked his two angels, and left the hall as the last song was being sung. He quickly took off the robes so that Father Wolffe could get to Mass, and the celebration was over.

—

Fifteen days later, Wiltz fell once again during the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s ill-fated Ardennes Offensive launched on 16^th December 1944. Tragically, some fifty of the children who had participated in the celebration on the 5^th December died in the fighting that followed. Alongside an ad hoc force of clerks, cooks, musicians, medics and orderlies of the 28^th’s Headquarters scrambled together to defend the town, Corporal Harry Stutz was one of the final few who took part in this heroic defense that stalled the advance of the assaulting forces by a further forty-eight hours. The town was eventually liberated once again a month later but not before it had been near demolished by the fighting.

Dick Brookins ended the war in 1945 and returned home to his native Rochester, NY. It wasn’t until 1977 that he learned completely out of the blue, from someone named Frank McClelland  who had also served in the 28^th Division that every year since 1944, the townspeople of Wiltz had chosen to celebrate the feast of “The American Kleeschen” in honor of that first party and he and Harry Stutz were invited back.

Between then and when he eventually passed in 2018 at the age of 96, Dick Brookins returned to Wiltz on several occasions reprising the role he had played in 1944. The tradition continues today. Each year, on 5th December, as “The American Kleeschen” is paraded in a jeep through the streets of the town, the children of the town are reminded of this unique celebration of a random act of kindness from decades before.