Pawnbrokers and Pickled Boys: Saint Nick, Money and Children

Join us for a special lecture about the historical St. Nicholas and his relationship to money, gifts and Christmas.

Every December brings the same complaint: Christmas has been swallowed by commerce. That complaint assumes the holy came first and the money later.

Saint Nicholas suggests otherwise. A fourth-century bishop in the eastern Roman Empire, he left almost no historical trace, yet the stories about him never stopped changing. Sailors and merchants prayed to him when cargoes were at risk. One early Greek tale had him tossing bags of gold through a poor man's window under cover of night. Kyle Smith follows those stories into the medieval West, where the saint of merchants became a saint of children too. By the time Nicholas began bringing presents at Christmas, the gifts and the money had traveled together for centuries.

Smith is professor of the history of religions at the University of Toronto. An award-winning teacher, he is the author or co-author of five books about Christian saints and martyrs. He is currently writing a cultural biography titled Nick: The True History of an Invented Saint.