Dear Saint Nicholas,
It has been many years — more than I care to think about — since last I wrote you. Of course, I addressed you then by your American name, Santa Claus. I was so proud to be able to write at all, as I remember. And I asked you for the things I wanted, as children do — I recall in particular a train set, a fire truck, a set of tools just like Daddy’s, and so on.
Now with a child of my own, all grown up, with a young gastroenterologist who tells me I am not doing too badly “for a man my age,” I feel moved to write you again. For I owe you, +Nicholas, and have only recently become aware of this debt. Perhaps becoming a bishop and occupying the same office as you held over sixteen hundred years ago in Myra, in what we now call Turkey, has something to do with it.
First, Nick, I owe you an apology. As a young priest I preached sermons railing against the commercialization of Christmas and the role you supposedly played in it. One phrase comes to mind: “the fat red pagan god of the mall.” I blush to think of those jeremiads now. Perhaps you too made mistakes as you learned to preach. I hope your congregation was as tolerant of you as mine was. They waited patiently for me to realize that sermons should not be jeremiads, which we should leave to Jeremiah and those prophets whom God raises up now to “speak…
