Saint Nicolas and Santa Claus

Saint Nicolas is a friend to all children in the Netherlands. Every year he comes to this cold little country on his boat with his humble servants who accompany him and help him to deliver all the presents he is giving away on his birthday on December 5^th.

When he arrives at the end of November, children put their shoes at the fireplace, start to sing songs about the old and generous man and hope at night, his servants will leave some candy in their shoes. Saint Nicolas in the mean time, will show up on roofs of homes on his grey horse , rides trough streets and will watch the children closely without them knowing and without them noticing and shows up on TV, telling the children to be good so they will get presents on his birthday.

Saint Nicolas, once known as the bishop of Myra, is supposed to be living in Spain the last few hundreds of years. Maybe because he has rheumatism and needs the warm climate to be able to function on his age or maybe because of the beautiful woman over there.

And there is Santa Claus. Yeah the one who lives on the North Pole with his wife and elves and reindeers. The one with his own toy factory were the elves work their asses off to get everything finished before Christmas starts. Like Nicolas, Claus reads all the letters he’s getting from the children and exercises with his reindeers for the long and heavy nights around Christmas. Mrs. Claus has to warm herself with some hot chocolate because workaholic Claus has no time for her then. (Maybe that’s why Nicolas is still single)

But what Nicolas and Claus didn’t know is that they were brothers. They didn’t know they were brothers until 2001 when a servant of Saint Nicolas asked an elf on the North Pole to send a single hair of Santa’s beard for DNA because he thought that Nicolas and Santa had a lot of similarities. But Nicolas didn’t want to talk about his past or his family so the servant started the investigation himself.

 It was a shock for Claus to find out he had a brother. He never knew when his father took him to The United States back in 1773 that he left a brother in Europe. They had changed their names like a lot of other Dutch did when they moved to another country. He wanted to meet the other old guy, his older brother, but committees in Holland are preventing this till this day. Claus just can’t show himself sooner (even though he tries) over here. He tried to convince  Nicolas but several attempts for phone calls and E-mails failed.

They still are not on speaking terms those two. Nicolas is leaving the country before Claus has the chance to even ask him how he’s doing. Nicolas always felt abandoned by his father and brother and can’t cope with meeting him.

And while Nicolas is enjoying the warm climate of Spain again, Claus and his elves start invading the houses of people with their candy and presents. Stables are cleaned from horse shit to provide a home for Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and of course Santa’s favorite Rudolph. Santa is showing up on TV and streets are filled with elves.

So we have two parties over here. One for Nicolas and one for Claus. At least as long as they won’t work as a team.

Partytime!!