St. Nick and the Bad Kids

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St. Nick and the Bad Kids

This story is about the real Saint Nicholas, not his watered-down imposter known as Santa Claus. The old Saint Nicholas, like the primordial gods and ancient fairytales was a far more complex personification than our modern version. He was terrifying as well as beneficent, feared as well as loved. He was the spirit of a dead Bishop that rewarded the good children and punished the errant.

He was not accompanied by fat little elves, he was accompanies by two sadistic subordinates. One was Krampus, a vicious red demon that St. Nick had enslaved. It now serves him alone for eternity. The other, Rupert, was a black man, possessing all possible racist attributes in one characterization. The Dutch called him Zwarte Pieten but in my home town of Alexandria, Minnesota, we feared him as Rupert. He carried a birch switch and a black sack into which he put naughty children before beating them. As he thrashed them the delighted red devil danced about to the sounds of their agonizing screams.

Saint Nicholas, in contrast to his companions, was tall, gift-giving and dressed in the garb of a European bishop. A costume he never wore in life as he was a Turkish Bishop in Myra. He didn’t come on Christmas, he came on his feastday. And when I was a child he still came to Catholic Schools. He came in the hope of keeping Christmas Holy even as it was morphing into its present secular form. Tuesday, December 6, 1960, was one of St. Nick’s last live appearances at St. Mary’s Elementary School, an episode that led 28 ten-year-olds to fall into rebellious sin – 29 if you count the beneficiary of our crime.

Late in the afternoon he and his creatures entered the school. Our town did not have a black man to play the role of Rupert - and putting on make-up, well, men in our town didn’t do that, not even face paint. So Rupert appeared with a thin black hood pulled tightly over his head. Krampus wore a rubber mask with curling horns and multiple eyes. St. Nick was dressed in a big red hat and a flowing cape. Both Rupert and the dancing devil were taller than the rascals pictured in our “Book of Saints,” but still slightly shorter than St. Nick. We heard their footsteps; then the visits to other classrooms, the fearful cries of incorrigible children just before the crack of Rupert’s stick, and the laughter of Krampus and the “ahhh’s” from the children when they were given their gifts. Then, he was at our classroom door.

At age ten, did we really believe? Belief is a strange thing. I think humans believe whatever is advantageous to believe - not what the facts dictate. So, we were 28 trembling children, resolute in our faith. However, the 29th child, Robert Circle, was a depraved skeptic. This was Robert’s first year in our school. His mom had come home to live with her parents after his dad abandoned them. He had lived in St. Paul, in the projects, where foolish fantasies are not tolerated. There, even Santa was just a load of crap.

Saint Nicholas entered our room. Robert’s tall body leaned back in his chair and his hard face wore a condescending smirk. The good saint spotted him at once and then began his catechistic inquisition of the other children.

“Who made you?” Sara was first to be asked.

“God made me,” she dutifully replied.

“Why did God make you?” Dave was quizzed.

“He made me out of his infinite love.” The correct answer was given.

“Greg, why were you placed on earth?”

“To suffer and die, Your Excellency.”

Then to Robert, “And why, my son, have you chosen to be defiant?”

“I guess that is just the way I am.”

Rupert grabbed Robert’s arms, lifting him to a standing position. And from under the dark gauze hood, he said, “Show respect.” Rupert was behind Robert, the devil to his side, and Saint Nicholas stood in front of him.

Robert stared into the Saint’s brilliant blue eyes for several seconds and then said, “Your beard is fake.” The devil picked up Rupert’s burlap sack and put it over the child’s head. In our book, the children were tied in the sack, but this one reached just slightly below Robert’s waist - not quite to his knees. He was led out of the room. He struggled only enough to show defiance, but with no real hope of escape.

From the hall we heard the sounds of a boy pushed against the wall, cracks of the birch switch, whispered demands for contrition, more sounds, then more, then more, and at last the surrendering tears of a redeemed boy. He returned to the fold, and was placed in the back row. He quickly wiped his eyes, and with a glare, tried to claim that he had not cried, not him, not Robert Circle. The correctly performing children were all given small brown bags containing an orange, nuts, candy and ten pennies. Robert received nothing.

Our teacher, Sister Mary Ann, walked into the hall with our saintly and hellish guests. They talked for some time, I assumed about the success of the day. It was then, in the very moment when we should have been our most redeemed that we sinned. We didn’t mean to, but somehow Satan got hold of us, and we did it.

Stanley, he started it. It was mostly his fault. I just went along because everyone else did it, too. Stanley took his crumpled but neatly folded lunch bag out of his pocket, and put his Saint Nicholas orange in it and passed it to Dave. Dave put two pennies in it, Greg a few nuts, Sara a candy, and every child sinned until it came to Robert. His bag was now the fullest. He quickly hid it, in his lunch box. His hands were shaking, and even though his eyes were now bright, they streamed with uncontrollable tears.

We knew it was a sin; Robert had been evil and deserved no reward. To reward a wicked boy was worse than being bad yourself. It is in fact the worst of all sins. But we did it anyway. Now we would all have to burn in purgatory. Of course, we would miss Robert, we knew he would be in hell by then; but today, he was with us.

Our teacher returned. She was pleased that Robert was still crying, crying because he could see how happy the good children were with our irrepressible smiles and our bags of goodies. But then for a moment she feared that we were too joyful. Her apprehensions were immediately relieved when she noticed that our delight increased as we glanced at Roberts’s tearful face. Yes, she thought, the children grasped the amplified pleasure of seeing the undeserving denied when they are rewarded. “Robert, I hope you learned something today.”

“Yes, Sister Mary Ann, I did.” He said, almost delighted, nearly like a saved soul.

“What is it that you learned?”

“I learned that God even loves appalling and evil children and that even for us there is hope in the Christmas season.” Sister May Ann was a little alarmed at his reply, both the wording and the nature of it, but could find no fault in it, so she ended the conversation.

Although enslaved devils and black puckish creatures no longer visit children, and Saint Nicholas has been transfigured into a jolly pitchman, I still do believe, at least at Christmas, that children have an incredible ability to sin in the most generous ways.

*The characters in this short story including Stanley, Robert and the narrator are drawn from Clyde Henry’s critically acclaimed novel “Stanley James” available at Amazon and on Kindle. Downloads of this story are available at www.StanleyJames.org

I give permission to email or print this story provided that it is reproduced in its entirety, including the citation for the novel “Stanley James.”

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