Celebrating Christmas

  • Published
  • By Mehmet Birbiri
  • Host Nation Adviser
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  Question: Mehmet, do Turkish people celebrate Christmas?

Response: You might have already noticed that shops throughout Turkey decorate their windows with pine trees, snow balls, red stockings, and statues and pictures of St. Nicholas. Turks, who are Moslem, may seem like they're observing Christmas like the Christians, but, they aren't celebrating Christmas, they're marking the New Year.

Many parties are held on New Year's Eve. Night clubs, luxury hotels and restaurants have special programs and menus, and radio and television stations broadcast special programs which last until morning. Generally, television stations broadcast a program or film about St. Nicholas during the early hours of the evening New Year's Eve for the children. That is to make the children happy so that they go to bed early and parents can party all night long.

Although many programs and parties are offered by restaurants and night clubs, many families prefer having their own parties at home. Often, several families will get together to celebrate. The wives show off their cooking skills by preparing richly set tables, and everyone spends the evening eating, drinking, watching television, listening to music and dancing.

Because of television, these parties are heavily influenced by the American Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations, and turkey is becoming popular as the main dish. Some families, especially in big cities, have Christmas trees as well. Gifts are exchanged for the New Year, and greeting cards are sent to friends and relatives.

Another tradition for the new year is to buy a lottery ticket. Although the National Lottery Administration holds three drawings a month with reasonable prizes, the top prize for the new year challenges everybody to get at least one ticket. Many people ask their friends in other cities to buy and send tickets to them.

Noel Baba
St. Nicholas is called Noel Baba in Turkey, better known as Santa Claus. The popular myth is that he lives at the North Pole. Few people actually know St. Nicholas was born, lived and died in Turkey during the fourth century. He was the bishop of Myra, now Demre, near Antalya.

A Byzantine basilica in Demre honors his memory, and the tale of his generosity is unforgotten on these shores. The story is of a bishop tip-toeing through the streets of old Myra to toss bags of gold through open windows or down chimneys.

He is said to have been the sole heir of a wealthy family and shared his money secretly with the less fortunate. One story told is how he gave a nobleman three sacks of gold for his daughters' dowries because he was too poor. The first two bags, he tossed through an open window. But when he found the window tightly shut on his third visit, he went down the chimney instead, dropping the sack in a red sock that was drying on the mantelpiece.

Since then, it has become tradition to put oranges in Christmas stockings to symbolize the sacks of gold. Also, the three golden balls that pawn shops use as their symbol originated from this story.

After St. Nicholas died in 323, his priests buried him in an elaborate marble sarcophagus that they periodically filled with fragrant oil. The oil dripped through cavities in the sarcophagus, and the priests had a lucrative business selling vials of it to pilgrims who believed the oil had miraculous powers.

The St. Nicholas Church was built in his memory after his death. The church is one of the oldest in Turkey, dating back to the fifth century. Tales of St Nicholas spread westward and in April 1087, merchants from Bari, Italy, ransacked the Saint's grave and took his bones to Italy believing they would bring them wealth. Based on that event, Bari and Antalya were declared sister cities several years ago. A few items from his sarcoghagus are on display in the Antalya museum.

In 1826, a Russian prince had the church restored by an architect. Instead of the cupola, a crosswise arch, unrelated to Byzantine architecture, was placed there and a belfry was added.

The sarcoghagus found inside the western apse is believed to be that of St. Nicholas.
Every year on December 6, the day St. Nicholas died, there's a service in St. Nicholas' Church in Demre. Dec 6 is also the first day of a week-long festival held in Demre sponsored by the Santa Claus Foundation.

There's a bronze statue of St. Nicholas in Demre, erected in 1981, which looks very much like the typical Santa Claus with a long beard, a sack over his shoulder and a group of small children gathered around him.