I concur

Pickle Nick!

Those are some weird as fuck looking children.

You would look weird too if you had been through what they had!
In that time the belief was that Jesus was perfect already when he was born, thus he was painted as an adult. This spread to other religious paintings containing children too, thus we have these creepy kids.
I believe they're called homunculus. I couldn't find too much on them, but here's an article. https://www.thecollector.com/baby-jesus-in-medieval-religious-iconography
They were brined.
- They got better!
They weren't children after all; they were adults and the pickling shrunk them
That is what they looked like in the olden days.
You see, infant mortality was very high, because instead of practicing good hygiene, people practiced pickling babies, and so only the most ripped and strong kids made it to 5.

"resurrected the pickled children" goes hard.

Resurrected Pickled Children sounds like a good metal band.

An interesting side note I just discovered on Wikipedia:

The boots-filled-over-night tradition is based on another legend of him throwing gold pieces through the window of three poor daughters so that their dad doesn't have to force them to become prostitutes.

Didn't expect the roots of St.Nicholas traditions to be that dark...

Source.
I say we all take a leaf out of the conservative playbook and demand to bring back the real Santa.
- Not sure about that.
  Traditional figures like Zwarte Piet might also reappear...

Ok so he just let people starve instead of having them have even three measly pickled children. Fucking priests, the REAL Jesus would have turned those three kids into a pickled feast feeding at least five thousand.

Don't worry, it's a made up story anyway
- you mean to tell me there wasn't actually a depickling necromancer roaming the streets?

Whenever he’s brought up I never miss the opportunity to mention that he was from Türkiye

TURKIYE MENTION 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷
- fuck now i want doner

he also got into a fist fight at the nicean council

From the Wikipedia page for Saint Nicholas

Other early stories tell of him calming a storm at sea, saving three innocent soldiers from wrongful execution, and chopping down a tree possessed by a demon.

Which he then turned into a toy car and gave to my kids to play with. Cause I fucking swear my kids are possessed.
Last one is just plot of Samurai Jack.

Renaissance Artist Draw An Actual Child Challenge: Impossible

Here in Flanders and to the north in the Netherlands we actually get told this story. Sinterklaas, who visits on the eve of the 5th (NL) or during the night (BE) is our OG Santa Claus.

For kids Sinterklaas is the main event, whereas Christmas is when you get given… socks. Last few years the focus seems to have shifted more to Christmas though.

Glad we got rid of ‘Zwartepiet’ though (Sinterklaas’s helpers). Think ‘elves’ except human-size, not-elf and with blackface.

I grew up attending international schools. Seeing my Dutch classmate dressed as zwartepiet getting called to the principal’s office is a core memory.

We also celebrate saint Nick on 5-6th of december. We never had the weird zwartepiet but Miklavž (ole Nick is accompanied by angels and krampus)
- Huh… TIL other countries do Sinterklaas as well. Miklavž… That’s Slovenian, going by the wikipedia page?

His necromancer career lacked longevity which is a key metric to determine memory.

Nah mate they (used to maybe? idk) play that song to children in schools where I grew up. The song literally says that the butcher kills the children, chop them off and cure them in salt. I never saw it that way but it's quite a hardcore children song. I wonder if they still do that lol.

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas_Day

Where are you from?
- I'm going to guess France

Santa also punched a dude at the Council of Nicea

Is Santa Saint Nicholas of Myra? Because where I live, Nikolaus and Santa are two different entities. One has a bishop's rod and hands out candy at December 6th, the other drinks coca cola, rides a sleigh and hands out presents at Christmas.
- Well they have the same name...
Allegedly struck a guy over an argument about the hierarchy of the godhead. Although this is recognized as apocryphal, not showing up in accounts until hagiographies hundreds of years later.
I think the resurrection thing is probably true, though.

1 going on 30 with those bald spots.

Reason might be that it weren't kids in the variant of the legend the painting is based on, but a kind of medieval travelling clerics on their way to Athens. Says so in the German Wikipedia.
Medieval paintings didn't care for realistic size comparisons, so might well have been misinterpreted as kids in later times.
- Maybe St. Nick half-assed the sign of the cross. So when the traveling clerics were resurrected, they got resurrected in fun sized.

Remember when Christians used to care for the hungry?

"The pickled children" sounds like a metal band name

I was gonna say St. Nick and the Pickled Children and call it a garage band.

Saint Picholas

There was also that time he slapped a bishop for teaching the heresy that Jesus was less than God

As god is generally regarded as the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that other bishop wasn't wrong though...
- That would be an ecumenical matter
- he was wrong. see the Nicean-Constantipolitan Creed.

Those babies are ripped AF

That was a pre-jolly Saint Nicholas.

He also lived in what is today Turkey, and has probably never seen a reindeer.

The Santa job required relocation and new means of transportation.

Wow...

The 6th of December could have a soooo much different character... 😆

I also just realized that I have only 2 days left to buy some sweets and stuff to put into my kid's boots.

gotta love medieval babies with sixpacks