On December 6th, the Church traditionally celebrates the feast of St. Nicholaus, the real-life saint from whom, of course, Santa Claus gets his name. One of the legends surrounding this great saint is the story of a poor family, the father of which was going to sell his own daughters into a life of prostitution because they had no dowries (these were rough times...). So Saint Nicholaus anonymously left large quantities of money at the families' home, in order to pay the girls' dowries and spare them from a life of prostitution. This of course is the tradition from which comes the whole idea of St. Nick leaving gifts in people's homes.
This simple story from the life of this heroic saint serves as a powerful image of the type of injustices that women continue to suffer due to their sexuality. Unfortunately, there are parts of the world in which families continue to sell their own daughters into a life of prostitution. In a world that demands that an insatiable desire for sex be continually fed, the body of a young woman is treated as an object to be bought and sold. But this is not just true in the most extreme cases in far off parts of the world. Pornography and the overly-sexualized culture that goes with it constantly feed into the reduction of women to objects used to satisfy the unbridled lusts of men. With all the cultural obsession over issues of sexism and equality, it's high time that the world around us stopped telling women that their only value is found in their bodies. It's also high time that women everywhere, particularly in the world of entertainment, stop believing and playing into this lie. And finally, it is definitely high time that more men stopped being the ones to buy the women and start being the ones to come through for them. In short, we need more men like St. Nicholaus....the real one.
Pax Vobiscum
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