Jolly ol’ St. Nicholas Parish - The Catholic church at the North Pole
"We are the real owner of Santa. The Church gave the world Santa."
In the city of North Pole, Alaska – some 20 minutes from Fairbanks – along St. Nicholas Drive, sits the Santa Claus House.
The famous attraction draws visitors from all over the world, eager to meet Santa and his reindeer, take a picture in the iconic red sleigh, and try the gift shop’s fudge and other treats.
Less than a mile away, along the same street, stands St. Nicholas Church – a quiet, unassuming building, and a stark contrast to the sparkle and shimmer of the tourist site down the road.
The irony of ministering to the faithful in the shadow of a shrine to the secular celebration of Christmas is not lost on Father Yakubu Aiden, the pastor of St. Nicholas.
“If you come in here to the North Pole, it is all about Santa, Santa, Santa,” said Aiden, who is originally from Nigeria. “The Santa house is not far from us.”
“But you are not dealing with Santa here at St. Nicholas,” he told The Pillar. “You’re dealing with the Catholic Church and Jesus Christ.”
There are a number of similarities between the Santa Claus House and St. Nicholas parish. For one thing, children are abundant at both.
At the Santa Claus House, kids run around, excited to see the man himself.
At St. Nicholas Church, children crowd the front pews, hoping for a chance to see the altar.
Father Robert Fath, the former pastor and current vicar general for the Diocese of Fairbanks, worked hard during his seven years at St. Nicks to make the parish a family-friendly place.
Once or twice a year, Fath said, he would use his homily for what he called a “family meeting,” making a point of reinforcing that families were welcome in the church.
“I would encourage families to bring their kids, you know, only use the cry room to calm them down, bring them back in, that there is no such thing as a walk of shame,” Fath said. “If your child was acting up, sit close to the front so that your children can see what’s going on.”
“But at the same time, I was addressing those of us that didn’t have children or who had adult children out of the house, that, you know, we have a responsibility to support those families, especially the larger families,” he added.
The parish is a vibrant community, the largest parish in the Diocese of Fairbanks. Of the parish’s 400 families, many have 6 or more kids, and it has become a vibrant hub for young adult and youth ministry.
“This parish has the highest number of young individuals in the diocese, so we have the youth group and then the young adult ministry,” Aiden said. “This Christmas season, the young people are doing so many things… They are planning for some Christmas pageant with the little kids…The young adults are already doing other activities in the church to talk to people about the true meaning of Christmas. It is great!”
Another shared feature between St. Nicholas’ Church and the Santa Claus House is the presence of nativity scenes — a reminder of the true meaning of Christmas. At the Santa Claus house, they are tucked on a hidden shelf to the left of Santa Claus, just one Christmas trinket among other ornaments, toys, and stuffed reindeer. They retail for $179.90.
At St. Nicks, the nativity is on display 24/7, 365 days a year, to remind people of the true meaning of the holiday to which their patron has become attached.
“When kids go to Santa, they expect Santa to give them something, so when people come to Saint Nick’s, they are supposed to get something. We give people Jesus and joy. So every day is Christmas here,” Aiden said.
“That’s why in our church we have the Christmas crib out every day here. So Christmas is every day…We have a very strong ministry of hospitality here.”
It is that ministry of hospitality that led Jeff and Ambre Hayes to fall in love with the St. Nicholas community upon moving to Fairbanks for the first time. Then, after Jeff, a helicopter battalion commander for the U.S. Army, was reassigned, they kept requesting Fairbanks assignments out of love for St. Nick’s.
The couple – now with their 7 children – is currently on their fourth tour in Alaska, and they have made St. Nicholas home.
“St. Nick’s is cute and quaint, and we have our little Alaskan tabernacle and the birch log altar. It’s very unique, but it’s not fancy, and that’s probably a good thing because the faith has to be about more than just the building,” Jeff Hayes said. “They genuinely understand where you are and want to help you grow in faith. It’s just a very good, healthy place to grow a family and ground them in the faith.”
Fath attributes the vibrancy of the parish and the presence of so many large families to its location between two large military bases — Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base.
“About 50% of those families are active duty military,” Fath said. “So they are only in the North Pole area for, you know, three-year stints, typically, so we have a very transient population,” Fath said. “The other 50% of the parish, half of them are probably retired military, but they’re the stable core. So you have families with a corporate memory of the parish, and you also have new blood coming in on a regular basis.”
“There’s a lot of new ideas being generated, unique ways of doing things, and then the fact that there are families in the parish, and it’s a parish that is open to the disruptions that children can naturally cause, creates an environment that’s inviting to other large families.”
The Hayes said they have found a parish that is not just supportive of their family, but is eager to help them in any way that they need.
“There is this culture of helping big families which makes the parish really feel like a family,” Ambre Hayes said. “There’s a lot of retirees, there’s a lot of veterans, there’s a lot of current service members, but there’s also just locals who have been here since St. Nick’s was founded in some instances.”
“The roots of the parish are very deep and very strong. It’s very welcoming. People genuinely go miles out of their way to help you,” she added.
Parishioners organize food trains after the birth of a new child or a family death. Older parishioners can be seen holding children from the large families, and nobody bats an eye when a child screams during Mass.
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But while the Santa Claus House and the St. Nicholas parish share some similarities, there are also very obvious differences.
Santa’s house is a full embrace of the secular aspects of Christmas, complete with a 50-foot-tall statue of jolly Ol’ St. Nick out front, a vast holiday store, and plenty of photo opportunities.
“Santa is this cultural figure for Christmas, and the gift-giving and everything revolves around our own Santa Claus, but he and his hut down the road [are] just an attraction,” Aiden said. “The secular world is taking over Church traditions, rebaptizing it to make it work.”
“As the pastor here, I feel St. Nick would not be happy about this, and at the parish, we are trying to reclaim the flair of St. Nick’s spirit, which is about generosity and acts of love. Those are very good qualities that we must recall this Christmas season.”
Aiden said he and previous pastors have emphasized the Eucharist and tried to create a joyful and hospitable attitude at the parish.
“The faith is what is most important,” Aiden said. “We emphasize having people know the faith, love the faith, have connection with the church now. Everything here is centered around the Eucharist, which brings families together. That’s how we make it like Christmas here everyday.”
Families living in North Pole, Alaska, have to find a way to balance the secular Christmas festivities all around them throughout the year with the real meaning of Christmas.
“I think we go to the Santa Claus House maybe once a year, and we spend countless hours…at our church,” Ambre Hayes said.
Fath said that during his time as pastor at St. Nick’s, he “developed the reputation of being the priest that didn’t like Santa Claus.”
“I would get a little excited about preaching during Advent about how the season is not about the fat man in the red suit, nor the 50-foot monstrosity down the street,” he said. “But it was more in jest than anything else.”
“The parish really has a strong understanding of their patron saint, the reason for Advent and Christmas, and that was just seen in the activities that would happen and the attitude of the parish overall.”
One year, in November, Fath acquired a first-class relic of St. Nicholas. He used the occasion to speak to a Sunday school class about the Catholic tradition of relics — how they are remnants of deceased saints.
That did not land well with one nine-year-old parishioner.
“When a family got back in the car, a young kid was whimpering and said, ‘Father Rob says Santa Claus is dead,’ which those words never came out of my mouth. I would never intentionally upset a child like that,” Fath said.
“Mom asked him what he meant. Well, during my Sunday school lecture, he made the logical connection that if Father Rob says we have a relic of St. Nicholas, and relics come from dead people, but St. Nicholas is also Santa Claus, therefore, Santa Claus is dead.”
“So I got an email from Mom the next morning. She wasn’t upset, but just wanted to let me know that I killed Santa Claus for her kid.”
While living in North Pole requires a balancing act that can be tricky at times, it has also presented occasional opportunities for St. Nicholas’ parishioners to share their patron saint’s famed generosity.
Kids frequently send letters to the Santa Claus House — which is located at 101 St. Nicholas Drive. But depending on the typeface, the 1s sometimes appear more like 7s.
And that means letters to Santa sometimes end up at St. Nicholas Parish, which is located at 707 St. Nicholas Drive.
One particularly memorable case, Fath said, was in 2012, shortly after Hurricane Sandy tore through the east coast.
“My secretary showed me a letter from a little girl who said she and her mother had lost everything in the hurricane,” Fath said. “She had written to Santa asking, primarily, for the basics — socks, underwear, clothing, things like that. And there were a couple of, you know, larger ticket items like a Kindlefire.”
“My secretary had called up several of the families in the parish who, within a couple of hours went out and purchased everything on this little girl’s list, wrapped it all up, and packaged it up, and one of the ladies wrote a handwritten note from Santa that explained to the girl that because of the hurricane, Santa couldn’t land his reindeer because of the damage. And so the Postal Service is helping ‘me’ to deliver presents this year.”
Fr. Aiden, the current pastor, said he has been to the Santa Claus House. And he enjoyed it.
“It’s pretty, it is beautiful. It’s a very lovely place to be, and people come from across the world. When I came here, one of the first missions I had was to go to see Santa,” the priest said. “It would be strange for the pastor in North Pole to live very close to Santa’s house and have not gone in there.”
He was quick to assert, though, that no matter how popular it may be, the Santa Claus House will never hold the true meaning of Christmas.
“We are the real owner of Santa,” he said. “The Church gave the world Santa. And this is the church here. This is the church in the North Pole.”
As a large family with a huge devotion to St Nick (the bishop from Myra who wasn’t married and most likely used a donkey for transport 😉) this article was amazing. 💜🥰. We do our big gift giving holiday in our family on St Nicholas feast and i never knew this parish existed. Now it’s on my travel list 😁
(Lest anyone be concerned about my children being deprived bc st Nick comes on his feast, Christmas still has stockings from mom and dad plus nana gifts plus Tia gifts. 🤣)
Great story. Thank you for including it