Nikolai is a very common name in Russia, and perhaps also in the world. In this article we will talk about such a topic as the name day of the bearers of this noble Greek name, as well as about the life of their main patron saint.
About Name Day
A name day is a holiday that is also called angel's day. In fact, this is a purely church holiday, and therefore only those who have been baptized with this name can celebrate Nikolai’s name day. Alas, he does not belong to the rest. As such, the day of an angel is a day of remembrance of a saint in whose honor a person is baptized. Such a saint is considered a personal patron, protector and intercessor before God for a person.
How to choose an angel day
As a rule, the day of an angel is set before baptism, when a saint is chosen, with whose name the sacrament will be performed. This choice lies entirely with the baptized. Or, if it is a baby, parents solve this problem for him. However, there are times when a person who was baptized in infancy does not know in memory of which of the saints of God he was named. In this case, it is allowed to choose a patron yourself - guided either by special sympathy for a particular saint, or by a purely formal determination procedure, which consists in the fact that according to the church calendar the day closest to the person’s birthday is commemorated by his holy namesake. This saint will be considered the patron saint. They do exactly the same thing when parents come to church with the chosen name, but have no idea about which of the saints to baptize the child. This is because not-so-believing people who baptize children just to abide by tradition or, even worse, out of superstitious fear, most often do not care who becomes the patron of their children.
Nicholas Name Day
The day on which specific Nicholas celebrate their angel day is difficult to determine. Firstly, due to the extreme prevalence of this name and, as a result, due to the huge number of saints carrying it. Judge for yourself - Nikolai’s name day according to the church calendar can fall out on at least four dozen different dates. Secondly, despite the impressive list of holy namesakes, most of Nikolaev, at least in Russia, prefer to be baptized in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, bypassing all the calendar rules for determining saints. Usually this is due to the fact that people simply do not know any other saints of Nikolaev . Below we give a list of the main saints revered in Russia, on the day of remembrance of which Nicholas’s name days are celebrated. However, this is by no means a complete list, since there are hundreds of saints throughout the Orthodox world, widely revered in some regions and countries and almost unknown in others. Well, after the list we will get acquainted with the brief life of the most famous saint, in whose honor the birthday of St. Nicholas - St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is celebrated.
List of saints
All dates are in the new style. In parentheses are dates according to the old style.
- 14.01 (1.01) Priest Martyr Nikolai (Bezhanitsky).
- 16.02 (3.02) Equal to the Apostles Nikolai. He founded the Orthodox mission in Japan.
- 17.02 (4.02) Rev. Nicholas the Confessor. He was abbot at the Studitsky monastery.
- 11.03 (26.02) The Righteous Nicholas the Local.
- 13.03 (28.02) Blessed Nicholas. He was a holy fool for Christ in Pskov.
- 03.03 (03.03) Martyr Nicholas. He suffered in Sevastia.
- 1.05 (18.04) Priest Martyr Nicholas. Repressed in 1937 in the USSR.
- 7.05 (24.04) Martyr Nicholas of Magnesia.
- 22.05 (9.05). On May 22, the so-called “summer Nikolai” is celebrated - the transfer of the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker from the Lycian World to Barium.
- 05/29 (16) Martyr Nikolai Mechevsky († 1617) and St. Nicholas Mystic, Patriarch of Constantinople.
- 10/06 (09/23) Martyr Nicholas of Constantinople.
- 13.11 (30.10) Martyr Nicholas of Chios.
- 12/19 (6/12) "Winter Nikolai". Actually, the memory of St. Nicholas is the same, the transfer of the remains of which is honored on May 22. On the same day, the memory of the martyr Nicholas Karaman is celebrated.
A Brief Life of St. Nicholas
You can talk a lot about who Archbishop Nikolai the Wonderworker was during his lifetime. But the trouble is that for more than fifteen hundred years (and he lived in the III-IV centuries), he turned from a historical figure into a mythological and archetypal character. Little remains of the real personality of this saint, who became the prototype of Santa Claus - stories about fantastic miracles and some vivid historical information collected from the biographies of various eponymous bishops. Thus, the saint we loan is a collective, idealized image, composed partly from the biographies of several real people, and some from folk fantasies and folklore. One can only assert that he was born and lived in Asia Minor, occupied the chair of the archbishop of the city of Lycian Mir, and preached Christianity with all his might. Among other things, he is credited with such an unseemly act as the destruction of a number of pagan shrines. There are no other reliable data on him.