Nicholas of Myra

Nicholas of Myra (also Nikolaus) in Lycia, Asia Minor was a 4th century Bishop and a Catholic Saint. His feast day is December 6, presumably the date of his death. Several acts of kindness are attributed to him, but historical accounts often confuse him with Nicholas of Sion.

He is said to have attended the Council of Nicaea as an opponent of Arianism. (After the council, Arianism was formally condemned , and the books of Arius and his followers were burned). He is applauded by later Christian writers for keeping Myra free of Arianism. The destruction of several pagan temples is also attributed to him, among them one temple of Artemis (also known as Diana). Because the celebration of Diana's birth is on December 6, some authors have speculated that this date was deliberately chosen for Nicholas' feast day to overshadow the pagan celebrations.

When Myra and Byzantium were overtaken by Islamic invaders, the remains of Bishop Nicholas were brought to Bari in Italy on May 9, 1087. Some observers have reported seeing oil exude from these relics.

Saint Nikolaus or St. Nicholas is celebrated in European countries, and in Germany, many children put a boot outside their front doors on the night from the 5th to the 6th of December. St. Nicholas fills the boot, called Nikolaus-Stiefel, with gifts, and at the same time checks up on the children to see if they were good. If they were not, they will have charcoal in their boots instead.

His reputation for gift giving comes from a story of three young women who were too poor to afford a dowry for their marriages: as each reached a marriagable age, Nicholas surreptitiously threw a bag of gold into the house at night. Some versions of the legend say that the girls' father, trying to discover their benefactor, kept watch on the third occasion, but Nicholas dropped the third bag down the chimney instead. For his helping the "financially challenged", St. Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers; the three gold balls traditionally hung outside a pawnshop are symbolic of the three sacks of gold.

The German-American Thomas Nast and other immigrants popularized their "Saint Nicholas" and other Christmas traditions in America. The tall skinny European St. Nicholas gradually became a fat, jolly, red cheeked old man, with a contracted version of "Saint Nicolas" as his name: Santa Claus.