The true story of St. Nicholas, and the origin of gift-giving during Christmas...

[Dien Rice]

I thought some might enjoy this...

Christmas time is very important for many businesses, and for many people as well!

We all know who St. Nicholas is - but our usual image of him is as Santa Claus... A jolly fat man in red, lugging a sack full of presents...

Believe it or don't, the real story of St. Nicholas is even more interesting!

St. Nicholas was born in Patara, back in the days of the Roman Empire, in the 3rd century AD. Nowadays, Patara is located in Turkey, but back in those days, everyone in that area spoke Greek.

There was a poor man, who had 3 daughters.

Back in those days, the father of daughters had to pay a dowry to the family of the groom to get them married.

If he couldn't pay the dowry, his daughters couldn't get married. And this poor man couldn't afford it for his daughters!

Sadly, that meant his unmarried daughters would probably end up being prostitutes. That's how it was back then.

St. Nicholas learned of this situation.

However, because of his own modesty, and not wanting to embarrass the family, he decided to do the following.

St. Nicholas got three purses, and filled them with gold coins. He sneaked to the house in the middle of the night, and threw them through the open window.

That money was enough to be able to pay the dowries...

St. Nicholas's secret gifts of the purses of gold coins had helped to save the girls from a life of prostitution, and enabled them to get married!

Now, there are some other versions of the story.

In one version, St. Nicholas threw the purses through the window, one each night.

After two nights of this, on the third night, the father lay in wait, to figure out who was giving the free gifts!

When St. Nicholas realized this, he climbed on the roof, and threw the last purse down the chimney instead!

It turns out that night, one of the girls had washed her stockings, and hung them over the embers in the fireplace to dry. When St. Nicholas threw the last purse filled with gold coins down the chimney, it fell into one of her stockings!

That's the true story of St. Nicholas... And you can see where many elements of the Santa Claus legend come from!

- The giving of gifts
- The connection of gift-giving with chimneys
- And even the connection with giving gifts by putting it inside a stocking

In reality - no matter what your background - the true story of St. Nicholas showed a truly great man, who did a very good deed (and many others)...

In my opinion, this is one case where the true story is actually much better than the legend!

Best wishes,

Dien Rice