Yes, There is a Santa Claus

Christmas.
I love it.
I love Santa Claus, one of my favorite Saints, Saint Nicholas. We celebrate his death on December 6th each year by leaving coins and candy in shoes left by the front door. Saint Nicholas who comes down the chimney isn’t some figment of an imagination. He’s the living legend of a real man, who helped real people more than 1700 years ago.
It was in what is now called Turkey where the young man grew up in a wealthy family and was made the Bishop of Myra. Kind and generous he would take presents to the needy and helped those in need.
Stockings and chimneys aren’t part of the legend but part of the fact of Saint Nicholas. Rather than have a man sell his daughter into prostitution to pay the dowry for another daughter, Saint Nicholas came to the rescue. Legend indicates that he threw a bag of money through a window, or down a chimney, to pay the dowry and save a young girl from prostitution. The bag of money landed in her stocking, which was hung by the chimney to dry.
Why is he so fond of children? The legend indicates Saint Nicholas stayed at an inn and had a horrifying dream that a crime by the innkeeper had taken the lives of some children. Saint Nicholas confronted the innkeeper and he confessed that he had killed his guests and put them in brine. There were three boys who were still in the casks and Saint Nicholas made the sign of the cross and they were restored to life.
Paying dowries by throwing money through windows, gave us stockings hanging by chimneys. Three children dead and brought back to life, could have given us elves, small men that help the Saint who brought them back to life.
Yes, there is a Saint Nicholas, he lives in me, and he’ll live in you, if you let him.