But he’s not quite like you’ve been told. He was St. Nicholas of Myra, in fourth-century Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), and as Kim Lawton of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly shows, some Americans are re-discovering a truly profound Christmas character:

“St. Nicholas was a real person. Not a fairy, not someone who’s flying through the sky with reindeer, but an actual person who lived and worked and died and had a full life,” said Canon Jim Rosenthal. “He had a Christian life because he was actually a bishop, a pastor.”
Rosenthal, director of communications for the worldwide Anglican Communion office, is founder of the St. Nicholas Society UK/USA, an international movement urging churches to reclaim St. Nicholas.
Every year, Rosenthal dresses up like St. Nicholas, complete with a bishop’s staff, called a crozier, and hat, called a miter. He visits churches to help spread the St. Nicholas message.
“If we don’t recover this tradition, I believe that we are going to eventually lose Christmas, any semblance of a religious Christmas,” he said.

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