I’ve been looking for Santa, in some form or fashion, most of my life.

On Christmas Eve, my older brother Alan and I would squeeze ourselves into a large cupboard downstairs, holding our breath, listening intently for every sound, every creaky board or the soft thud of what could be sled runners settling on the roof.

From where we were, we could clearly see the tree in the rumpus room, lights twinkling in an array of colours; red to blue to green. And on our right, the fireplace, wood snapping and popping, the flames filling the room with an amber glow and casting shadows that danced around us. We were certain that if we stayed in our hiding place long enough, we would see HIM.

But we never did.

Around 10 pm, our mom or dad would always find us and march us off to bed. And there I would lie in the dark, falling asleep while listening for distant sleigh bells and the tap tap of hooves on the ceiling overhead.

On Christmas morning, Alan would wake me early when the house was still dark and quiet, and we would creep down the stairs, hearts racing. And there, beneath the twinkling lights, was Santa’s bounty. Presents, all neatly wrapped in shiny paper, scattered under the tree. Stockings hanging heavy from above the fireplace, bulging and lumpy.

We were not allowed to open the presents before everyone was awake, but we could open our stockings, and so we did. We dumped our stockings on the hearth. The smell hit us first—sweet citrus, sharp green pine, familiar and comforting. Candy canes, assorted nuts, mandarins, caramels, a chocolate orange wrapped in foil.

Magic made real.

It was a ritual my brother and I would continue for several years. Until one year we did not. I was six or maybe seven and he was five years older, and he was decidedly too old for Santa. That’s when he told me Santa wasn’t real.

I did not believe him at first. How could it not be true?! Who was bringing the presents then? What about the Christmas Eve radio and TV broadcasts tracking Santa’s flight around the world? That was news! Real news with satellites! And the news wouldn’t lie.

But he insisted. Santa wasn’t real. He was all made up. And as he insisted, I started to piece together small details that formed a different picture than what had been my reality. The box marked Sears, hidden in the closet; the same box later wrapped under the tree marked, “From Santa.” The same caramels, nuts and candies in a dish on the coffee table as in our stockings, even though Santa filled our stockings, not our candy dishes. And I began to wonder.

So I asked Mom.

I don’t remember what she said, but I remember what she did. That Christmas, under the tree, was a book. Softcover, with the image of a man in a horse-drawn sleigh riding through the glow of the night in a village. The real Saint Nicholas.

I don’t know where that book is now. I have looked for it occasionally, especially this time of year. I search my toy closet and bookshelves when I go home, but it’s vanished.

Maybe that’s fitting. Maybe it was part of its own miracle and it never existed at all.

And now, all these years later, I’m going to share it with you.

The Santa in My Childhood Book

The Santa in that book, my book, didn’t live at the North Pole.

He lived in a northern village, a cold place in the winter, not unlike my home in Alberta, Canada.

His name was Nicholas. He was a kind man, not dressed in a bright red suit but in a dull brown wool coat and hat. He was quiet and thoughtful, and he noticed things that other people stepped around. He knew which houses went dark early because they couldn’t afford lamp oil, or which chimneys only let out a thin veil of smoke for a few hours of the day because they couldn’t afford coal. He noticed the children without mittens and with holes in their shoes, the ones wearing coats that were threadbare and torn with sleeves two inches too short, displaying scrawny wrists ringed with coal dust and grime.

And on cold nights, when the village was quiet and the lamps had gone out, he would go out too.

He carried a flour sack over his shoulder. You see, he was a man of relative means who was also a craftsman and wood carver, and the sack was full of small hand-carved toys: a wooden horse, a doll with painted eyes. And yes, lumps of coal.

He would leave a carved animal on a doorstep. A doll tucked into a boot. He would also leave warm woollen stockings on the stoop, and in them he would stuff lumps of coal to stoke the fire in the morning.

He did so in the dark of night, anonymously.

Quiet kindness left in unlit doorways where inside, families slept, drawn close to keep warm, unaware of a man with a beard and a sack who had left a small reprieve to be discovered in the morning.

For a long time after, that was my Santa Claus. Not the one who flew through the air in a sleigh, but a real man who did kind things. That was enough to keep the spirit alive for me, and I didn’t miss the old Santa anymore.

Now, some 50 years later, I find myself looking for St. Nicholas again. Not the childhood book that vanished from my toy closet shelves, but the man himself. The kind stranger in the brown wool coat who walked through winter nights leaving warmth, kindness and hope.

Nicholas of Myra

While I have not yet found that book or that man, the search for the real St. Nicholas takes me to another kind man. Not in a northern village like most of us imagine, but in a warm coastal city in the fourth century.

This is the St. Nick that history remembers.

Nicholas was born around 270 AD in Patara, a busy port in the Roman province of Lycia, in what is now southern Turkey. His parents were wealthy Christians, and when they died, he inherited a considerable fortune.

He could have settled into a comfortable life. A bigger house. Better clothes. A life of ease in a seaside town with ships coming and going, loaded with grain, oil, spices, and gossip.

He chose another calling.

Bit by bit, and sometimes in great handfuls, he began to give his inheritance away. Not with plaques or public ceremonies, but quietly. He took seriously Jesus’ words about giving in secret, about not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

In time, Nicholas was ordained a priest. Later, he became bishop of Myra, a city not far from his birthplace. He served during a hard time for Christians: arrests, interrogations, pressure to worship the emperor’s gods. Some traditions say he was imprisoned for a time during the persecutions, though the details are hazy.

What people remembered most was not prison, but presence: a pastor who showed up for people no one else valued much. The poor. The desperate. Sailors far from home. Families on the edge.

Over the years, stories gathered around him—stories of generosity, of prayer, of help arriving just in time. In the Eastern churches they would come to call him Nicholas the Wonderworker. Not because he was a magician, but because, again and again, where he went, people experienced the wonder of having their needs met when they had run out of options.

The Story of the Three Daughters

One story in particular stayed with the church. It is not a newspaper report; it comes to us as a beloved legend from early Christian writers, treasured more for what it reveals about his character than for precise historical detail. But it has the feel of Nicholas all over it.

Nicholas heard about a family in Myra: a father with three daughters and no money to provide for them. In that culture, a dowry was a girl’s safeguard. Without one, a daughter might never marry. Without marriage or another household to receive her, she could easily be pushed toward slavery, exploitation, or life on the streets.

The father could see the disaster coming and could not stop it.

Nicholas understood what was at stake. This was not about wedding parties and pretty fabrics. This was about whether three young women would be protected or exposed.

He could have arrived in daylight, knocked loudly on the door, and pressed a generous gift of money into the father’s hands. People would have spoken of his kindness for years.

But Nicholas preferred another method: giving, yes, but giving in a way that protected the receiver, not the giver’s reputation.

So, the story goes, he waited until night.

When the streets were quiet and the lamps had gone dark, he took a bag of gold and went to the family’s house. He tossed it in. Some versions say through an open window, others say down the chimney. However it travelled, it landed where it needed to land.

In the morning, the father found it.

Enough for a dowry. Enough to secure a future for his eldest daughter.

He searched for the donor. He found no one.

A second night. A second bag of gold. A second daughter was saved from the same fate.

By the third night, the father could stand the mystery no longer. He hid and watched. When the third bag flew through the dark, he ran out and discovered Nicholas himself, the bishop of Myra, trying to slip away.

The father, overwhelmed, tried to thank him. Nicholas tried to brush it off. Finally, Nicholas asked him to keep the matter quiet. No speeches. Just take the gold and look after your daughters.

Three girls. Three bags. Three lives quietly rerouted.

Is every detail in that story historically verifiable? No. The story grew in the telling. But the church has carried it for centuries because it matches what they knew of the man: his wealth, his secrecy, his stubborn refusal to look away when someone was about to be crushed by circumstance.

Why the Church Remembered Him

The stories did not stop there.

Sailors told of Nicholas’ prayers calming storms and bringing ships safely to harbour, which is why he is still honoured as a patron of sailors and those at sea. People in times of famine remembered a bishop who persuaded grain ship captains to share their cargo with a starving city. Others told how he intervened for people falsely accused or facing unjust punishment.

Again and again, Nicholas shows up not as a distant official, but as someone who steps into the gap for those with no power.

We don’t have a modern biography with dates and citations for every episode. Much of what we know comes from later accounts that blend memory and reverence. The Catholic Encyclopedia and Orthodox writings are clear about this: the historical record is thin, the tradition is rich.

But across those traditions, certain things stay consistent:

He lived in Lycia, in what is now Turkey.

He became bishop of Myra.

He was known for generosity, especially to the poor.

He was remembered as an intercessor and protector.

His reputation for “wonder-working” followed him long after his death.

Nicholas died on a December day, traditionally December 6, around the year 343. By then, there were more stories about him than one person could tell in a single sitting.

In time, his relics were carried from Myra to the Italian city of Bari, where a basilica was built in his honour, and he became known in the West as Nicholas of Bari. His feast day on December 6 became a natural moment each year to remember his life and, in small ways, to imitate it.

After His Death: Feast Days and Folklore

After Nicholas’ death, Christians across the Mediterranean and Europe began marking St. Nicholas’ Day with stories and simple acts of generosity.

In many places, children would put out shoes or stockings on the eve of December 6. In the morning, they would find them filled with small gifts: coins, nuts, sweets, left “for Nicholas’ sake.” Families would give secretly to neighbours in need, remembering the bishop who once gave without asking for recognition.

Over centuries, the figure of Nicholas travelled and shifted.

In the Eastern churches, icons show him as a serious, kind bishop, Gospel book in hand, blessing the faithful. He is called “Wonderworker” and prayed to as a saint who still intercedes for the living.

In Western Europe, he became the focus of children’s customs and household celebrations: shoes by the door, treats in the night, gifts for the poor.

In the Netherlands, this St. Nicholas became Sinterklaas: a bishop in a red robe, white beard, mitre, and staff, riding a white horse over the rooftops and filling clean children’s shoes with sweets on the night of December 5.

Dutch settlers carried Sinterklaas to New Amsterdam, later New York. His name shifted in English mouths: Sinterklaas…Sinte Klaas…Santa Claus.

In North America, poets and illustrators took this older, bishop-saint figure and dressed him for a northern winter. In 1823, a poem appeared in a newspaper: “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known by its opening, “‘Twas the night before Christmas…”

With that poem, Nicholas moved again: from December 6 to Christmas Eve. He acquired a miniature sleigh, eight named reindeer, a special fondness for chimneys and rooftops, and stockings hung “by the chimney with care.”

Later in the 19th century, cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa again and again for American magazines: a rounder, fur-trimmed suit, a workshop, a list of who had been naughty and nice, and eventually a home at the North Pole.

In the 1930s, Coca-Cola’s Christmas advertisements, painted by Haddon Sundblom, gave us an even more familiar version: red suit, white fur, rosy cheeks, kindly grandfather energy. Those images went everywhere. By the end of the 20th century, that Santa, part bishop, part poem, part advertising, was known around the world.

So the Santa who shows up in malls and movies today is a composite:

A fourth-century bishop from the Mediterranean

A Dutch St. Nicholas on a white horse

A Victorian-era poem

A run of magazine cartoons

A global soft drink campaign

A lot of layers on one man.

What We’re Really Remembering

Which brings us back to the question that keeps coming, especially from children:

“Is Santa real?”

If by “Santa” we mean a man in a red suit who lives at the North Pole, manufactures toys with a team of elves, flies around the world in one night, and slides down every chimney with a bag full of toys? Well, probably no. That Santa is a story, stitched together from poems, pictures, and imagination.

But if by “Santa” we mean Nicholas, a real man who lived in a real city, who inherited more than he needed and quietly gave it away, who acted as a living, breathing answer to other people’s desperate prayers, then yes. He was real. He is remembered. His life left a mark.

The Santa of my childhood book, the village man in the brown wool coat with the toys and the coal, is not bad theology, even if the details are not on point. The geography is off. The climate is very off. But the gesture is faithful.

So when we fill stockings or leave a present where a child will find it in the morning, we are doing more than playing along with a myth. We are standing in a long line behind a bishop who once lived in Myra, and who gave from his heart.

That is the part worth passing on. The part that holds, even after the childhood illusion breaks. The part that makes the loss of one kind of magic the beginning of another.

And if the old book that introduced me to a different St. Nick is gone, disappeared in some move or spring cleaning, that’s all right. It bridged the gap between a commercially driven, rotund man in a red suit and the spirit of Christmas, and the true magic, which is real and passed down through the ages.

The story has stayed with me. Even if it wasn’t accurate in every detail, it held true in its meaning. It introduced me at an early age to another perspective of Christmas.

A Christmas that is still magical. A time when we reflect on those we love and those less fortunate. When we celebrate not only the birth of Christ but what He stood for: faith, love, and the act of giving, especially when no one is looking.