Long ago, in a town called Myra, right beside the sea, there lived a bishop named Nicholas. Myra stood in a region called Lycia, in what is now Turkey, and today that place is called Demre. Nicholas lived in the fourth century, which means more than sixteen hundred years ago. He loved two things above all others: looking after the poor of his town, and doing it where nobody could see.

Perhaps you already know the story of the three bags of gold, the night Nicholas quietly helped a family in great trouble. This is a different story. This is the story of the long journey his name made across the world, until it arrived inside your own house in the month of December.

The Sixth of December

Nicholas died on a sixth of December, and the people of Myra kept that day carefully. Every year, when the sixth came round, they remembered the bishop who gave his presents in secret. Sailors chose him as their patron and carried his stories from harbour to harbour. In the year 1087, Italian merchants brought the saint's remains to the city of Bari, in Italy, and built a church there in his honor.

So the name of Nicholas traveled on to Greece, to Russia, to Germany, to Holland. In every place, people did on his day what he himself had done: they gave presents without being seen. Parents hid sweets and small coins the night before and said Saint Nicholas had left them. The children woke up, found the surprise, and never guessed. The bishop's secret was still going on, now inside every house.

Sinterklaas

In Holland the long name Sint Nikolaas shrank in the mouths of the children until it became Sinterklaas. The Dutch pictured him as a bishop of their own time: white-bearded, in a red cloak and a tall mitre, riding a white horse. On the evening of the fifth of December, the night before his feast, children set their shoes by the fireplace or the window. Into each shoe they tucked a handful of hay or a carrot, not for themselves, but for the horse.

By morning the hay was gone, and in its place there were pepernoten, little round spice biscuits, or a chocolate letter, the first letter of each child's name. That is why so many people still hang stockings on Christmas Eve: the stocking hung by the chimney came later, in New York, and it looks a great deal like those Dutch shoes.

Across the Sea

Then many Dutch families crossed the ocean and went to live on the other side of the water, in a new town they called New Amsterdam. They packed their pots, their seeds and their songs. In time that town changed hands and changed names, and became New York. Much later, speaking English now, the families of Dutch descent there began to remember again the saint their grandparents had kept.

There people spoke English, and the English language chewed the name into its own shape, until Sinterklaas turned into Santa Claus. Later came New York writers who told and sang this Santa Claus in their own way, and it was they who gave him the chimney, and then the sleigh and the reindeer, on Christmas Eve. In Brazil the name arrived by way of the French Père Noël, which means Father Christmas, and became Papai Noel.

Whose Birthday It Is

Look what a long road that was: Myra, Bari, Amsterdam, New York, Brazil. A real bishop crossed sixteen hundred years and reached you wearing another name and another coat. Underneath Santa's white beard lives Nicholas, who gave without showing his face and wanted no thank-you at all.

And there is one thing he would very much like you to know. His own day is the sixth of December, and the twenty-fifth is not his: it is the birthday of Jesus. If you could ask the bishop of Myra what to do at Christmas, he would not point at himself. He would point at the manger in Bethlehem, and then at the door of somebody who needs help.