The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St. Nicholas. It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280 A.D. in Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey. Much admired for his piety and kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends. It is said that he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick. One of the best-known St. Nicholas stories is the time he saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their father by providing them with a dowry so that they could be married. Over the course of many years, Nicholas\u2019s popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors. His feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death, December 6. This was traditionally considered a lucky day to make large purchases or to get married. By the Renaissance, St. Nicholas was the most popular saint in Europe. Even after the Protestant Reformation, when the veneration of saints began to be discouraged, St. Nicholas maintained a positive reputation, especially in Holland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St. Nicholas made his first inroads into American popular culture towards the end of the 18th century. In December 1773, and again in 1774, a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families had gathered to honor the anniversary of his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the United States, Santa Claus and his wife, Mrs. Claus, call the North Pole home, and children write letters to Santa and track Santa\u2019s progress around the world on Christmas Eve. Children often leave cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for his reindeer on Christmas Eve. Santa Claus keeps a \u201cnaughty list\u201d and a \u201cnice list\u201d to determine who deserves gifts on Christmas morning, and parents often invoke these lists as a way to ensure their children are on their best behavior. The lists are immortalized in the 1934 Christmas song \u201cSanta Claus is coming to Town\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe’s making a list
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who’s naughty and nice
Santa Claus is coming to town<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Santa Claus, known as Saint Nicholas or Kris Kringle\u2014 has a long history steeped in Christmas traditions. Today, he is thought of mainly as the jolly man in red who brings toys to good girls and boys on Christmas Eve, but his story stretches all the way back to the 3rd century, when Saint Nicholas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18837,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7807\/revisions\/18837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyglamour.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}