Who is father christmas

He was a very rich man because his parents died when he was young and left him a lot of money. He was also a very kind man and had a reputation for helping the poor and giving secret gifts to people who needed it.

There are several legends about St. Nicholas, although we don't know if any of them are true! The most famous story about St. Nicholas tells how the custom of hanging up stockings to put presents in first started!

It goes like this:. There was a poor man who had three daughters. The man was so poor that he did not have enough money for a dowry, so his daughters couldn't get married. A dowry is a sum of money paid to the bridegroom by the bride's parents on the wedding day.

This still happens in some countries, even today. One night, Nicholas secretly dropped a bag of gold down the chimney and into the house this meant that the oldest daughter was then able to be married.

The bag fell into a stocking that had been hung by the fire to dry! This was repeated later with the second daughter. Finally, determined to discover the person who had given him the money, the father secretly hid by the fire every evening until he caught Nicholas dropping in a bag of gold. Nicholas begged the man to not tell anyone what he had done, because he did not want to bring attention to himself.

But soon the news got out and when anyone received a secret gift, it was thought that maybe it was from Nicholas. Because of his kindness Nicholas was made a Saint. Nicholas is not only the saint of children but also of sailors! One story tells of him helping some sailors that were caught in a bad storm off the coast of Turkey. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. A session cookie is used to identify a particular visit to our Website.

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Santa Claus and Father Christmas have become synonymous over time, with American culture seeping into aspects of many English traditions and folklore. By HeritageDaily. November 5, This caused a lot of resistance that was expressed in a number of pamphlets being printed both for and against observing Christmas.

Defenses came particularly from royalists, who also tended to be recusant Catholics:. Traditional festivities reappeared after the Restoration in , though they were forever changed. Feudal relationships were changing as people had been scattered or killed; many landed gentry who had lost estates and moved to London. As the Industrial Revolution began in the s, country life would never be the same.

Rural society had observed the full Twelve Days of Christmas as a festival season with revelry, leading to excess, throughout. With the move to industrialized cities, workers, unlike their earlier rural counterparts, had just Christmas Day free from work. He was a charitable bishop from Myra now called Demre in Turkey.

His first gifts were anonymously delivered bags of gold coins to a man so that a he could afford to have his daughters married. There are still other, more grim and graphic, variations of the story. One has the three daughters about to enter prostitution to escape financial hardship. Another has three boys being butchered in order that their meat could be sold off as ham whereupon Nicholas resurrects the boys.

Saint Nicholas was, and is, such an inspiring figure that even though the town of his birthplace is now largely Muslim, and so no longer recognises Christmas, they still celebrate the figure of Santa Claus. Nicholas is believed to have died on 6 December and in certain countries, like Holland, children receive gifts on this day, the Feast of St Nicholas, rather than at Christmas.

So why does he come on the 24 December?