It’s a striking image: a man climbing up the side of a house and tossing three gold coins into the room of three poor young women. The funny thing about it is that the gift giver is missing his customary bright red suit and hat, white beard, and accompanying reindeer.St. Nicholas of Myra comes to life — as far as a reconstruction of his life out of much later sources permits — in Adam English’s The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus.
I have to admit that I was skeptical about The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus when I picked it up. Part of me likes the story of saints: exemplary lives, mortal and postmortal miracles, and — usually my favorite part of the story — the translation / robbery of relics. At the same time, for historians, saints are pretty inaccessible. No contemporaneous sources and the impossible task of separating hagiography from reality.
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