Christmas Eve every year at my house is one of the craziest days of the year. When I was a child, my two brothers and I would bounce off the walls with excitement and anticipation because we knew who was coming to visit us later that evening. For years, when I was a child, I claimed to have seen Santa Claus one Christmas morning. It's not like I was lying. I really thought I did. The story of Santa Claus is probably one of the most repeated stories in history. Generations of parents have put their children to bed at night telling them to be good because Santa knows when you're naughty and when you're nice. I know personally, that was a big motivator for me to be good. I always had a long list of gifts that I asked Santa Claus for every year. Every year, my siblings and I would stay up late at night waiting to hear that our parents would sleep. As soon as we were sure they were, we would sneak into the living room to see if Santa had been there yet. Many Christmas mornings we would wake our parents excitedly around 3 or 4 in the morning because we couldn't contain ourselves. The legend of Santa Claus is one that I am sure to pass on to my children. Most people know that our Santa Claus today originates from Saint Nicholas, but the derivation of the story of Santa Claus comes from many sources. Indeed, since the Catholic church downgraded St. Nicholas from his official saint status in 1969 (since there were no records of his canonization), the original legend of this third-century Turkish bishop is not widely recognized as part of our celebration of Christmas. .Nicholas was born into a wealthy family living in Patera, southern Turkey. Legend states that on the church's fast days, Wednesdays and Fridays, the infant Nicholas was breastfed only after sunset. Just one of the many stories demonstrating his saintly reputation concerns an angel who appeared to the cardinal to appoint a new bishop for the Turkish city of Myra, with a face as bright as the sun, who told the cardinal to ordain the thirty-year-old Nicholas. Through his priesthood in the early Christian faith, even while alive he was recognized for his generosity towards all those who found themselves in difficulty. In his role as a priest, one story tells of Nicholas, who took pity on a girl in his parish whose family had no dowry. If Nicholas... in the center of the card... could revolutionize, the new American culture embraced almost everything that was not British, and so began the Dutch Christmas celebration in honor of their beloved St. Nick. Washington Irving emphasized Dutch culture in his "Knickerbocker Tales," which he wrote for the New York newspaper press. He mentions Saint Nicholas more than two dozen times in his chronicle, and it is from these writings that the original story "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," better known as "The Night Before Christmas," was conceived. The poem came to Clement Clark one night before Christmas while he was riding a horse and carriage through the snowy streets of New York City, so he returned home and wrote it for his children. Nick came to be depicted as a cheerful man with the more familiar red suit and white beard, and Harper's Weekly publisher Thomas Nast printed drawings that brought these images to the public. By this time, St. Nicholas' bishop's staff had become the most pagan candy cane. Other famous writers in the 1800s also published variations of the Santa story, and by 1890 the first Santa's department store had emerged. In the 20th century, Santa Claus was here to stay!