You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, sprouts. Today Today is Friday's December 6th, 2019. It is also the feast day of St. Nicholas.

Now, this week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we have been diving into Advent by talking about this season of waiting and how waiting can be important so God can widen, stretch out our hearts so we can receive his gifts. We also talked about

how important waiting was in the Old Testament. When there were prophets who were special people

close to God that God chose to deliver his message

to the people. Those messages were that you have sinned and you will be punished, but then also

if you repent, I will be merciful. The prophets spoke a lot about the coming Messiah.

Now today we are going to talk about a very popular saint in the Catholic

faith, and that is St. Nicholas. Now, you might think that St. Nicholas is the same as Santa Claus,

and they certainly look similar if you look at pictures. It is true the St. Nicholas is what we based our tradition of

Santa Claus on. But St. Nicholas was a real person. He lived a long time ago, and he was a bishop

in Greece. Now, let's talk a little bit about his early life. So St. Nicholas's parents wanted a baby very

badly, but they were asked to wait many years before that prayer was answered, just as we wait

during Advent. Finally, after years of waiting, they had a little son and they named him Nicholas.

However, since this happened so long ago, there was still certain epidemics that would go

through entire countryside, where many, many people would get sick and die because they didn't

have modern medicine. This happened when St. Nicholas was a young boy and he lost both of his parents.

He was in force to be raised by his uncle, who was a bishop himself. He was raised by him,

taught how to pray, and eventually became a priest. From a very young age, St. Nicholas had been

known as a very generous person. Remember,

his parents had been wealthy and he was the only child. After his parents died, he received a great

fortune. But instead of keeping that to himself, he generously gave it away. And the way in which he

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