So for this next story, we need to warn you.

If you have small kids in the room, you may want to mute this and come back a bit later,

because we're talking about that visitor from the North Pole, okay?

This Christmas Day, many good boys and girls welcome that familiar visitor last night,

the jolly man in the red suit with a sleigh full of gifts.

But that white-bearded figure that we all recognize as Santa Claus,

he is a relatively modern creation shaped over centuries.

Stephanie Syr recently talked with an author who unwraps the surprising history of old St. Nick.

That author is Jerry Boler, and his book, Santa Claus, a biography, traces how the legend of

our favorite bearded gift giver evolved over centuries. Jerry, it's such a pleasure to have you

on the news hour. So I want to hop right into it. Is Santa Claus, and I quote from the book,

a figure of mythology or a creature of literature

or a tool of a clever capitalist? He is a wonderful myth, about 1,700 years old, American

in renovation, and largely a conspiracy by families. So it changes over time. St. Nicholas was an actual

four-century bishop. What was he most known for? At the time of his life, he was known for generosity.

But when he died, a cult grew up around him inside Christianity that made him the most influential, popular male saint

on the Christian calendar. He was the patron saint of so many things, but probably his most

famous miracle in the Middle Ages was his resurrection of three murdered boys who had been

chopped up and put in the pickle barrel. He discovered this and put them all together

again. So he becomes the patron saint of children and thus around maybe the 12th century, he was

someone who parents and the church said came on December 6th to bring presents for good little girls

and boys to leave something in their shoe.

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