On December 6th every year, countries across Europe celebrate St. Nicholas Day.

The way they celebrate can vary dramatically from place to place,

but what they all have in common is honoring a man with a long white beard who gives presents to children.

And if that all sounds familiar, it should. with a long white beard who gives presents to children.

And if that all sounds familiar, it should.

Learn more about St. Nicholas, St. Nicholas Day, and how it celebrated around the world on

this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The story of St Nicholas is similar to the story of many Saints and other

personalities from Antiquity. We don't know much about them. What we do know was

written well after the fact, and there was probably a lot of embellishment of their stories.

So everything about St Nicholas has to be taken with a big grain of salt. Nicholas was born in the

year 270 in the city of Patara in Asia Minor or what we call today Turkey. He was

born in the Roman Empire when it was pretty much at its peak. He was supposedly born to a wealthy Greek

Christian family and yet an uncle who was a bishop in the city of Mearna. There is

little known about his life growing up. When he was a young man his parents supposedly died in an epidemic. When he received his inheritance

he made the decision to give it all away to the poor. His uncle, seeing his virtue,

supposedly made him a priest. His generosity became legendary. In one of his most

famous acts of charity there was a man with three daughters who couldn't afford

their dowries to get them married. Without getting married, and this is the way it

worked at the time,

the daughters would probably have been forced into prostitution.

He wanted to help the father, but he didn't want to embarrass him by publicly giving him charity.

So he snuck into his house on three separate nights delivering three bags of gold one for each daughter

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