Today the Church celebrates the life, ministry and place in Christmas tradition that is Nicholas - a fourth-century Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor (in what is now southern Turkey).
His reputation as a worker of wonders was enhanced by a ninth-century author of his hagiography and he is now best known through these stories.
Many of them concern his love and care for children, how he fed the hungry, healed the sick and cared for the oppressed. He saved three girls from a life of prostitution by providing them with dowries and so developed the tradition of bearing gifts to children on his feast day, a practice appropriated for the Christmas celebrations.
Nicholas is also one of the patron saints of Russia.
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