It all started with the Christmas Essay I wrote some years back. The picture above was made to describe for the portion concerning Santa Claus and St. Nicholas’ exploits; which often incorporated other legends of the winter solstice and was actually more common in the ancient world than most people care to believe. Many of the people that read the essay mentioned the St. Nick and the demons (or daemons, if the pejorative connotations offends your culture) he is said to have exploited, loved the drawing and didn’t mention anything else. Researching for this little entry, I became interested in the historical St. Nicholas of Myra of Lycia and decided to do the whole story. It has taken a while, though, as I am using Joe L. Wheeler’s biography as a reference and trying to piece it together with actually known history from the that time and place, which Wheeler seems to care nothing about. Behold, the illustrated version of St. Nick’s biography and eventual lead into the legends.