If you've ever been asked, "Who is Saint Nicholas?"... If you've ever wondered if he is just a commercial invention... If you've ever thought there is no such person... You may be surprised to know the true Saint Nicholas. You'll never again think of Santa Claus in quite the same way. An instant classic by one of America's most respected thinkers, The True Saint Nicholas is a book to be shared with family and friends every year to evoke the true spirit of Christmas. William J. Bennett served as Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George H. W. Bush and as Secretary of Education and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities under President Reagan. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from Williams College, a doctorate in political philosophy from the University of Texas, and a law degree from Harvard. He is the author of such bestselling books as The Educated Child , The Death of Outrage , The Book of Virtues , and the two-volume series America: The Last Best Hope . Dr. Bennett is the former host of the nationally syndicated radio show Bill Bennett's Morning in America and the current host of the popular podcast, The Bill Bennett Show . He is also the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute and a regular contributor to CNN. He, his wife, Elayne, and their two sons, John and Joseph, live in Maryland. CHAPTER ONE Answered Prayers and Secret Alms Like many good things, this story begins with a mother's prayer. During the days of the Roman Empire, in a province called Lycia, in what is now the country of Turkey, a husband and wife longed for a child. Theophanes and Nonna, their names are said to have been. Their home was Patara, a flourishing town at the mouth of the river Xanthos on the Mediterranean coast, a place where the forested hills sloped down to the clear blue sea. Theophanes and Nonna were a well-to-do couple. Perhaps they inherited land and money. Theophanes may have run a prosperous trade in cloth or milled grains. History does not tell us. We know only that, according to one old chronicle, they were people "of substantial lineage, holding property enough without superfluity." Their comfortable lives were troubled by one great unhappiness: though they had been married for many years, they had never managed to have children. As time passed, they wept and waited, but no child came. Still, Nonna refused to give up hope. Instead, she did something very wise. She prayed. Like Hannah in the First Book of Samuel in the Bible, she poured out her soul to God, asking him to remember her. It must have seemed like a miracle when late in life, after so many hopes and tears, Nonna's prayer was answered around the year A.D. 280 with the birth of a son. She surely recalled how Hannah, who was finally blessed with the boy Samuel, had vowed to "give him unto the Lord all the days of his life" (1 Samuel 1:11 KJV). Some say that when Nonna's child was placed in his bath right after birth, he stood up by himself and raised his arms as if in praise of God. Others say that on Wednesdays and Fridays, traditional days of fasting for early Christians, he refused to nurse until after sundown. Such are the legends. But there must have been something that made the proud parents hope that their child would someday serve God and his fellow men in some remarkable way. They christened the baby Nicholas, a name that in Greek means "people's victor," after an uncle who was an abbot at a nearby monastery. Patara was a good town to grow up in, a bustling center of trade full of sights for a boy to explore. Wide avenues lined with columns and paved with stones led from town gates past houses, shops, and temples to busy agorai (market squares). Beneath brightly colored awnings, merchants arranged their goods: grapes, olives, cheese, herbs, dyed wool and cotton, pottery, jewelry, leather, glassware, skins of wine. The shoppers who haggled with vendors and the men who swapped news in the shade of roofed colonnades all spoke Greek, the dominant language of that part of the world. Young Nicholas must have spent many hours listening to the shouts of the tradesmen advertising their wares and the talk of women filling jugs with water at the public fountains. As he roamed the streets of Patara, the boy saw reminders of both his proud Greek heritage and imperial Rome's wide reach. A temple to Apollo drew travelers hoping to divine the future from a revered oracle. The grand assembly building, where officials from all over Lycia met to debate, could seat one thousand people. Elegant baths with rooms covered by marble tiles dotted the city. A massive monument with three Roman arches, built to honor a governor of Lycia, supported an aqueduct that brought water to Patara's inhabitants. On a hillside near the sea stood the favorite spot of many Patarans, the amphitheater. More than two dozen tiers of stone seats rose above a raised st