{"id":45596,"date":"2019-12-24T09:15:32","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T14:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=45596"},"modified":"2019-12-24T09:15:56","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T14:15:56","slug":"did-you-know-that-santa-claus-was-a-real-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/12\/did-you-know-that-santa-claus-was-a-real-person\/","title":{"rendered":"Did you know that Santa Claus was a real person?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/St-Nicholas-life-Myra.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45598\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/St-Nicholas-life-Myra.jpg 800w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/St-Nicholas-life-Myra-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/St-Nicholas-life-Myra-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Did you know\nthat Santa Claus was a real person? Santa Claus was originally known as Saint\nNicholas and he loved children. During the Third Century AD, Nicholas was born\nin what is now known today as the country of Turkey. Born into great wealth and\ninfluence, the later as an adult, Nicholas noticed the many poor, especially\nchildren who suffered from not only hunger, but from sickness as well. He\ndecided to spend much of his family\u2019s wealth to bless and help many of those\npoor kids, even some adults<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the\nmost well-known stories about Saint Nicholas was how he rescued three sisters from\nbeing sold into slavery or perhaps even prostitution, by their father. The\nfather did not have enough money to support his three daughters, and at the\ntime, families gained wealth by marrying their daughter\u2019s to men who paid the\nfamilies of those daughters, with dowries. Nicholas took some of his family\u2019s\nwealth and provided a dowry for each of the sister\u2019s so that they would not be\nsold into indentured servitude.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another\nstory about the kindness of Saint Nicholas, although the story is both\nunconfirmed or verified, there are reports that he somehow used his money and\ninfluence to rescue three men who had been falsely accused and were sentenced\nto death. Surely a heroic and selfless act rarely seen today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some years\nafter Nicholas became famous throughout Europe for his exploits with helping\nand blessing children and the poor. Saint Nicholas died in December 6, 343. The\ntradition of gift giving continued, especially in Holland where children where every\nevening before December 6<sup>th<\/sup>, Dutch children would leave their shoes\noutside their homes and the next morning, find gifts filling their shoes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The original\nSaint Nicholas has long since gone, but the spirit of Saint Nicholas lives on\namong some of us today who reach out to help the poor, especially children not\nonly on Christmas, but every day of the year. Will you also emulate Saint\nNicholas on Christmas and throughout 2020?&nbsp;\nWe could definitely use more Saint Nick\u2019s. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you know that Santa Claus was a real person? Santa Claus was originally known as Saint Nicholas and he loved children. During the Third Century AD, Nicholas was born&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}