Why Does Santa Bring Gifts

The history of Christmas and in particular the reasons for the giving of gifts are not known for certain, but several things are known for a fact. The traditions of Santa Claus and giving presents at Christmastime began long before the birth of Jesus Christ, although it really depends on where in the world you live as to how you believe the whole tradition started.
 The giving of presents at Christmastime actually dates back over 4000 years to the Mesopotamians. They believed that every year in winter their primary god Marduk would do battle with the evil spirits of chaos. Upon Marduk’s return, it was necessary for the king to then pledge his allegiance to the God, and he would die at the end of the year. The Mesopotamians obviously cottoned on to the fact that they were going through kings quicker than they could produce them, so they would dress a convict up as the king and treat him as though he were a king for one day. At the end of the new year festival, they would kill him.
 On this day, they would present gifts to one another to mark the beginning of the new year and the success that Marduk had yet again bestowed on them. This is where the giving of Christmas gifts began.
 St Nicholas is believed to have been born around 300 A. D and lived in what is now Turkey. He was a widely revered and loved monk due to his overwhelming kindness. His most famous act of kindness was to save three sisters from slavery by providing them with a dowry in order that they could be married.
 As such a popular character, he soon became the patron saint of many groups of people, eventually resting on children and sailors. Traditionally, St. Nicholas day was celebrated and remembered on December 6th, although his role as patron saint of children has seen his special day moved to coincide with Christmas.
 So one thing that is certain is that Santa Claus visits us on the wrong day every single year. Celebration of Saint Nicholas should in fact be on December 6th, although the moving of St. Nicholas day to the 25th was presumably done to combine his special day with the Christian festival. If the large superstores and toy manufacturers were given the choice, I’m quite sure they would rather celebrate them separately, so be warned for next year. Saint Nicholas was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra (now Deere) in the region of Lucia in the Roman Empire, today in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes.^[9] He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. In continental Europe (more precisely the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany) he is usually portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. In 1087, while the Greek Christian inhabitants of Myra were subjugated by the newly arrived Muslim Seljuk dynasty, and soon after their Greek Orthodox church had been declared to be in schism by the Catholic Church (1054 AD), a group of merchants from the Italian city of Bar removed the major bones of Nicholas's skeleton from his sarcophagus in the Greek church in Myra. Over the objection of the monks of Myra, the sailors took the bones of St. Nicholas to Bar, where they are now enshrined in the Basilica di San Nicole. Sailors from Bar collected just half of Nicholas' skeleton, leaving all the minor fragments in the church sarcophagus. These were later taken by Venetian sailors during the First Crusade and placed in Venice, where a church to St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, was built on the San Nicole Lido. St. Nicholas' vandalized sarcophagus can still be seen in the St. Nicholas Church in Myra. This tradition was confirmed in two important scientific investigations of the relics in Bar and Venice, which revealed that the relics in the two Italian cities belong to the same skeleton. Saint Nicholas was later claimed as a patron saint of many diverse groups, from archers, sailors, and children to pawnbrokers.^[9][10] He is also the patron saint of both Amsterdam and Moscow.