St. Nicholas is venerated in both the East and the West by numerous altars and churches erected in his memory. There are countless stories bearing witness to his extraordinary character.
He was born in Asia Minor and became the bishop of Myra, the capital. He was very well brought up by parents who were very serious about his studying of the sacred books at a very early age. While he was still young, his parents died and left him with a comfortable fortune. Nicholas resolved to use his fortune for works of charity. It was not long before the opportunity to do just that arose.
A citizen of Patara had lost all of his money. He had three daughters who could not find husbands because their poverty denied them any kind of dowery. The father, in deep despair, was about to commit them to a life of shame. Nicholas, upon hearing this, took a bag of gold and at night tossed it through an open window of the man's house. The man used it for a dowery for his eldest daughter and she quickly married. Nicholas repeated this course of action for the second and third daughter. On the night that Nicholas was throwing the bag of gold in the window for the third daughter, the girl's father was watching by the window and was overwhelmed with gratitude for young Nicholas' kindness.
Nicholas was also the protector of his people in temporal affairs. Once when the governor had been bribed to condemn three innocent men to death, Nicholas stayed the hand of the executioner and released them on the day of the execution. He then reproved the governor so sternly that he repented.
Three prisoners imprisoned on false charges of treason remembered Nicholas' passion for justice and prayed to God for Nicholas to intercede on their behalf. That very night Nicholas appeared to the emperor in a dream and ordered him to release the prisoners. The prefect had the exact same dream and the next morning the two men discussed their dreams with each other. After questioning the prisoners and learning that they had prayed for the intervention of Nicholas, the emperor released them and sent a letter to Nicholas asking him to pray for world peace. In the West this story took on more and more fantastic forms; in one version the three officers were referred to as three boys murdered by an innkeeper and put into a brine tube from which Nicholas rescued them and restored them to life.
St. Nicholas is portrayed with three boys in a tub or else tossing a bag of gold through a window. In the West he has often been invoked by prisoners and in the East by sailors. One legend has it that during his life-time he appeared off the coast of Lycia to some storm tossed mariners who invoked his aid, and he brought them safely to port.
From the legend of the three boys may have come the tradition of his love for children, celebrated in both secular and religious observances. In many places, there was once a year a ceremonious installation of a "boy bishop." In Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands gifts were bestowed on children at Christmas time in St. Nicholas' name. His popularity was greatest of all in Russia, where he and St. Andrew were joint national patrons.
St. Nicholas' emblems are children, a mitre and a vessel.
