St Nicholas is the patron saint of children and sailors, he lived in the 4th century in Turkey.

The most famous story about St Nicholas concerns a poor man who had three daughters. In order to marry a lady’s father would be expected to provide a dowry, without this they would remain single. St Nicholas became aware of the plight of this family and one night dropped a purse of coins down the chimney into the house so that the eldest daughter would have enough money to get married. The purse is said to have fallen into a stocking, put by the fire to dry.

When the time came for the second daughter to marry, St Nicholas repeated the act. The father was delighted but desperate to know who was so kindly giving money to his family. Night after night he kept watch by the fire until St Nicholas returned with money for the third daughter’s dowry.

St Nicholas was not happy that he’d been caught and begged the father not to say anything as he did not wish his good deeds to be widely known. However, the story did get out and from that day on, whenever anyone received a mystery gift, it was said to be from Nicholas.

Here at Marham we are making each day of advent count and on Monday we celebrated St Nicholas Day. We learned the story and discussed the gift of giving and the wonderful feeling created when making someone happy.

We each received a small gift from St Nicholas and followed this with a wonderful afternoon drinking Prosecco, eating mince pies, and enjoying each other’s company.

It has been a fabulous day; it is so interesting to think that a large part of our modern Christmas is based on a good deed carried out in the 4^th century