Spotted: St. Nicholas with a basket of gold coins at Trinity Church in Menlo Park

For over three decades, St. Nicholas, as portrayed by Dick Livermore, has been visiting Trinity Church in Menlo Park. Yesterday’s appearance was particularly appropriate as it was St. Nicholas Day. The historic 4th-century Christian saint and Greek Bishop of Myra, in Asia Minor (modern-day Demre, Turkey) had, according to Wikipedia, “a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose modern name comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas, itself from a series of elisions and corruptions of the transliteration of ‘Saint Nikolaos’.”

Photo by Haydi Sowerine