There are many legends of Saint Nicholas. Some say that a sailor who fell overboard from a ship was rescued by Nicholas while he was walking on water. Some say that some students were robbed and dismembered and Saint Nicholas reassembled them and brought them back to life. It was believed the Nicholas took pity on the poor and gave them gifts and gold. All of this was done during or around Christmas.

The association with Chimneys, stockings, and Santa Claus all originated with the story of the widower and his three daughters. They were poverty-stricken and the three daughters were facing the threat of being forced to prostitute. Saint Nicholas crept up to their house and dropped gold into their stockings they had hung from the mantle to dry. The next morning, Christmas morning actually, they awoke to find gold in each of their stockings and so a legend was born.

Saint Nicholas soon evolved into a man with a long white beard who wore a long red and white bishop's robe. Later on in 1809 in New York, Washington Irving created a tale of a joy little chubby man, who wore red and white suit and rode a magic horse through the air to visit everyone's homes to give gifts to the good ones and switches to the bad one. The poem "The Night Before Christmas" by Major Henry Livingston Jr. replaced the magic horse with the traditional sleigh and eight tiny reindeer as we know today.

The sole belief in Santa Claus all began around Christmas time in 1897 when a little girl named Virginia O'Hanlon asked the question if Santa Claus was real, in a letter to the New York Sun. The answer she received was yes, and since that day children all over America have believed that on Christmas Eve, Old St. Nick will slide down the Chimney and deliver gifts to all the good girls and boys.