Happy St Nicholas' Day..

6th December, St Nicholas Day, I remember spending in 1972 in my international community of students in Switzerland.   All the Nicholas's, Nikolai's, Nikos's (and Nichola's too) were treated as celebrities, and St Nicholas himself appeared - not as Santa, or Father Christmas, but in the bishop's robes that the original St Nick deserved.  

This stone - dated 1268 - comes from the ruins of the old Cross Kirk in Peebles.   In the second half of the 13th century, a group of priests, clerics and burgesses discovered a stone cross and the ashes of a man.   They improbably, and possibly commercially, decided that these were the remains of St Nicholas himself.  The King agreed, and Peebles became for a while a very favoured place of pilgrimage.