Santa's Bones

http://www.walkabouttravelgear.com/bones.htm
(Hey, kids, don't read this!) Here's a little sour fact to drop in your neighbor's eggnog. Do you ever wonder if maybe, just maybe, Christmas magic is true and Santa Claus is a real person? Well, you're half right. The truth is that not only did the jolly old elf (actually a Roman bishop) walk the earth, but he bit the dust in A.D. 343. If you don't believe it, you can stare at photos of his tired old bones on the Net. The relics are stored in an archaeological museum in Turkey, where the saintly philanthroper once gave two girls money to keep them from being sold to a brothel. There are three fragments on display, and I'm sorry to report that they're entirely devoid of anything magic -- in fact, they're quite dead. "It's very bizarre staring at St. Nick's bones," writes the author. "You expect the Easter Bunny's femur to be in the next case over."

(This was reprinted from my Washington Post column in 1997)
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