With Christmas So Near I Was Reading About The Saint Of Christmas,

Saint Nicolas, AKA Santa Claus, the true story of Santa Claus begins with Nicholas, who was born during the third century in the village of Patara, at the time the area was Greek and is now on the southern coast of Turkey, obeying Jesus' words to "sell what you own and give the money to the poor," Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering,

above St Nicholas first appears here as a newly born baby miraculously standing up and praying, in the centre panel, he is an adult, looking through the window of an impoverished widower’s house, his anonymous present of money will provide dowries (marriage gifts) for the widower’s three daughters and save them from destitution, finally, he is shown as a bishop reviving three murdered boys,

it appears that this picture shows three boys that were destine to have the same fate as some of the survivors of yesterdays blog, of the true story of Moby Dick, befall them, they were to be eaten, the artist is Gerard David, who was the last great 15th-century painter from Bruges, the scene depicts an early case of anthropophagy (the eating of human flesh), the boys had been killed by a butcher, their carcasses were salting in a makeshift vat awaiting ingestion by famished townspeople, fortunately, that most notorious child-lover himself, St. Nicholas, just happened to be passing through town when he caught wind of the boy-eating scandal and resurrected the lads in the tub, so now I know where Santa Claus came from and how Saint Nick came by his name.