Anthony McLean

Every Legend
Begins With a Truth
No One Expected

Old Saint Nick: The True Story of Santa Claus reimagines the real man behind the myth — the bishop, the demon he called a friend, and the two-thousand-year secret only now being told. This isn’t another Christmas tale. It’s the origin story of Saint Nicholas himself, as he tells it.

Meet the Author

Anthony V. McLean is the author of Old Saint Nick: The True Story of Santa Claus, a novel year in the making and built from a lifelong fascination with the real history behind Christmas’s most famous figure. A father of three, Anthony wrote the book for his children first — and for anyone who has ever wondered what truth might be hiding behind the legend of Saint Nicholas.
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A Legend Two Thousand Years in the Making

Old Saint Nick: The True Story of Santa Claus

Everyone knows the legend. Almost no one knows the truth. Old Saint Nick tells the real story of Bishop Nicholas — a man transformed into something eternal by a bond he never expected, with a companion the world would come to fear as Krampus.

Told through Nicholas’s own account — and, in places, through the eyes of his wife, Mary — the novel spans centuries, continents, and one impossible friendship, arriving finally at the Christmas Eve tradition we know today.

E-book

Hardcover

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$ 45.00

The Story Behind the Legend

Old Saint Nick began as a question: what if Santa Claus wasn’t invented, but simply never fully explained? Anthony McLean built the answer from real Saint Nicholas folklore, Krampus legend, and centuries of Christmas tradition — then filled in the rest with a story only Nicholas himself could tell. The result is a novel that treats the world’s most beloved holiday figure as what he might really be: a man with a past, a purpose, and a friend the world misunderstood.

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