Diane Southam finds Santa in Turkey.

It was the middle of August. Exhausted, we’d been driving for hours in sweltering heat along the Turquoise coast in Turkey, trying to find an inn for the night that hadn’t been requisitioned by package holiday companies.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, wherever we looked, from telegraph poles to billboards, there were posters of a grinning Father Christmas in traditional Santa garb. Seeing Santa in the summer in a Muslim country was confusing to say the least.

We finally found a room in a lovely little place called Patara, which had turned into something of a ghost town since the tour companies upped sticks in the nineties and moved to the trendier Kalkan. Fortunately the owner of our hotel, Mohammed, was able to throw some light on the Santa mystery.

Patara is the birthplace of St. Nicholas, or Noel Baba as he’s known to the Turks. Born in the third century A.D. Nicholas became Bishop of Myra. His reputation as a generous giver of presents owes its origin to his act of kindness in throwing three purses of gold into the home of a poor man who couldn’t afford dowries for his three daughters, thus saving the girls from a life of walking the streets.