Religion has always been a source for argument, Americans are lucky enough to live in a country that allows them to practice any religion they desire without fear of prosecution. This was not the case in medieval Europe, religious practices were either approved institutional church or condemned as heresy. The common people aware of the dishonesty of the church began to express their religious faith in new and different ways.
Many people in this time could not read, without literacy reading about the lives of saints was not possible. These people learned the stories of Jesus and his saints through sermons and by seeing the stories set down on stained glass windows. Hand in hand with sermons, the men that could read learned about the lives of saints through stories called hagiography. These stories often presented ordinary people and how their lives were touched by God, and how this could be used as inspiration in everyday lives. One of the people that were included in these stories was Santa Claus. This may sound a bit odd, due to the fact that everyone knows that Santa does not exist, but he did. Santa Claus or St. Nicholas was a man who took his wealth and gave it to the needy without them knowing who it was. This is how the story of Santa Claus first began and it is a story that set an example for people in the Middle Ages to draw off of.
The church in the Late Middle Ages had become very corrupt. In a search for more money, the church began a number of practices that were only detrimental to itself. Offices were given to the person who could pay the most to take it and not to the person who was most qualified. Because of this most of the people in the church who had power were of little use, plus those who were in power could be in charge of many different places at once further causing problems by taxing their already limited skills. .
People in the Late Middle Ages no longer feeling the church was as good as it claimed began to practice religion in their own ways.