I have been a serious collector of Santa Claus figurines and ornaments for more than thirty years, and have amassed a collection of some 4500 figurines and ornaments depicting Santa, one of the largest individual collections of which I am aware. My collection ranges from antique to modern, and folk art to china and crystal. My original motivation for writing Santa Claus Worldwide: A History of St. Nicholas and Other Holiday Gift-Bringers was to provide a guide for individuals who collected Santa Claus figurines because most of the existing works were outdated and often inaccurate. In 2014, as Chapter 1, the history of Santa and his European counterparts, expanded to several hundred pages, I decided to create a multi-volume work. The second volume will address authorship of “The Night Before Christmas,” and the third volume will return to the original purpose, a guide for collectors. Although I am not an author by trade, I have made my living for forty years as a researcher, writer and editor. I have undergraduate degrees in philosophy and journalism and a graduate degree in law from the University of Utah. From 1974 to 1978, I was employed as a copy editor with The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City, Utah. Between 1981 and 2015, I was a partner specializing in labor and employment law with two of the nation’s largest firms. I retired in 2015, and moved to Asheville, N.C., to pursue my writing ambition.