Nadeau

Santa's dead and interred in Ireland;
the Irish claim this, others dispute it

Many believe St. Nick was a real person, but dispute where his mortal remains remain today. The Irish have an opinion on the matter, of course.

The saint who the legend of Santa Claus is based on is believed to be buried in Kilkenny, according to local historians.

The remains of St Nicholas of Myra, the philanthropist who lived in the 4th century and was the bishop of Lycia, are thought to have been moved to Jerpoint Abbey some 800 years ago.

During his life, St Nicholas left anonymous gifts for the poor and his well-known generosity propelled him to sainthood shortly after his death in 346, inspiring the legend of the jolly man in the red suit.

[…St. Nick] was originally buried at a local church in Myra, in modern day Turkey, when he died. Historians now believe his body was later moved to the abbey in Ireland by early crusaders.
Belfast Telegraph

At least one Belfast Telegraph reader is skeptical. “Good Lord - not something else. They'll be claiming next that ET's ancestors were actually Irish before they emigrated into outer space,” he says.

The American version of Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, derives from the Dutch version called Sint Klaas, or SinterKlaas.

Saint Nicholas died in about 350 AD [some cultures cite Dec. 6, 346 A.D. as the precise date of death] and his fame spread rapidly through the Middle Ages with thousands of churches dedicated to him. He has been the patron saint of Moscow, Greece, children, sailors, prisoners, bakers, pawnbrokers, shopkeepers and wolves…

In his most famous exploit however, a poor man had three daughters but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried and probably, in absence of any other possible employment would have to become prostitutes. Hearing of the poor man's plight, Nicholas decided to help him but being too modest to help the man in public, (or to save the man the humiliation of accepting charity), he went to his house under the cover of night and threw three purses (one for each daughter) filled with gold coins through the window opening into the man's house…

The three gold balls traditionally hung outside a pawnshop symbolize the three sacks of gold.

As noted earlier, St. Nicholas's corpse is kept in Kilkenny. Some sources contend his relics remain "in the basilica of St. Nicola in Bari, Italy where they were deposited after being stolen from Myra, Turkey in 1087 AD."

Whereas the devotional importance of relics and the economics associated with pilgrimages caused the remains of most saints to be divided up and spread over numerous churches in several countries, St. Nicholas is unique in that most of his bones have been preserved in one spot: his grave crypt in Bari …[and] The Roman Catholic has allowed for one scientific survey of the bones. In the late 1950s, during a restoration of the chapel, it allowed a team of hand-picked scientists to photograph and measure the contents of the crypt grave.

In the summer of 2005, the report of these measurements was sent to a forensic laboratory in England. The review of the data revealed that the historical St. Nicholas was barely five feet in height (while not exactly small, still shorter than average, even for his time [all the better to fit down the chimney].
Various sources, Wikipedia

Interestingly, a facial reconstruction of St. Nicolas of Myrna has been done using modern forensic science to examine his relics. The results reportedly indicated "a mended broken nose perhaps … broken by Arius at the First Council at Nicaea."

Here is what some scientists say St. Nick probably looked like.

And how would you like to wander out to the living room around midnight to fetch some of the Christmas cookies left on the mantlepiece only to discover this character emerging from your fireplace? I mean, just look at those eyes!