The Story
When our kids were young, my late wife, Lana, wished there was a Hollywood-style movie about the life of St. Nicholas. She thought it would be a great way to tell people about his deep love for Jesus—and point people to Christ at Christmas.
In 2009, I wrote the first draft of our book St. Nicholas: The Believer to flesh out his story for a movie. In 2012, Lana and I reached out to a friend and Hollywood producer to see what he thought, and he said when the book was ready, he’d like to read it (which he said he rarely offers to do even for friends because he has so little time to even read his own projects!)
Over the years, we began collecting books and stories about St. Nicholas, researching what was real and what was inspired by his life and legend.
Ironically, the day we called our friend was the same day we got the biopsy results from Lana’s doctor: she had breast cancer. Over the next nine months we continued to edit the draft of our book to get it ready. Lana finished her final edits two weeks before she passed from this life to the next.
It took me a year before I ever did anything with the manuscript. But for Christmas of 2013, I published the final version of St. Nicholas: The Believer, as both a novella and a 6-week series to the subscribers of my weekly emails.
Every year I republished it to my subscribers, and people kept telling me how they read it each year, alone or with their families.
In 2018, a ballet company in South Carolina wrote asking if they could turn our story into a full-length ballet with 250 of their students. They did, and the show ran every Christmas for 4 years. We filmed the production the 2nd year, and posted it online for all to see, called One Life: A Christmas Story Ballet.
In 2020, I finished writing both a script and score for a musical version of the story, and in 2021 gathered 100 friends and family to put on a production of the musical here in Streator, Illinois called His Name Was Nicholas.
In 2022, while scouting in Italy for possible locations for a movie version, I ran across a “puppet opera” company that staged historical shows in their mountain town of Sulmona. I asked if they’d be interested in creating a puppet opera about the life of St. Nicholas based on our book, and they said that would be a dream come true.
So in 2023, after 18 months of planning, carving, painting, and rehearsing, we premiered Saint Nicholas: An Italian Puppet Opera at the beautiful Maria Caniglia Theater in Sulmona, Italy. We filmed the production and put it on Amazon Prime for Christmas of 2024.
Also in 2024, I reached out to another friend and theater professor at Asbury seminary to ask if he would want to write the screenplay for a movie. He and his wife tour around the world doing live theater and have a knack for touching audiences with both humor and heart.
In 2025, he finished the screenplay and I read it with delight.
What’s next? The movie!
In 2026, we’re taking our next steps to bring Lana’s movie dream to life. Want to join us?
Here’s a brief pitch deck that tells more. Just scroll through the 10 slides or download to share with others!
Get Involved
If you’d like to be part of it, contact me here!
You can also make a donation and just mention it’s for “St. Nicholas: The Musical”
Can’t wait to see what’s next!!!
Sincerely,
