That may be true of some foreigners. Numerous Germans, whose affection for Christmas is legendary and who tend to visit Turkey's southern coast in the winter months, are said to have been receptive.
"It's like 'Christmasland' in America!" said Karen Loreol, a Swiss national on a German tour bus last week. "There is a replica of the 'Silent Night' church in Salzburg!
Mayor Suleyman Topcu points with pride to Demre's official seal, which features a stylized Santa, rather than the town's 4th-century local hero.
(Karl Vick -- The Washington Post)
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"I love it," she said. "Christmas is wonderful."
Russians feel differently. It was a Russian sculptor, Gregory Potosky, who cast the bronze statue as a gift to the city of Demre in 2000. And it was Russians who would pile out of tour buses -- as many as 80 buses a day in summer -- and fall to their knees to pray before it.
"And without letting us know, or letting the artist know, they changed the location, which shocked everybody here and in Russia," said a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Ankara, the Turkish capital. "He's a very important saint, a very important figure in Russia."
Topcu said the city would take steps to mollify the Russians. The bronze, he said, will be given a more prominent position in the Church of Saint Nicholas, which Czar Alexander II paid to restore in the late 19th century. The move is promised by the time the Russians arrive in summer.
But there's no plan, he said, to take Santa off the pedestal.
"The old one was nicer," said Mehmet Cavus, another vendor in the row of stands pitching "Saint Nicholas icons" in signs written in Cyrillic, the Russian alphabet.
"And the old one the tourists treated as something holy," added Hayriye Koc, wandering over from her stand. "They respected it. They prayed to it."
She looked up at the man in the red suit. "This one," she said, "doesn't have that."
