St. Nicholas Day

Today we celebrated Saint Nicholas Day at our house. I asked Samuel what he remembered about St. Nicholas Day and he said "It's when we give other people stuff." That's the attitude and memory I was hoping would stick.

We started celebrating this last year as a way to teach our children about the real St. Nicholas, remember a tradition I learned about while in Eastern Europe and a way to focus us on giving to others during Christmas as we remember that we have been given so much (I don't need to spend time teaching them about getting and wanting!) If you want to know more about how we celebrate this let me know - but in general we bake goodies for our neighbors, someone who serves us (like firemen or police men) and we get a small gift for each other. We leave our shoes on the fireplace and we get the surprise in the morning. The children were so excited this year to get something for each other - and they did a great job choosing things the other would like, we didn't get to give out our goodies- a migraine did me in for the day - but we will get to that this week. Here are some pics from the morning and our tree decorating this evening.