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The Legend of Saint Nicholas by Demi

 

Dh & his family are Belgian, so we celebrate Dec. 6 w/ Oma & Opa. Oma & Opa always have a tray of chocolates, marzipan, speculaas cookies, & clementines for the dc, along w/ a small gift.

 

*Not* for the kids, but I love

" about St. Niklaas in the Netherlands. :lol: (Sedaris' reaction was about the same as mine the first time I was in Belgium w/ dh & saw the Zwarte Piets running around town.)

 

ETA: Dd attends a weekly Dutch school. For St. Niklaas day, they have Zwarte Piets visit & put sweets/treats in the kids' shoes (which they leave outside the classroom door that day).

Edited by Stacia
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St. Nicholas of Myra is a saint in the Orthodox church, and so we celebrated the feast of St. Nicholas for the first time last year. It was a lot of fun, and so edifying to learn about his life. Do you have an Orthodox church near you? On the eve of the feast (Dec. 5), there might be a special service, so you could check that out to add to your celebration. Our priest reads the story to the children, and then we came home and had the kids put out one shoe near the doorway before they went to bed. Then we put some of the traditional items in them (candy, a small toy, an icon), to begin the feast day the next morning (Dec. 6).

 

Here are some books from this Orthodox perspective:

The Legend of St. Nicholas

The Miracle of St. Nicholas

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St. Nicholas of Myra is a saint in the Orthodox church, and so we celebrated the feast of St. Nicholas for the first time last year. It was a lot of fun, and so edifying to learn about his life. Do you have an Orthodox church near you? On the eve of the feast (Dec. 5), there might be a special service, so you could check that out to add to your celebration. Our priest reads the story to the children, and then we came home and had the kids put out one shoe near the doorway before they went to bed. Then we put some of the traditional items in them (candy, a small toy, an icon), to begin the feast day the next morning (Dec. 6).

 

Here are some books from this Orthodox perspective:

The Legend of St. Nicholas

The Miracle of St. Nicholas

 

Thank you!

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The Legend of Saint Nicholas by Demi

 

Dh & his family are Belgian, so we celebrate Dec. 6 w/ Oma & Opa. Oma & Opa always have a tray of chocolates, marzipan, speculaas cookies, & clementines for the dc, along w/ a small gift.

 

*Not* for the kids, but I love

" about St. Niklaas in the Netherlands. :lol: (Sedaris' reaction was about the same as mine the first time I was in Belgium w/ dh & saw the Zwarte Piets running around town.)

 

ETA: Dd attends a weekly Dutch school. For St. Niklaas day, they have Zwarte Piets visit & put sweets/treats in the kids' shoes (which they leave outside the classroom door that day).

 

Thank you!

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We do much like the above posters. My heritage is Dutch, and on Dec. 5/6 (whichever is a better night schedule-wise), Oma and Opa, and Grandma and Grandpa come over and have a nice meal. Before the meal, shoes with an apple and carrot are left by the front door. Sometime between dinner and dessert, while we are still at the table chatting, Opa "goes to the bathroom" and shortly thereafter there is a loud knock at the door. When we answer it, we find a bag of presents. The carrot for Sinter Klaas's horse is gone, and in it's place a Droste chocolate letter. Then dd opens the presents (which are her Christmas gifts from me in their entirety), and we have dessert. Sometimes we have little Dutch pancakes for dessert.

 

During this evening Oma and Opa tell stories of the Sinter Klaas parades in Holland that they watched as children, and how Uncle John, a naughty boy, got put in Zwarte Peits' bag and taken out of the school classroom to be lectured about his behavior :), etc.

 

We usually check a Saint Nicholas book out of the library, though dd know the story just fine now. We really don't make it anything religious at all. In fact the reason we do this is to get the majority of the gift giving over before Christmas, so on Christmas itself we can focus a bit more on the gift of the Savior, not on presents. On Christmas she still gets gifts from plenty of relatives though, so it doesn't entirely work, but does spread out the fun.

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