Anyone celebrate St. Nick day?

I sure wish we'd done that instead of the little Santa we've done at Christmas..but it's on the calendar for this year :)
 
We celebrated it when I was growing up! I loved it!

I may start it up now that Nathan's old enough to know what's going on!
 
I had never even heard of this until we moved to WI. At that time my oldest was 7 and I didn't want to introduce a new holiday and make him wonder why St. Nick never visited us in MN, so we decided not to adopt this. Every year though, I wonder if they are going to hear about it at school and ask me about it. So far, we have been lucky!
 
It is known here as Sinterklaas and it's celebrated everywhere here. We haven't in previous years but we are this year. You can read a bit more about it here.
 
I have friend (in the USA) who does. She also bakes cookies and does the 'stockings' on this day. Her DH has dutch heritage.
 
Well, we do, but I'm not in the US. :-)

BTW St. Nick makes me wince - agnostic as I am, it seems kind of too familiar to call a saint like that. :-))
 
my mom was German, so sometimes she'd fill my shoes for Saint Nicholas day, but she wasn't very consistent with it. I think she did it 3 or 4 times when I was a child. I haven't done it for my kids but it seems like a fun tradition!
 
I wish we did every year, but we don't. When we had German students, they usually celebrated it FOR us, by doing everything we needed to do for it.

We have a Swedish student this year, so I don't know if he's going to help us celebrate St. Lucia day or not.
 
We do!

It is celebrated in former Czecho-Slovakia and in many European countries (Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary...) We put our boots under the window and St. Nicholas puts there candy, chocolate, fruits or peanuts for those who obeyed the whole year... those who didn't get coal, onion or potatoes :)
 
It's not celebrated by anyone I know around here.

But the 6th is when our visiting elf on the shelf brings the boys new ornaments for the Christmas tree. Every year they each get an ornament that in some way symbolizes an interest or activity they had during the year. When they are grown they get to take the ornaments for their own trees.
 
Stacey42 said:
It's not celebrated by anyone I know around here.

But the 6th is when our visiting elf on the shelf brings the boys new ornaments for the Christmas tree. Every year they each get an ornament that in some way symbolizes an interest or activity they had during the year. When they are grown they get to take the ornaments for their own trees.
Click to expand...

Ooohhh... I love making a bit of a tradition around when to get the ornament... every year, I get a new ornament with the year or our name printed on it since I believe it's bad luck not to have at least one new ornament a year put on the tree... don't ask me why I think that, I've always thought that... I also get an ornament for kiddo, but didn't have a set tradition around giving it to him... it was always there....
 
I just looked into this tonight! Weird. :)

Since Jeff and I are both German and Irish, I'd like to celebrate St. Nicholas Day on the 6th and St. Stephen's Day on the 26th, but with a twist. We won't be able to do these things this year, but I hope we're able to next year.

I'd like to discuss the real person of St. Nicholas and then have the kids put a pair of old shoes (maybe the same pair every year?) outside their bedroom door. I don't want to introduce another imaginary person into the equation, so it won't be St. Nick himself actually visiting, but we will take away their old shoes and replace them with a new pair with a few small treats inside. The main point will be, however, that in the spirit of St. Nicholas, they will need to use their new shoes to do something good for someone else and we will do whatever good deed that is as a family either that day or that week.

Along the same lines, I'd like to discuss the real Stephen from the Bible and explain the Irish tradition of Wren Day (an interesting and slightly morbid tradition) and that we are going to celebrate the spirit of St. Stephen/the monies that the boys collect on Wren Day. Jeff's grandmother is giving us a pig cookie jar (I think -- I have yet to see it!) that we're going to put our spare change in all year long and then open it on St. Stephen's Day and donate it to the less fortunate in some way to be decided upon by the family. Her husband is the one who was Irish, so it seems fitting to use her cookie jar. :)

I hope that this will be a neat way to celebrate our heritage as well as focus on giving to others rather than Santa/materialism/getting presents.
 
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