St. Nicholas

Today is officially St. Nicholas Day.   This is not a holiday we usually celebrate, but after having heard of it on the FIAR boards last year, I thought it might be a fun tradition to add to my family's Christmas season.  I told the kids about it on Friday and read them a great book called "Mommy Was Santa Claus Born on Christmas Too?"so that they could get an idea of what the day is all about.  Then today we all enthusiastically celebrated with a full day of holiday fun. 

 

We began our day at a "Breakfast With Santa" event run by a local women's group.  When we arrived we were surprised to learn that almost 500 people were registered, so you can imagine the chaotic scramble of at least 350 excited little kids that we walked in to.  Then, just to make the situation a bit more fun they gave them all hot chocolate, donuts, and cookies for breakfast.  To my amusement, the organizer of the event (my neighbor from across the street) stood at the platform and asked if everyone could "please quiet down for a few announcements."  Asking quiet of a group of 4 year olds is like asking birds not to fly - of course the din in the room barely dimmed for a second or so, and was back up to full volume soon.  As I looked across the room I watched all the mom's shoot each other knowing glances and giggles at my neighbor's naive comment.  The kids had no idea what was being said up front, they were just happy to be getting coloring books and candy at 10AM.

After a long nap (mostly for my benefit, but kinda' for the kids too) we baked my Mother-in-Law's famous lemon flavored sugar cookies while listening to Christmas music and packaged up a few boxes to bring to friends.  We got in a great discussion about generosity.  For kids, cookies are harder to share than St. Nicholas' gold.

The evening was full of holiday parties.  First a celebration with a group of our former neighbors, and then a 60th birthday party for my aunt.  Phew . . . I'm exhausted!