Feast Day Celebration of Saint Nicholas

A crate of Clementine oranges-the first of the season-three fun and generously sized mugs for hot chocolate and herbal teas, a jar of lemon curd with a package of "cookies," a lovely statue of our beloved Saint Nicholas and four filled stockings.
These are what greeted the children Wednesday morning when they awoke before dawn. Naturally, it was no surprise; each had hung their stockings with great hope and care the previous night and each knows the date of the Feast of St. Nicholas-December 6-as well as they know their own birth dates.
Actually, the whole week had been a study and celebration, what with all of the St. Nicholas history and geography lessons and outstanding activities from the beautiful St. Nicholas Center website.

The most difficult aspect of the feast day is waiting for Mother to arise so the stockings can be explored at last. And, arise she did! With camera ready, the stockings were carefully emptied. I love that our children have learned to remove one item at a time and studiously appreciate it rather than dumping everything out at once.

There were beautiful lovely St. Therese bracelets for each of the older girls
and a gorgeous Irish penal rosary for Firstborn (all made by Kimberlee)
Firstborn also received a new pack with sketchbook and sketching pencils within. Sunshine found a lovely and informative book about Norway and Rosebud was delighted by a new multi-pack of play dough. Each child received an ornament (another family tradition); this year it was a little wooden bird. And, of course, the requisite chocolate coins and a candy cane to represent St. Nicholas' crozier. (The oranges and chocolate coins are traditional gifts intended to represent the generous St. Nicholas who surreptitiously provided three poor maidens with bags of gold for their dowry thus saving them from being sold into slavery.)

We had our usual group of friends over to pray the Rosary in the afternoon and shared our Clementine oranges and a plethora of St. Nicholas coloring pages and activities along with a candy cane for each. At the end of the day, we sent St. Nicholas day e-cards to Granny and our cousins in the Midwest before sinking contentedly into a long, deep sleep.

Thursday the children discovered online activities at the aforementioned St. Nicholas Center website. Late in the afternoon,a hardcover copy ofThe Miracle of St. Nicholas was delivered at our door. Two of the children are giving up reading pleasure books for Advent, but they will still listen to me read. What a sweet moment we had snuggling on the couch reading a new book together! I also read "Christmas in Maine" by Robert Coffin from A Christmas Treasury. Mr. Coffin writes eloquently and with such rich turns of phrases that I found myself longing for a cold Northeastern Christmas:

If you want to have a Christmas like the one we had on Paradise Farm when I was a boy, you will have to hunt up a salt-water farm on the Maine coast, with bays on both sides of it, and a road that goes around all sorts of bays, up over Misery Hill and down, and through the fir trees so close together that they brush you and your horse on both cheeks … You must have a clear December night, with blue Maine stars snapping like sapphires with the cold, and the big moon flooding full … and lighting up the snowy spruce boughs like crushed diamonds.

—Robert P. Tristram Coffin,
“Christmas in Maine,” 1935.

Today we had the privilege of assisting at a Mass in honor of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. We went out for a meaty dinner at Fuddrucker's and back at home the children watched the a propos story of St. Bernadette of Lourdes and Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception. Next week it is on to two more of my favorites: Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Lucia.