Thursday, December 6, 2007

Happy Feast of St. Nicholas!

The buildup to Christmas is so fun. We brought out our stockings today after putting up our advent wreath and Jesse tree on Sunday, and we read his story to the girls this morning before they dug into their stockings. Pictures to follow later...the girls are having a great time today!

3 comments:

Kelle said...

We just put our shoes out for St. Nicholas like the old story, you do the stocking instead? Does that mean you don't do Santa also on Christmas Day? In Germany with the Catholic population so high, almost no one does Santa on Christmas day at all. I always just assumed we would do both. Growing up Protestant, we sometimes have trouble giving up our family traditions surrounding Christmas.

I would love to see pictures of your decorations for advent!

Kelle

Kristen said...

Kelle,

We do stockings because we read the story about how he helped the poor man with three daughters by leaving gold in their stockings drying by the fireplace...I linked to the story in the blog. I actually don't know the shoe story! And no, we don't do Santa on Christmas day...just St. Nicholas on the feast. We think it distracts too much from Jesus and his birth. It is difficult to give up traditions we grew up with, but it is so wonderful to hear our children talk with excitement about Jesus' birthday instead of Santa coming and what he will bring them! I just picture Jesus smiling up in Heaven when he hears them. :-)

Kelle said...

The way I heard the story is that the bag landed in one of the girls’ shoes when it was tossed in the window. Here is the story with that added if you're interested
http://womentodaymagazine.com/christmas/stnick.html

I definitely agree that it is harder to keep the focus on Jesus with Santa. Brian and I have been discussing this lately. I was just a little worried that it was too late with Hannah being old enough to remember now.