Happy Feast Day of Saint Nicholas! 2015 Edition

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We celebrated the feast day of Saint Nicholas which is on Dec. 6 each year.  The Advent season is full of great feast days of beloved saints and Saint Nicholas is a popular one for sure, though many may not realize that "Santa Claus' " name came from this real bishop of Myra.

For a great online resource about Saint Nicholas, be sure to visit Saint Nicholas Center.  It is full of stories, games, activities, and crafts all about Saint Nicholas.  

Here are some ways we celebrated this fun feast day...

We hung our Advent ornament of St. Nicholas on our Advent tree.

These were fun cookies to make.  I saw the idea on my Facebook newsfeed and decided to try them out.  They didn't last long in our house though!

This year my children colored this beautiful free Saint Nicholas coloring page from Audrey Eclectic.

 

photo credit: Audrey Eclectic 

It's a tradition that on the eve of Dec. 6, families put out their shoes in hopes that St. Nicholas will fill their shoes with treats.  Our children always find wrapped gold chocolate coins to represent the gold that Saint Nicholas left in secret to 3 sisters who couldn't get married because they didn't have enough money for their dowries.  Our children also find candy canes, clementines and new Christmas books.

The Saint Nicholas peg doll was painted by Suzanne for our Saint peg doll swap.

This year we added Our Lady of Guadalupe, Bambinelli Sunday and Gingerbread Friends to our collection.  We already had Saint Nicholas, The Real Story of the Christmas Legend from last year, but I like to set it out each year to read it again.

We also set out the Playmobil Saint Nicholas and Angel with our Shining Light Saint Nicholas Doll.
This year Saint Nicholas brought a Saint Nicholas Tiny Saint to add to our Tiny Saints collection.  My children love clipping these cute Saints to their bags and necklaces.

Our Wandering Wisemen and Camel decided to stop in and check out the Saint Nicholas treats.  The Wisemen have been traveling through our house Bethlehem and they will eventually find Baby Jesus on the Epiphany.

I caught our 8 year old reading Gingerbread Friends to her little sister.

Saint Nicholas' feast day on Dec. 6th is the beginning of many feast days this week.

Here our more Advent feast days coming up that we hope to celebrate again this year:

Dec. 8 - Advent Feast Days: Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception 2014
Dec. 9 - Advent Feast Days: Saint Juan Diego
Dec. 12 - Advent Feast Days: Our Lady of Guadalupe
Dec. 13 - Advent Feast Days: St. Lucy

Have a blessed week during this second week of Advent!