St. Nicholas Day

In the spirit of taking Santa out of Christmas, we have been doing our stockings on St. Nicholas day for the last several years. I have read, and I am hoping, that by spreading out the season and gift giving in small doses from St. Nicholas Day through Epiphany that children won't get as crazy with the anticipation and subsequent let down at Christmas. This year I included the littlest W in making the cookies that we left out for St. Nicholas. I learned though that it is never a good idea to make a two year old walk a way from a plate of cookies. The next morning he came down stairs and right to the plate and started eating the cookie with a bite out of it that we had St. Nicholas leave behind. We also left out a little Santa hat that Grandma W. sent
Here are a few St. Nicholas things that I have collected over the years. They aren't all authentic St. Nicholas the bishop of Myrna images, that is hard to come by. The Father Christmas-y statue I got as a sweet 16 gift from my aunt and the two icons we got on our trip to Turkey, where he was born and lived.
In keeping with the legend of St. Nicholas throwing the bags of gold coins in the window to save three girls from a life of prostitution, I get gold foil wrapped chocolate coins from See's candy. For Mr. W I usually get a bottle or two of Samichlaus Bier which is a beer that is brewed only on St. Nicholas Day at a monestary in Austria.
We had a birthday party to attend later in the day so we weren't able to make a fire and enjoy our living room. But Mr. W did make us a nice breakfast of blueberry waffles. Since today was a special feast day I decided to bring out the Christmas china for today.