Our Family’s St. Nicholas Day Traditions

I don’t know if it’s possible to be in a Christian group on Facebook without the argument of Santa coming up every single year. It usually starts up right as the arguments over Halloween end. I feel like this a Christmas tradition that has been debated among Christians for a very long time.

Today I’m going to tell you where our family lands on this topic and how we’ve begun celebrating St. Nicholas Day at our home.

A Little Bit of History

No, no. I am not talking about the history of Christmas or St. Nicholas Day. If you want more info about that, feel free to Google it. I’m going to share some of my own personal history.

I grew up in a family where my father loved incorporating Santa Claus into our Christmas celebrations but my mother was not a Santa fan. When my parents separated (and later divorced) when I was 6, my mother told us that Santa wasn’t real. I was so young at the time that I don’t remember much of that conversation. I think my older siblings were old enough that they had started to question the validity of Santa or knew the truth already.

What I do remember is growing up and feeling like I missed out on the whole “Santa experience”. My friends at school would talk excitedly of Santa, before and after Christmas. (I knew not to spoil the secret.) It felt like it would have been so fun.

I remember watching Miracle on 34th Street (the classic 1947 version) and wishing maybe that whole scenario would happen in my life.

And, I think my younger sister always wished we had Santa too growing up. We didn’t really “do” stockings either. We had some old ones in one of our Christmas tubs though and I can remember her setting hers out one Christmas hoping she’d wake up to it filled by Santa.

(Mom, if you’re reading this, it’s really okay. I’m fine now with having not “done Santa” as a kid.)

When Orin and I started having children, he didn’t really care either way if we incorporated Santa or not. It was never a big deal in his family growing up either. I remember saying I wanted our children to have that “magical” experience though.

And so, for many years, we had Santa here. It was great and fun! My kids seemed to really enjoy it and, when they started to reach a point where it seemed like they might be questioning it, I would sit them down and have a conversation with them about the truth of Santa.

We’d talk about how there really was a man, St. Nicholas, who gave gifts in secret. And so, anyone could honor his memory by being “Santa” themselves and giving gifts in secret. Then they were invited to help Orin and me that year and in the future to prep Santa gifts for their siblings.

It was so sweet and precious to see my children SO excited to give secretly to their siblings. None of them were upset with us for playing Santa, and despite the warnings I had heard from other Christians, none of them questioned the validity of Jesus Christ because of it.

How and Why We Shifted Santa to St. Nicholas Day

For the most part, Santa was going well for our family but I had grown concerned over the years that too much focus was going to him instead of celebrating Jesus’ birth.

We had already shifted to Santa just filling stockings and bringing one small gift each year.

It also felt like everything was leading up to this one morning – so much excitement and intensity – and then it was just over. I felt sad many Christmas afternoons. We were always so so busy leading up to Christmas and then bam, it was just over nearly as soon as it felt like it started.

As I was wrestling with all of that, I also began to learn more about St. Nicholas Day and the traditional church calendar.

Advent is celebrated for the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day. St. Nicholas Day is on December 6th. Did you know that the 12 Days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day? They end with Epiphany (or 3 Kings Day).

Every year Orin and I said how sad we were about how fast the holiday season would go. I started feeling like we were doing Christmas all wrong. We were rushing through Advent just to get to Christmas, only to have it all end abruptly there.

We started talking about what we could do to really make the entire season better for our family, full of more fun memories and meaningful family time together.

We decided we would start celebrating the entire Advent season (including St. Nicholas Day) through Epiphany.

Talking to the Kids about St. Nicholas Day

First we had to have a talk with our older kids who already knew Sant wasn’t real. We explained we were moving Santa to another day.

At first they were a little sad. As I mentioned, they love being Santa to their younger siblings. However, I explained to them that they would still be able to help with St. Nicholas Day plus we would find ways to include all of the kids with filling the stockings on Christmas Eve.

For the younger kids, we decided to send them a letter from Santa to let them know he would be coming from now on on December 6th. He also let them know that they should leave a pair of their shoes by their front door to be filled with treats.

Then we told the kids that since Santa was no longer going to fill their Christmas stockings, each of us would draw names out of a hat and fill each other’s stockings. They loved that idea!

St. Nicholas Day Traditions

I researched traditional St.Nicholas Day traditions and combined them with some of our own Santa traditions.

Traditionally, two things parents would leave in their children’s shoes for St. Nicholas Day are chocolate coins and oranges, so that’s what we decided to do.

We also wanted to carry on our tradition of Santa bringing each of the kids a new Christmas ornament for our tree. Our thought is that by the time our children move out of our home, they will have at least 18 ornaments of their own to take with them for their first Christmas tree.

How It Went Celebrating Our First St. Nicholas Day

It. Went. Great! We let our older kids help choose ornaments for their siblings and everyone had a great morning!

I hadn’t made other plans for the day last year but this year I plan to do even more for our St. Nicholas Day celebrations, with a special breakfast and dinner too.

How Christmas Without Santa Went

Christmas was amazing and, for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t feel sad when all of the gifts were opened. We’d already been celebrating for weeks and we had more celebrating to come.

Epiphany

We also celebrated Epiphany with 2 kids for each child plus a 3rd gift for everyone. (Three gifts to symbolize the 3 wise men’s gifts). It was so much fun and, by that point, I was more than ready to take our tree down and get back to our regular lives.

This Year’s St. Nicholas Day Ornaments

Our Christmas ornaments are a big part of our Christmas celebrations, even more now that we’ve switched to celebrating St. Nicholas Day. The ornament is the “big gift” in their shoes. It’s special and our kids then run to attach it to our tree. The ornaments are each different, unique for each child.

We want them to be heirloom-quality so our children will have them to cherish for years to come, so this year we got them all from Old World Christmas. Read more about them and why we chose the ones we did for each child HERE.

100% Recommend Extending Your Christmas Season & Celebrating St. Nicholas Day!

This past year was the best Christmas we’ve had! Finally, Christmas didn’t feel like it went by too fast. Christmas day ended and we continued to celebrate, watching Christmas movies, singing Christmas hymns, eating Christmas cookies.

We made the memories, we had the fun and the “magic” of Santa, my kids experienced the joy of giving, and most importantly, we celebrated Christ’s birth as a family.