St Nicholas Day Traditions
Feast Day Celebrated December 6
As an adult convert to Orthodoxy, I didn’t grow up celebrating St Nicholas Day. In fact, as Protestants growing up, we embraced the secular “Santa” narrative as a major part of our Christmas day traditions. When I became a parent, I wrestled with the idea of passing on the “Santa” tradition to my kids, worried that it would be a distraction from the real meaning behind Christmas, but also fearing I would be missing out on the * magical * Christmas that is so often oversold. As a new Orthodox Christian, I was delighted to learn that there was a reasonable alternative to the secular “Santa” story…. aka the OG Santa! Ever since learning about the real Saint Nick, we have joyfully embraced him in our home as a cherish feast day which are anchored with some special family traditions!
If you’re new to St Nicholas Day, I’m honored I get to share him with you! This is a super fun feast day to celebrate and is a great way to bring the life of the Church into your homes! In the Orthodox Church, we celebrate Saints on their feast day, and St Nicholas’ feast day is December 6th. If you’re new to celebrating feast days as a family, this one is a great one to start with! I love seeing my children’s eyes light up when they discover the connections between the Saint Nicholas Bishop of Myra and our present-day Santa Claus. Making this connection has provided so many opportunities to talk about saints and their roles in our lives.
In this blog you’ll find some simple and easy ideas to celebrate the the Feast of St Nicholas - emphasis on easy! Activity suggestions, book recommendations, and additional information so you can share his story so together you can grow to love him even more!
Watch our video on St Nicholas Day on YouTube with Patristic Nectar Kids
Scroll down for more suggestions on how we celebrate this feast as a family!
Our approach to “Santa”
We personally have never done “Santa” in our house, but of course living in the world my kids are very familiar with him. He’s in practically every Christmas movie, song and window display! Not to mention many adults in their life who quiz them about “what will Santa be bringing you this year?” Living not of this world doesn’t mean we don’t also live * in * the world. So here is how we handle it in our home!
We really emphasis St Nicholas Day! My children are very familiar with St Nicholas mostly because of all of the special feast day traditions (December 6)! More on those later in this post. If you don’t know about the real St Nick, read about his life. There are a number of Children’s books that tell the many stories of his life. Get familiar with him! I tell my kids who the real “Santa” is. I explain it to them by saying “Saint Nicholas is a real person, and over time his story became a fictional character known as Santa (translation: saint)- who brings presents to kids in secret.” We talk about how St Nicholas gave in secret to the young maidens too poor to get married using his inheritance. We don’t avoid him, but we just talk about the connections, and I tend to downplay the fictional story and emphasize that St Nicholas is a real person and he is the patron saint of Children and he can help us whenever we need him, so we should ask for his prayers!
You can read more about his life in this blogpost on St Nicholas Day
Here are some ways to celebrate St Nicholas Day:
Set out the Shoes the Night Before!
One of the most common traditions to celebrate St Nicholas Day is on the eve before the feast (December 5th), children lay out their shoes in hopes that St Nicholas will pay them a visit. On December 6th, children will awake to find that St Nicholas has come and secretly left chocolate gold coins for them! The giving of a small gift and oranges are sometimes associated with this feast day too! This is a cherished tradition, and one that my children are most excited about! It’s about the only day they get to wake up and eat candy before breakfast. You can read all about the variations of how this feast is celebrated throughout the world here.
I prepare my children for the feast the evening before by reading the story of St Nicholas and the gold coins before they go to sleep on December 5th (the day before St Nicholas Day). We talk about how he helped the poor in secret because he loved God and he didn’t want others to know it was him who was delivering the coins. We also talk about the roles of saints in our lives, how we can ask them to help us and pray for us. My kids then set out their shoes before bed. While they sleep, I set up our piano with a St Nicholas feast day scene: I put out our icon of St Nicholas, our St Nicholas books, a St Nicholas prayer print from Emilia’s Post, chocolate gold coins from Paidea Classics, and their small gifts (Snuggly Dolls from Draw Near Designs).
Christmas PJs
In addition to gold coins and oranges, I give my kids their Christmas Pajamas for the season (I am a sucker for matching family pjs), so those are included in their gifts as well! They awake in the morning to find their festive jammies and darted to the piano to see if St Nicholas paid us a visit, and sure enough he had. They were so delighted to find all the new treats and gifts and couldn’t wait to read the stories about St Nicholas again. Watching their eyes light up as these stories come alive before them and making these connection in a fun way made all the effort worth it. You can likely see from their expressions that this will be a fond memory from their childhood and it’s a feast they look forward to year after year.
Giving in Secret
A few years ago, we started our own family tradition of creating St Nicholas Day bags to drop off secretly on their neighbors porch on St Nicholas day. It’s a cherished tradition! After reading the story of St Nicholas and the 9 Gold Coins, we learn from this famous St Nicholas story that it is good to give in secret! I remind them of Jesus’s words in the Gospel of Matthew 6:1-4:
“Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
It was actually my kids idea to create gift bags for the neighbors using their extra bounty. We gathered up some extra gold coins, and oranges, and put them in a bag. Of course, my heart is always for evangelism opportunities, so I created little gift tags to print up and attach so our neighbors can learn more about St Nicholas day! I created a bundle for families like yours to carry on this tradition in your own communities, and included a pretty print out to learn about other St Nicholas Day Traditions!
Drop off Logistics
Once we gather the supplies in bags and tie on a St Nicholas tag, I task each child to be St Nicholas and drop off their designated coins. Each time we deliver the bags, I always coach them “Remember, try not to get caught, just like St Nicholas!” One year our neighbors sent us a friendly text “Thanks for the treats!” and to our disappointment we were caught, but it was all in good fun! Now we have expanded our operation to not only our immediate neighbors, but some other friends we drive and drop them off to. Again, it has become a cherished tradition in our house for St Nicholas day!
Attend the Divine Services
The best way to celebrate this feast is by attending a Divine Liturgy (as you are able). Our parish does a special St Nicholas Liturgy during the week and usually we have a special in person St Nicholas visit! The children take off their shoes and leave them by the Christmas tree during the Liturgy and after communion, they find that their shoes are filled with treats! Such a sweet cherished tradition as a community!
Feast Day Table
If you’ve followed my blog for anytime at all, you know I love celebrating the feasts! Our homeschool table (and piano) have become a central part of our table decor for each feast! I usually will display our St Nicholas books, St Nicholas Icon (from Art by Chemevi), St Nicholas prayer print from Emilia’s Post, and add some Christmasy decorations as well. There is something so cozy and inviting to display books in this way so if you have any cookbook stands to use or some sort of shelf or table to create, it can assist in elevating the space for this feast in our homes!
Orthodox Book Recommendations
One of my favorite ways to share about a feast day with my kids is through story books. Thankfully there are a number of great options available for St Nicholas. You can also find the story of his life online and print it (click here). I wanted to highlight a few books we own and love for St Nicholas Day:
Saint Nicholas & the Nine Gold Coins by Jim Forest
This is probably my favorite book to share on St Nicholas day. It is published by SVS Press and tells the infamous tale of St Nicholas and the story behind the gold coins. As a young man, Nicholas hears about the misfortune of a family with 3 daughters who are too poor for a dowry order to get married. Nicholas secretly gives bags of coins from his own inheritance on 3 separate occasions by throwing bags of gold coins through an open window in order to save the young girls from any misfortune. The illustrations in this book are brilliant and resemble Byzantine iconography and my children love making the connection between the gold coins they receive on St Nicholas Day and the story of the 9 gold coins.
You can find it at SVS Press
The Miracle of Saint Nicholas by Gloria Whelan
We love the story of The Miracle of Saint Nicholas from Ancient Faith Bookstore. This is another favorite story and we read it year after year! It’s not about the life of St Nicholas, it’s actually about the shut down of churches in Russia in the 20th Century and through the piety of a young boy and the miracle of St Nicholas, the church is opened up and filled to the brim on Christmas morning. I can’t read it without tearing up at the end. I highly recommend this book as it is an endearing story of a child’s faith and the miracle workings of the Saints in our lives. It’s also the perfect Christmas book!
You can find it at Ancient Faith Bookstore
Saint Nicholas by Potamitis Publishing
This pocket size book tells the story of St Nicholas and the gold coins as well, and is the perfect size to throw into a church bag or stocking stuffer. In fact, this book came in a gift set from Paidea Classics along with a bag of chocolate gold coins, which was a fun package for the girls to open along with their St Nicholas gifts!
You can find the book gift set at Paidea Classics along with chocolate gold coins
St Nicholas Day Tree
This will be our first year trying this tradition, but I have heard from others that they have a tradition of putting up their Christmas tree on (or around) St Nicholas day! Normally I love putting up my tree right after Thanksgiving, but this year with Thanksgiving happening so late, I am going to prolong putting up the tree until St Nicholas day! I’ll let you know how it goes!
St Nicholas Day Cookies and Treats
We personally do not make cookies on St Nicholas day, but our Church bakers do! After the Divine Liturgy, our feast day bakers make yummy traditional St Nicholas Day cookies! There are some ideas on Pinterest for St Nicholas cookies and treats that would be fun to make as a family, so linking those here as well:
Check out my Amazon Storefront for St Nicholas Day
You may also enjoy:
Final Thoughts
My hope is to provide you with many ideas and ways to participate in this special feast day, finding what works best for your family. This is just what our family does, but that is not the standard. Every home is a little church and will create their own little “t” traditions! However, keeping our focus on prayer and attending services as we live the life of the church is what’s most important. Everything else is icing on the cake.
Be sure to follow along on Instagram for more Feast Day resources and Nativity activities! I pray you have a joyous and fruitful Nativity!
Kh Destinie