St. Nick

Last year A. was just starting to "get" Christmas.  She knew it was a special time of year and was excited on Christmas morning.  This year, she is into it.  But, I am happy to say that she does realize that it is Jesus's birthday and her favorite Christmas thing to do is use her nativity to act out the story while I read the Christmas Story.  Last year was also our first year that we had a St. Nick's Day party.  To me, this romantic idea will let the kids know that Santa is around at Christmas time because he celebrated Jesus by giving gifts to those in need.  Over the years, he has made it his mission to give to everyone and spread God's love, just like we should.

Well, like I said, its somewhat a romantic idea for a kid to comprehend.  I spent time researching on www.stnicholascenter.org and found an abundance of traditions from different countries.  So, here was my vision of the party on Dec 6. 
1. Our friends down the street would come over and we would make "letter" cookies -- a German st. Nicholas tradition
2. We would eat a pork chop recipe that I alwo found on that website and talk about how it was food that the real st.Nicholas used to eat
3. We would read a book about the real Santa (I recommend Saint Nicholas by Julie Stiegemeyer because the rest are too old for the preschoolers)
4. We would play a game of pass the parcel aka hot potato and the winner would share the gift just like St. Nicholas would.

Here is how the night went...
1. Only one of the kiddos was interested in baking with me, the rest wanted to play with toys that we have out year round.

2. I did read the story but with about a billion "A. are you listening" throughout because she was so happy to have all of her friends that she couldn't listen (she has since read it about 13 times and I think gets the point)
3. Only A. would eat the food as it wasn't exactly kid friendly.  Though the other parents and I enjoyed it
4. We never played the game so we played it after the party.  After an obviously rigged game where A. was really confused as to why you did not want to keep the present in your lap, she reluctantly gave us each some disgusting candy that I did eat to rove a point though lets put it on the record that tootsie rolls and dots are disgusting.

So, overall, I think they all had a good time playing with their friends.  We'll keep trying on the love one another.