Saint Nicholas

Nikolaustag 2025

Today is one of my favorite days of the entire Christmas season…Nikolaustag!

We tend to celebrate this holiday in a German way, so of course our main activity today was…Christmas on The Hill?

Yes, some of us spent the afternoon in the Italian neighborhood of St. Louis to attend a fun local event. It wasn’t our normal Nikolaustag, but it was fun to switch things up a bit! And we still had our traditional dinner of chicken Döner Kebab this evening:

This year’s gingerbread dessert was a tiramisu:

And we had our traditional wassail while decorating the tree (I didn’t get a picture of the drink, but I did get a shot of one of this year’s ornaments…the theme was Pokémon). I realized this year that the Fab Five fall into two camps about decorating the tree…three of them want to hang their personal ornaments near each other in a collection, and two of them want to scatter their personal ornaments all throughout the tree. These two methods of decorating are pretty incompatible when five people are trying to hang ornaments, and that results in some hilarious conversations!

It wasn’t quite our regular Nikolaustag, especially since Bunny had to work today, and Turkey was at school taking a scary national math exam, but it was fun!

Nikolaustag 2024

We’re a day late, but today we celebrated Nikolaustag! We wanted to wait until Bunny was home from college, which just happened to be today. We did all of our favorite Nikolaustag things, starting with stockings and decorating the tree. In addition to the children’s yearly ornaments, I also added two new ornaments…a Christmas Tree Cake that Ryan surprised me with this morning, and Hallmark’s rendition of “It’s a Small World.”

We always have wassail while we decorate:

And for dinner, we had our traditional meal of döner kebab:

I like to make a gingerbread dessert for Nikolaustag…this year, it was gingerbread whoopie pies:

This is one of my favorite days of the year, and between Bunny being home and the traditions, it feels like Christmastime is really here!

Nikolaustag

Happy Nikolaustag!

We started the day as we start every St. Nick’s Day…with stockings. The children always receive a new ornament, and this year, the ornaments came from our trip to Disney World. I had such a fun time picking them out at Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe the Magic Kingdom’s Liberty Square back in June!

We always decorate the tree on December 6th…in addition to our Mickey Ears ornaments (and the final installation of the “12 Days of Christmas”), we also added an ornament made from marble from the steps of the US Capitol that we picked up when we toured the building over the summer:

For dinner, as I did last year, I made Döner Kebab. One more year, and it will be a full-fledged tradition!

For dessert, I stuck with the Disney theme and made Mini Gingerbread Bundt Cakes with Orange-Vanilla Sauce from a recipe on the Disney Parks Blog:

We always have wassail on Nikolaustag, too:

Now I feel like the Christmas season has really begun!

A New Tradition for Nikolaustag?

I think we may have started a new tradition for Nikolaustag!

A few weeks ago, I tried making a recipe from Döner Kebab from Dirndl Kitchen. I’ve been looking for more recipes that celebrate our German heritage, and this particular one stood out to me because it has some things in common with shawarma, which we all love. The funny thing about Döner Kebab, though, is that while it is extremely popular in Germany as a fast food, its roots are in Turkey. And then it struck me how much like St. Nicholas that is. He lived and worked in what is modern-day Turkey, but his commemoration date, and particularly his persona as St. Nick, giver of presents, is popular especially in Germany. So I decided that even though it’s a decent amount of work to make homemade Pide, garlic sauce, pickled cabbage, and marinated chicken all on a busy Monday, it would be the perfect meal for Nikolaustag. And it was! It’s already become a family-favorite meal, but I think the connection to where Nicholas of Myra actually lived, and where he is celebrated, especially as connected to our family’s heritage, makes it an extra-special Advent meal, and I hope it becomes a regular part of our St. Nick’s Day traditions!

A Markel Family St. Nicholas Day

Time for another installment of “A Markel Family Holiday!” St. Nicholas Day has always been one of favorite days in Advent, so I thought I’d share what we do to make it special.

The day always begins with stockings. We keep it simple…chocolate coins, oranges, and a new ornament for each child to hang on the tree. They’ve each received an ornament every year since their births, so they will have a nice collection to start their own trees when they have homes of their own someday!

We always read Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend from CPH. It’s a fantastic book!

And of course we do our Jesse Tree reading for the day. This year, the commemoration for St. Nicholas fell on the day we read about Jacob:

In the afternoon, we decorate the tree. I put it up and hung the lights almost a month ago, but we always wait for St. Nicholas Day for the addition of the ornaments.

We enjoy hot wassail while we decorate:

Some years, I make a special dinner. This year, we tried a Turkish fish stew and flat bread, to honor the area of the world from which St. Nicholas comes.

And of course we have evening prayers by the light of the Advent wreath.

I really love this holiday, and the special ways we celebrate it!

Chickadee Thursday

The children can count on getting three things in their stockings on Saint Nicholas Day every year…an orange, chocolate coins, and a new ornament to add to their collection. This year, I picked up ornaments from Germany when we visited the Christkindlmarket in Naperville, and Chickadee was very excited to hang her new snowman ornament on the tree this morning!

Advent with Little Luther

A reformer, a bishop, and an angel gather under a Jesse Tree…sounds like the beginning of a very strange Advent joke…

We’ve had some fun with Little Luther this year, and I figured Advent should be no different:

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I got him a few seasonally appropriate Playmobil friends (I have to imagine Luther would have enjoyed spending time with a heretic-slapper!), and they’re all hanging out under our Jesse Tree. Just a little Lutheran fun in our Advent season!

A French Colonial Christmas

Today, after celebrating Christmas in Italy on The Hill, we traveled to the Jarrot Mansion in Cahokia to celebrate a French colonial Christmas. The house was decorated in a simple, but beautiful style:

There was a musician playing the hammered dulcimer, which really added to the festive spirit!

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And, instead of a typical American Santa, they had Saint Nicholas, also the precursor to the French Père Noël, visiting with people.

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This was a unique, and still very St. Louis, way to celebrate Christmas!

December 6–Nicholas of Myra, Pastor

From the LCMS website:

Of the many saints commemorated by the Christian Church, Nicholas (d. A.D. 342) is one of the best known. Very little is known historically of him, although there was a church of Saint Nicholas in Constantinople as early as the sixth century. Research has affirmed that there was a bishop by the name of Nicholas in the city of Myra in Lycia (part of Turkey today) in the fourth century. From that coastal location, legends about Nicholas have traveled throughout time and space. He is associated with charitable giving in many countries around the world and is portrayed as the rescuer of sailors, the protector of children, and the friend of people in distress or need. In commemoration of “Sinte Klaas” (Dutch for Saint Nicholas, in English “Santa Claus”), December 6 is a day for giving and receiving gifts in many parts of Europe.