St Nicholas and everything else

  

We started a new tradition this week. I invited my friend Liz and her kids around after school on Tuesday and we celebrated St Nicholas Day. We made this cake, I printed out some colour-in pages from here, and I got a picture book from the library called "Saint Nicholas: The story of the real Santa Claus" by Mary Joslin and read it to the kids. We even tucked a small present into their shoes when they weren't looking. "Saint Nicholas has come! Saint Nicholas has come!" they yelled at the top of their voices when they found the gifts.

I didn't know very much about Saint Nicholas myself until this week. I didn't know the story about the gold coins being thrown down the chimney to the family in need, and the coins landing in the shoes and stockings that were drying by the fire. I didn't know that in Holland, where the children all put their shoes out ready for a present to be delivered by St Nick on the night of the fifth, the Dutch word for Saint Nicholas is "Sinter Klaas." It's not that I didn't know all of this... in a vague sort of way... but I'd never actually put it all together.

So it made me very happy to have another story to layer over the Santa story and the piped christmas music. Especially this week, when Greer had a lovely carol singing morning at school, accompanied by flashing lights, reindeer, a gingerbread house, no sign of a manger anywhere, and no "real" christmas carols.  And especially when this is the time I start to get a bit grumpy and overwhelmed by all the money and activity that the Christmas season seems to require.

But I'm not here to complain. The fact of the matter is that this week was actually very complicated, for all sorts of reasons. As I wrote to you last time, I am trying to achieve a kind of "zen" purposefulness about our Christmas preparations. But I keep being thwarted. I keep crying for children without families, and getting emails from World Vision in my inbox warning me in no uncertain terms that a "hunger crisis is looming" in West Africa.

And so what do I do? I buy more Christmas decorations.