 can find St. Nicholas Catholic gifts here. You can also include candy canes which symbolize a shepherd’s staff, and even have a little fun by re-shaping them into a bishop’s crosier (see below).
Another cute.
Yes... St. Nicholas was known to ride a donkey laden with gifts for children before he graduated to flying reindeer!
St. Therese of Lisieux describes this tradition in her home in France as a small child and recounts how much she loved it. However, for her family this happened not on St. Nicholas
St. Nicholas’ feast day traditions vary widely from country to country, but they all carry the same theme of small gifts and treats left in either shoes or stockings.
Continuing this Advent tradition in your own home is a great way to teach your children to venerate the saints and to deepen their knowledge of and love for the Christian faith.
Have fun reading about the variety of some of these stories here as families share their own St. Nicholas day traditions past and present.
BLESSING OF THE CANDY CANES ON ST. NICHOLAS DAY
Another tradition that’s becoming fun to do with small children is the St. Nicholas Day Blessing of the Candy Canes. The prayer below is a beautiful reflection of Catholic faith.
St. Nicholas Day Candy Cane Blessing Prayer.
This article was originally published in December 2012 and updated in 2015. ©2012-2015 The Catholic Company.
Being of Slovenian descent – we always had this tradition growing up. December 6th was the feast of St. Nicholas – we called him MiklavÅlavÅlavÅ¾ was gone – and we told him all about what happened. It’s funny how he was never in the house at time. 😉
Great memories and a wonderful tradition! Thanks Mom and Dad!
Thank you for promoting the beautiful traditions and saints of our Catholic Faith. I love to share your posts on my site. God bless.
Then we would promise to be good and say a prayer and beg MiklavÅ¾ to come back. Weâ€™d hear footsteps at the front door and chains in the distance. Weâ€™d wait a few minutes until my mom looked out the window to make sure the coast was clear â€“ then weâ€™d open the door and see our shoes FULL of chocolates and candy and sometimes some coins. My Dad always walked into the house after MiklavÅ¾ was gone â€“ and we told him all about what happened. Itâ€™s funny how he was never in the house at time. 😉
Great memories and a wonderful tradition! Thanks Mom and Dad!New observational technologies are greatly complicating oceanographic research, even as they present tantalizing opportunities. Because they are less expensive and more networked than ship-based measurements, remotely operated vehicles like undersea drones and satellites can provide an unprecedented amount of data while democratizing the research process. However, these new tools also challenge existing maritime codes such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. During the 2015-2016 academic year, Geography, Environment and Society PhD candidate Jessica Lehman was awarded a Consortium Research Grant to explore how these new technologies have become entangled in questions of territory, information-sharing, and politics. Lehman notes, “Concerns about global environmental crises such as climate change push scientists to collect more data and make it freely available online, but nations are concerned that these data may compromise their sovereignty, from military operations to fisheries development. To address these concerns, we can’t make assumptions about relationships between security and new technologies; we have to follow them into the world and see what they are actually doing.” Her Consortium-funded research informed her dissertation, which evaluated the interfaces between geopolitics and international oceanographic science. Lehman is currently an AW Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; to learn more about her research, click here.The Montenegrin daily Vijesti reported on August 26, 1999, that the bodies of thirty-six Roma had been found in the Adriatic Sea by the Montenegrin Coast Guard. The Roma were refugees from Kosovo who were being smuggled into Italy when their ship sank on August 20. Sixty-nine Roma from the same ship were rescued by the crew of a Bar-Bari ferry on August 20, according to the same source. The British Independent of August 27 claimed that "more than forty" corpses had been discovered and that sixty more passengers of the same ship were believed dead. According to The Independent, Italian police detained two men in connection with the drowning, J.N. from the Montenegrin port of Kotor and R.B. from the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica on August 26, while six other suspects from Montenegro and Serbia were still at large.
Kosovo and Montenegro told the ERRC that smugglers charge between 1500 to 3000 German marks (approximately 770-1540 euros) per person. The Italian weekly newspaper Panorama wrote on July 22 that the Italian consulate in Bar, Montenegro had refused as many as 3000 Romani applicants. Roma reportedly make the illegal crossing in very poor conditions. Il Manifesto reported on August 12, that a 75-year-old Romani woman had died as a result of a crossing that lasted for more than three days. Another five Roma from the same ship were admitted to hospital in Brindisi.
The war in Kosovo has aggravated a long-standing problem in Italy: the ill-treatment of foreigners, especially Roma from Eastern Europe (See "Advocacy", Roma Rights 1/99; "Snapshots from around Europe", Roma Rights, 2/99). When picked up by the Italian authorities, the Roma are often provided with a residence permit valid for a short period of time. Reportedly, the most common permit issued to Kosovo refugees allows them to stay until December 31, 1999. Refugees are then housed in authorised or improvised camps in the Puglia region, where most of the Romani refugees usually land. These are at present overcrowded and have poor sanitary facilities. In an attempt to respond to the new crisis, authorities have relocated Roma to camps in Crotone, in the Calabria region, as well as to Comiso, the former NATO base in Sicily. In addition, Roma have been allowed to leave the camps, often resulting in their moving north to long-established illegal settlements in northern Italy.
During a fact-finding mission to camps in northern Italy, the ERRC found that there was also an officially sanctioned counter-flow of Roma from camps in the North to camps in the South. For example, at the end of July 1999, the local authorities of Bergamo in northern Italy ordered that eighty Kosovo Roma be moved to the camp in Crotone, southeastern Italy, although the camp in Crotone is notorious for being unsanitary and dangerous. Both Kosovo Roma with temporary residence permits and Roma without any documents were ordered to move to Crotone. Effectively only forty of the eighty persons listed - mostly women and children - arrived in Crotone. The whereabouts of the rest were not known to the ERRC at the time of publication.
On July 20, 1999, the international and domestic press reported that Italian authorities intended to cease regarding persons fleeing Yugoslavia as refugees, but would instead treat them as illegal immigrants. According to reports by the Associated Press from July 20, the Italian Interior Ministry intended to regard the issue as one of human trafficking rather than the flight of persons persecuted on ethnic grounds. Ministry spokesperson Daniela Pugliese reportedly stated that the Ministry did not accept that the lives of Roma are at risk in Kosovo.
On August 4, 1999, the ERRC sent a letter of concern to Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, calling his attention to the issue of Romani refugees from Kosovo in Italy, urging that Roma who have fled Kosovo and arrived in Italy be provided international protection in Italy. The full text of that letter is available on the ERRC internet homepage at: www.errc.org. Copies of the letter were also sent to the Italian Foreign and Interior Ministers. To date, the ERRC has received no reply from Prime Minister D'Alema's office.
Meanwhile, Roma from Kosovo who have fled to Macedonia may soon no longer be welcome in that country. The Skopje daily Nova Makedonija reported on August 17 that after September 30, 1999, refugees from Kosovo would lose their legal status in Macedonia. The paper quoted Mr Pavle Trajanov, the Macedonian Minister of Interior, as saying that those refugees who decide to remain in Macedonia after September 30 would no longer be eligible for humanitarian assistance. The only exceptions, according to Mr Trajanov, would be cases in which persons have no place to return to in Kosovo. These would be assisted in transfer to third countries or would be allowed to remain in Macedonia. Such cases would be identified in co-operation with international humanitarian organisations operating in Macedonia, Mr Trajanov said. The ERRC sent a letter to Minister Trajanov on August 31, appealing to his office to reaffirm its commitment to abiding by international law norms to providing refugees safe haven. The text of that letter is on the ERRC internet homepage at: www.errc.org. As of August 26, Macedonia was providing refuge to around 10,000 Romani refugees from Kosovo, according to various non-governmental sources. On August 25, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that 408 Roma from the Kosovo town of Gnjilane had entered Macedonia during the previous week.
On August 13, 1029 Roman