Friday, December 5, 2008

Saint Nicholas Day

Tomorrow, December 6 is Saint Nicholas day in our calendar and I must confess to having portrayed the old gentleman on many occasions. A dear friend in Dallas is a costume designer and very kindly created a beautiful Saint Nicholas cope and miter for me over a dozen years ago and I put it to good use every year.

What I really like to do is appear in church as if a visiting bishop and tell the children just who I (St Nicholas) am, and how I came to be known in this country as Santa Claus. It is a good story and as I explain about Santa I remove the cope and switch to a Santa hat. It makes a nice connection from the historical Bishop Nicholas to the now rather secular Santa Claus. The kids love it because I end up giving them candy.

1 comments:

Anonymous said... [Reply to comment]

My word you do look smart! I knew we rotund people were put on earth for a reason - we're a jolly bunch - with a festive Ho, Ho, Ho
made to tell stories that children can believe. You have such a head start on we females at this time of year - all I could aspire to is a red-cheeked Grandmother-type with apron barely capable of fastening but still managing to carry the overstuffed turkey to the table. There my imagination fails me as I'm going to a snazzy restaurant with my family this year and let others do the preparation and washing up.

Anne