Today as you know is December 6th, also known as St. Nicholas Day. We all know of our version of St. Nick as the chubby grandpa man in a fuzzy red suite squeezing down the chimney to deliver presents to little boys & girls.
The activity for today is read the true story of St. Nicholas. So tonight while my hubby made dinner {which is rare around here since he is always working so hard, but today he had the day off} I read while he cooked. I found the 'true' story of St. Nicholas here along with the picture above. I will share with you my favorite excerpt of the story.
"One story tells of a poor man with three
daughters. In those days a young woman's father had to offer prospective
husbands something of value, a dowry. The larger the dowry, the better the
chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman
was unlikely to marry. This poor man's daughters, without dowries, were therefore destined to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on
three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home-providing the
needed dowries. The bags of gold, tossed through an open window, are said to
have landed in stockings or shoes left before the fire to dry.
This led to the
custom of children hanging stockings or putting out shoes, eagerly awaiting
gifts from Saint Nicholas. Sometimes the story is told with gold balls
instead of bags of gold. That is why three gold balls, sometimes represented as
oranges, are one of the symbols for St. Nicholas. And so St. Nicholas is a
gift-giver."
And suddenly the picture of oranges in stockings all makes sense!
No comments:
Post a Comment