St. Nicholas Eve

Tonight is the eve of St. Nicholas Day. Nicholas was born in Lycia, which is now part of Turkey. Legend says he was a kind and generous man, who protected the poor and did many great deeds.

In Holland St. Nicholas is called Sinter Klaas (he is the original Santa Claus). Children in Holland leave their shoes by the fireplace on this night, and in the morning they are filled with marzipan and small toys. Also, Sinter Claus often leaves larger gifts tonight or during the next day.

Agenda today:

A fox for Toys for Tots

1. Joy of Giving meditation
2. Journal queries
3. Donate to Toys for Tots
4. Make pfeffernüsse
5. Make recycled block signs
6. Fill shoes

1. Joy of Giving meditation: 

• Center, and open your heart. 
• Bring a picture to your mind of all that you have to offer- your time, love, skills, information and wisdom, patience, smiles, and the things you make with your hands. 
• When you feel rich with blessings, breathe out your gifts to the universe.
• As you breathe in, feel the joy of giving fill you in return.

2. Journal queries:

How can I determine the right gift, the perfect gift, for each person? 

How can I get all the right gifts, and still retain the peace and lightness I want for myself this season?

3. Donate to Toys for Tots:

Any small, secret kindness is a gift from St. Nicholas. Today I will look for a special gift, and feel again the gentle joy of offering my love to an anonymous child.

4. Make pfeffernüsse:
In Holland children get pfeffernüsse on St. Nicholas eve, but when I was young we always got them closer to Christmas, from our German neighbor Bill Rueter. Bill brought us a small bowl of these spicy cookies every Christmas when I was a child.

Pfeffernüsse means “pepper nuts”, and they are supposed to be as hard as nuts! To eat them you need to suck on them until they soften. They improve with age- they get harder- so make them well in advance. 

One full batch- 150 small cookies.

This recipe comes from Bill Rueter's Grandma Ott.

Ingredients:

• 1 c. dark Karo corn syrup
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. vegetable oil
• 1/4 c. milk
• 1/2-Tbsp. anise oil
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. each of cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, and black pepper
• many cups of flour

Yield: 150 small cookies-

1- Preheat the oven to 400ºF. 

2- Mix together all the ingredients, and add flour until the dough is very, very stiff. Grandma Ott said, “When you are sure it’s stiff enough, add some more.”  When you can’t stir any more in, use your hands to kneed it in.

3- Form the dough into logs, and then roll one log into a thin rope. Break the rope into small bits and roll these into balls about 1/2-inch thick. (If they are too large, they will be hard to suck on.)

4- Place the balls close together but not touching on a greased cookie sheet. You should be able to easily fill two pans. 

5- Bake 10-12 minutes- the cookies should be cooked through and lightly browned. If you added enough flour, they will be soft at first, but get hard pretty quickly.

Check out this story about St. Nicholas’ donkey and the pfeffernusse.

This wood block sign is for sale at my Etsy site.

5. Make recycled block signs:
This is a good day to work on making gifts for Christmas!

PEACE wood block sign for sale at my Etsy site.

My theme for this first week of Advent is to "Cherish and care for the earth", and one way I do that is to repurpose scrap materials I find around the house.




I've been collecting 2x4 end-pieces that are weathered and a little worn, and this fall I've begun to use them to make handpainted decorative signs (for sale at my Etsy site).

That odd gray thing on the right is a sanding block.

Supplies: Weathered 2x4 blocks of wood- any size, wire brush, rasp, sandpaper or a foam sanding block, pencil and paper, acrylic paints, paint pens, brushes, spray varnish





1. First clean up the recycled wood with a steel brush and a rasp. Be sure you don't leave any splinters or rough spots. Sand the board lightly.

2. Design your sign. I use an alphabet I made up that's a combination of "the Skinny" and a brush lettered font that I like. 

I draw out the word once with pencil on paper, then adjust it with marker, then write it directly on to the board. (You might prefer to use transfer paper, but it's not easy to transfer to a rough wood surface.)

3. It turned out here that I wanted to adjust the spacing a bit, so I just painted over the water-based marker and re-drew the letters with an acrylic paint pen. 

4. Then I painted around each letter with gradations of blue and green. Later I will go over the letters again with a black paint pen, and probably refine the colors.

6. Fill shoes:
When my children were younger, we read stories about St. Nicholas, and celebrated with the shoes and gifts because- well, why not?? Any excuse for giving gifts and eating chocolate is a good one!

The Dutch give simple gifts tonight, but they are often accompanied with riddles, or wrapped in deceiving ways, such as a small box nested inside larger boxes, or something hollowed out with a gift inside.

Even though my children are grown, and have left home, I have a few small gifts to leave at their doors. The most traditional St. Nicholas gifts are:

• Chocolate gold coins, symbolic of the coins Nicholas dropped down a chimney for three poor women.
• Oranges, another symbol of gold
• Candy canes- really candy croziers- bishop's staffs- like St. Nicholas holds.