So our Christmas traditions start December 6th with St. Nicolas day. This is our "Stocking day." My family started to celebrate this after we got a book about St. Nicolas which talked about the real man behind our modern day Santa.
In the stockings we always put gingerbread people because this man named Nicolas would give gingerbread to the poor children as treats. We also always put chocolate coins in the stockings to represent the story where Nicolas found out about a poor man who had 3 daughters of marriageable age.
In his day if girls didn't have a dowry they had little if any chance of getting married. The eldest daughter was going to sell herself into slavery so that her sisters would have a chance at getting married. Nicolas went at night secretly and threw money into the window to keep this from happening. When he did this the girls had hung their stockings by the fire to dry and the money landed in the stocking (hence why we use stockings to put gifts in).
So that's the bare bones version of the story of St. Nicolas. December 6th is the day of his death and we celebrate him not only because he was so generous but also because it helps to get Santa out of the way so we can focus on the real reason of why we celebrate Christmas.
We also have more fun this way because we aren't trying to do both gifts and stockings and food and clean up all on the same day. We do have the most awesome gingerbread men on the planet, just sayin'.
What else do we put in the stockings? Well we put a couple of candy canes someone ends up with some coal in their stocking (this year everyone did with this cool recipe we found on Pinterest).
(The recipe is on http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/2011/06/grand-cayman-no-bake-cookies-and-cream-bars/) we made ours coal shaped and let them harden that way rather than pressing the mixture into the pan like Sweet Pea does.
The rest of what we put in is random stuff we find at thrift stores, little snacks, and candy. Most of it is under $5. It's pretty laid back and it's so fun to watch the kids come running out in the morning to get a peek at what St. Nicolas brought them.
