In many places, St. Nicholas is a gift giver. His feast day, St. Nicholas’ Day, is December 6, which falls early in the Advent season. In some places in the United States, he arrives in the middle of November, visiting schools and homes to find out if children have been good. In other places, he comes in the night and finds carrots and hay for his horse or donkey along with children’s’ wish lists. Small treats are left in shoes or stockings.

Parties may be held on December 5th, and shoes or stockings left for St. Nicholas to fill during the night. Children will find treats of small gifts, fruit or nuts, and special Nicholas candies and cookies.

St. Nicholas is celebrated by many churches and by communities which have a Dutch, German, or Ukrainian heritage. On the Advent Sunday, churches may have St. Nicholas festivals, with the saint himself appearing to greet children in person, give instruction and encouragement, and hand out treats for children of all ages.

In Milwaukee, children hang stockings on St. Nicholas’ Eve with a wish list for him to give to Santa. St. Nick collects the wish lists and fills stockings with candy and toys for good children and coal for the naughty ones.

The coal is a warning to get one’s act together in the next three weeks before Christmas.

Nicholas does his gift giving secretly, under cover of darkness. He didn’t want to be seen and recognized as he wanted those he helped to give thanks to God.

Arrowhead seniors Nicole Hospel, Taylor Radtke, and Will DeWeerdt celebrated St. Nick.

Hospel says, “I got malon cookies and a Vera Bradley landered/wallet.”

She says, “I think in different countries, they put like fruit or something different in their stockings.”

Radtke says, “Typically we celebrate it. My mom usually does, but [this year] my mom was working so much that she completely forgot.”

“Yeah usually we get candy, like the boxes you get at the movies, like nail polish, small stuff. When we were little, we got toys. I used to get like a sack of coal but it was actually gum,” says Radtke.

Since Radtke got nothing in her stocking this year, he says, “Last year, I got a candy box of Sour Patch Kids, Victoria’s Secret lip gloss, bubble gum that rolls and that’s all I can remember.”

“I think the story is that he was an old saint in one of the European villages around the Renaissance era and that he would take a sack full of presents and deliver them to children’s’ front porch in winter. But I don’t know why it’s celebrated on December 5th,” says Radtke.

DeWeerdt says, “I got headphones and movie tickets.”

“I know that he was a saint that gave a lot to people and that’s why he’s called St. Nick,” DeWeerdt says.

These three Arrowhead seniors stockings came with candy canes which symbol candy croziers, one of St. Nicholas’ symbols.