On the Laser This Week - St. Nicholas Ornaments

toughwiththetoomey
Mar 22
3 min read

Whenever my husband gets a day of rest, he's busy designing on the laser. We recently visited my family for Thanksgiving where he had a few days of uninterrupted downtime to design while on vacation. As uninterrupted a day as life with 6th kids and a ton of family provides. The rest paid off! Behold, St. Nicholas ornaments! These generated quite the laughs, and I'm thrilled to feature them as our first laser product on the blog.

Wooden Christmas Ornament St. Nicholas, walnut and laser engraved in a man's hand, deck the halls, deck the heretic.

St. Nicholas's Feast Day is on December 6th! What better way to celebrate than these custom designed ornaments in your kiddos shoes.

These beauties are 100% going in our kids boots for this celebration. If you're unfamiliar with the story of St. Nicholas, you can check out this Saint's life here.

Celebrating Saint Nicholas's Feast Day on December 6th.

We added this liturgical celebration a few years ago and it has quickly become one of our family's favorites! St. Nicholas was a wealthy man known for his generous acts of kindness. He gifted three dowries to keep a poor man's three daughters from being sold into slavery. The story varies, but the bags of gold were tossed through an open window or down the chimney, landing in shoes or drying stockings. Thus began the tradition of leaving shoes or stockings out overnight for St. Nicholas.

We celebrate this feast day liturgically by having our kiddos leave their shoes out in front of our tree or fireplace. Our go to items are gifts that resemble the doweries for the three daughters! It's a great time to gift your family new shoes, if your kids are like mine and won't stop growing. This year we used our tried and true boots to hold oranges, St. Nicholas ornaments, and gold coins.

Christmas Tree with boots, books, and oranges for Saint Nicholas's Catholic feast day.

This is also the time when we bring out our Advent and Christmas books for our morning basket. We've collected these over the years from used bookstores and other publishers. A few of our favorites are shown above. I will tell you The Night the Saints Saved Christmas definitely brings tears to my eyes when I read it to our littles.

St. Nicholas Gifts - Gold Catholic Everyday Carry Coins

One traditional gift for Catholics on St. Nicholas's feast day is gifting gold coins. While true gold coins are few and far between these days, chocolate gold coins are abundant this time of year! Since we abstained from added sugars this past Advent, we gifted our kiddos these Catholic EDC coins my husband designed. Our oldest son, soon to be our first teenager, really likes this Memento Mori EDC coin design.

two laser engraved coins for St. Nicholas feast day: I am a Catholic In Case of Emergency Contact a Priest

Speculaas Cookies - Saint Nicholas Feast Day Treat

Dutch specula's cookies are a wonderful way to celebrate this feast day. I've been meaning to add this to our celebration for the past few years and I finally feel that this is our year. Our youngest is napping on her own and I have free hands to make the traditional spice mix with my little sous chef. I first saw this tradition from Kendra at Catholic All Year! Her recipe is linked here.

My daughter and I had the best time making the traditional spice mix. She thought it was so strange adding pepper to a cookie mix, but I promise you will not want to skip that step. We didn't have white pepper, but black pepper worked great.

Girl griding pepper, speculaas cookie recipe.

Traditionally made in the shape of St. Nicholas in a hand-carved wooden mold, speculaas cookies are a simple yet intentional treat to add to your feast day line up! While we don't have a wooden mold, it is something we want to look for before next year. This year we used our favorite candy cane and ninja cookie cutters in honor of St. Nicholas's Crozier and defending the Faith! I hope this inspires you to live liturgically this upcoming Advent.