Jolly Old St. Nicholas, lean your ear this way!

Hi, this is Fr. Rocky with another Advent Inspiration.

December 6^th is the Feast of St. Nicholas. You know who he is, don’t you? That’s St. Nicholas of Bari, a small town on the Adriatic Coast of Italy. Some of his relics are in a Church there, but he served as a Bishop in Armenia and was very generous with the poor, secretly giving away money and food for the needy, and most people never knew where it came from. Today we call him Santa Claus, and when we are generous with the poor, we are really living the Christmas spirit.

When I was a kid, we left our shoes outside our bedroom before we went to bed the night before St. Nicholas Day and when we awoke, we’d find our shoes stuffed with goodies, including chocolate marshmallows, Hershey Kisses, and a yo-yo.  We knew it wasn’t Christmas yet, but this was a warm-up to the actual day, and we just couldn’t wait. One year, when we woke up on St. Nicholas Day, we looked outside and it had snowed five inches the night before.  It was the first snow of the season and we were really excited!

Thanks for joining us on this journey. If you have missed a previous Advent Inspiration, you can find all of them here.