Franzen St. Nick’s Day and our naughty dogs

What a fun day we had today! My Mom and my brothers and sisters (and their families) get together this time of the year and we celebrate St. Nicholas Day. Now the ‘official’ day is really December 6th, but it’s just too hard to get everyone together during the week so we usually have it on the closest weekend to the 6th. The tradition of the day has changed over the years. When my mom celebrated it as a kid, she said they would set out shoes by the back door and in the morning they would get fruit and nuts in your shoe. After reading up on this one time, I found out putting your shoes out is an old German tradition.  When we were growing up, we would get together at one of my aunts or uncles and then the fun would begin. You’d be running around like kids do, when all of a sudden you would hear snowmobiles. You knew that St. Nick was outside and he could have one of the devils with him – now to know that this was Krampus. But you know what? We didn’t really care to know who he was, but was scared to death. I remember crawling under beds because we were so scared. But when everything settled down, we would all be in one room and end up singing Christmas songs. You had to sit on his lap and tell him what you wanted for Christmas and if the devil was with him you were hoping that you wouldn’t get a lump of coal but a small bag with hard candy in it and salted peanuts. So today we got together again to celebrate this. It’s been a tradition of over 80 years in our family and what a day we had. There was wayyy too much food and when St. Nick showed up some of the kids stuck to their parents like Velcro. But eventually everyone had a chance to tell St. Nick what they wanted for Christmas and no one got a lump of coal. After a couple of Christmas songs, there was small bags of toys and candy for all the kids. The one thing that the married girls do is to have St. Nicholas shirts so you have to wear them for the day. Sometimes you forget to wear it and you know that the next year you for sure will be wearing it!  After more eating than we all probably should have, off we went to my Nieces and her husbands house that they just moved into. They just moved into their house these past couple of weeks and it was a chance to not only see their house but also their Christmas decorations.

Looking good with our St. Nicholas shirts on

But then…. when we got home we found that our dogs didn’t want to sit on the hard ground that had some snow on it, so they went on the porch and pulled off the porch rug. When we pulled into the yard, both dogs were just sitting on the rug and not bothering anyone. No one will ever say that we have dumb dogs. Naughty – yup…. but not dumb!

Just trying to keep warm when we were gone