Who gave me something of themselves this year?
Tonight is the week's celebration night. For three days, everyone has been noticing the gifts that cost someone something. Tonight you hear the story of Nicholas, light the first candle, read the gold ornaments by its light, and get ready for three days of giving. Plan on about 45 minutes, with dinner wherever it fits.
Remember: Nicholas and the first candle.
Rejoice: the first Opening. Everyone reads the gold ornaments with their name on them.
Ready: check your shoes, then make the Plan for December 5 to 7.
Nicholas and the First Candle
Supplies: the first of your five candles in its holder (or the tin or battery candle you chose), a long-neck lighter, and a spot where everyone can sit close.
Instructions:
Turn the room lights down, leaving enough light to read by, and gather everyone around the candle before it's lit. A grown-up reads the story of Nicholas out loud, and the candle gets lit when the story ends.
The whole Remember takes about ten minutes. Every family handles Santa its own way, and this story works with any of them.
Read to the kids:
About 1,700 years ago, a boy named Nicholas grew up in a town by the sea, in the country we now call Turkey. People have been telling stories about him for more than a thousand years. Nobody knows for sure how much of this one really happened, but here is how the story goes.
Nicholas's mom and dad followed Jesus, and they taught him what Jesus taught. One thing Jesus said was about giving. When you give something to help someone, he said, keep it so secret that you "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing."
When Nicholas was still young, his mom and dad died, and they left him a lot of money. He could have kept all of it for himself. Instead, he started looking for people who needed help.
In his town lived a father with three daughters, and the family was very poor. Back then, a young woman needed money from her family before she could get married and start a home of her own. This father had nothing to give his girls, and he didn't know what would happen to them.
Nicholas heard about the family, and he had more than enough gold to help. But how should he give it? He could gather the whole town, stand up where everyone could see, and hand the father a big bag of gold while everybody cheered, "Hooray for Nicholas!" But then everyone would know how poor the family was, too. Or he could give it in secret, so nobody would ever find out who did it. Which way would you pick?
(Give the kids a moment to answer.)
Nicholas picked the secret way. One night, after the whole town was asleep, he crept through the dark streets to the family's house. There were no streetlights back then, only the moon. He found an open window, tossed in a bag of his own gold, and hurried away before anyone woke up. In the morning the father found the bag, and he couldn't believe it. Now his oldest daughter could get married. But who had left it? Nobody knew.
A while later, Nicholas did it again: another dark night, another open window, another bag of gold, this time for the second daughter. Again, nobody knew who had done it.
By now the father guessed it might happen a third time, so he stayed awake and waited by the window. Sure enough, late one night, a bag of gold came flying in. The father ran outside and caught the giver. It was Nicholas! The father started thanking him over and over, but as the story goes, Nicholas stopped him. "Don't thank me," he said. "Thank God. I'm only a resource. God is the source."
A source is where something good comes from. A resource is someone it passes through on its way to somebody else. Nicholas believed the gold had only passed through his hands on its way from God to this family, so he asked the father for one more thing: a promise never to tell anyone.
Here's the funny part. Nicholas tried hard to keep his gift a secret, but we still know his name. Somehow the story got out. Maybe the father was too happy to keep quiet. If Nicholas had handed over the gold on a stage, he might be one more rich man nobody remembers. Because he hid it, people have been telling his story ever since.
Later, people started calling him Saint Nicholas, a title for someone remembered for living the way Jesus taught. In some countries, children still set out their shoes the night before his day, hoping to find a treat inside in the morning.
His name has a fun story too. In Dutch, the language of the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas is called Sinterklaas (SIN-ter-klahss). Dutch families who came to America said it a lot like "Sante Klaas," and over many years it turned into a name you know: Santa Claus. "Santa" comes from the old Dutch word for "saint," and "Claus" comes from the end of Nicholas's name. The Santa we know from stories and movies grew out of stories like this one, with other stories mixed in, and the name Santa Claus still has Saint Nicholas's name hidden inside it.
Then the grown-up holds up the lighter and reads one more short part:
This lighter has fuel inside that we can't see. Our candle can't light itself, so its flame has to come from somewhere else. That's grace: a good gift you didn't earn. Nicholas didn't make his gold, either. It came to him as a gift from God, and he passed it on. Every bit of light we pass on starts with God, too. God is the source, and we get to be resources.
Then the grown-up reads this to the kids:
All November we said, "Grace comes in, gratitude sees it, and graciousness passes it on." Tonight we say it with a candle: the light we were given, given away. Listen to each line, then say it back.
A grown-up leads each line, and everyone says it back. On "Passed along," the grown-up lights the first candle with the lighter and sets it where everyone can see it. Everyone can do the hand motions in parentheses, but they're optional.
Grown-up: Grace comes in. (Cup both hands, palms up.)
All: Grace comes in.Grown-up: Gratitude sees it. (Point to your eyes.)
All: Gratitude sees it.Grown-up: And graciousness passes it on. (Open your hands toward the candle.)
All: And graciousness passes it on.Grown-up: What do we pass on?
All: Generosity.Grown-up: One light.
All: One light.Grown-up: Passed along. (Light the first candle.)
All: Passed along.
Every Celebrate day from here to January 1 uses these same words, and the answer to "What do we pass on?" grows by one word each week.
Alternative Liturgy: Ancient Light Version
For families who want it, these words can replace the ones above. Light the candle while a grown-up or an older kid reads:
Reader: Jesus once said, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light." In his world, a healthy eye also meant a generous one.
All: One light, passed along.
Each week of the Alternative has its own line, printed in that week's Day 4.
Leave the candle burning. It's the light you'll read the gold ornaments by in a few minutes.
Tins or battery candles: a candle in a tin lights the same way. For a battery candle, switch it on at the moment you'd strike the lighter.
Didn't plan ahead? Any candle in the house works tonight.
Want a longer night? The Nicholas Night, in the back of the book, has the fuller story, more of Nicholas's world, and the Secret Saint Workshop, a few quick games that train everyone to give in secret. Use it tonight in place of this Remember, or on December 5, the night before Nicholas's day.
The First Opening
Supplies: the gold ornaments on the tree, and the lit candle.
Instructions:
On December 1, everyone wrote a gold ornament to each person in the house, thanking them for something they gave that cost them. Tonight those ornaments come down.
Each person goes to the tree, finds the gold ornaments with their own name on the front, takes them down, and brings them to the candle. Take turns reading them out loud by its light, one at a time. Anyone who would rather read theirs privately can, and a grown-up sits with each child who can't read yet and reads theirs to them. The red and white ornaments stay on the tree.
After the reading, the gold ornaments belong to whoever's name is on them. If you hung stockings, that's where they go. This is the first of five Openings this season, so think of it as a small Christmas morning, with four more to come.
Kids: let the youngest go first. A five-year-old holding a paper circle with their own name on it has usually waited long enough.
Check Your Shoes and Make the Plan
Supplies:
Everyone's shoes, lined up by the front door before the night starts
A little money for each pair: a few dollars or some coins (amounts can differ)
Paper, a pen, and the list of names you started on December 2
Instructions:
Sometime during the evening, while everyone is busy, a grown-up slips a little money into each pair of shoes by the door.
When the Opening is done, send everyone to check their shoes. Let the surprise land, then tell them what it's for. Like Nicholas's gold, this money came as a gift you didn't earn, and it's for giving away in secret on December 6, Nicholas's day.
Then make the Plan for the next three days, one line for each kind of giving. Time (December 5): who gets your time, at a point in the day when you'd rather rest? Resources (December 6): what will you give, and to whom, without your name on it? The shoe money goes here. For suggested organizations, see the facilitation notes on Day 6. Words (December 7): who needs a note that says what you see in them? A plan only has to be good enough to follow.
If your household wants it, add one more line: a Christmas agreement. Each person gives one gift to each of the others in the house, and picks it with one question in mind: "What will make their life better?" Write it at the bottom of the Plan if everyone agrees.
Put the Plan where everyone will see it in the morning.
Kids: for the Christmas agreement, put the question their way: "What could you give your brother or sister, or someone else in the family, that would make their day better?"
Bake Twice, Give the Better Batch. Sometime this week, bake two batches of something your family likes, such as cookies, muffins, or a loaf of bread. Keep one batch for yourselves, and give the better one to a neighbor or a friend. It fits this week because giving away the better batch costs you something (you're the ones left with the lopsided cookies), and that's the kind of gift Nicholas gave out of his own gold. Any recipe your family already makes works, and so does a store-bought mix. Deliver the plate that evening or the next day, and if you like, leave it on the step with no name, the way Nicholas did.
Kids' story: read "Thanks First" from The Overflow Adventure in Wanderful Woods together.
Time: about 45 minutes: 10 for Nicholas and the candle, 15 to 20 for the Opening, and 15 for the shoes and the Plan.
Short on time? Light the candle, read the ornaments, check the shoes, and write only tomorrow's Time line. The rest of the Plan can wait until morning.
Leading the words: an older kid can lead the Grown-up lines, tonight or any week.
If money is tight: a few coins in each shoe is plenty. The point is that it's theirs to give.
Blow the candle out before bed. Next week it gets relit first, and the second candle is lit from it.
Hello, my wonderful story friends! Last time, Mr. Moose and Mr. Monkey got lost in a snowstorm, and Everest Eagle didn’t just point the way. He came down and walked them home under his wing. Tonight, the whole woods gathers in Sunny Square, and Ricky has a very important announcement.
What do you think should come first, before you give something away? Let’s go see what Ricky decides.
The sky over Sunny Square was dark blue and full of stars, and the snow crunched and squeaked under everybody’s feet as they came.
The fire crackled inside its sparkly gravel ring, and the squash lantern glowed on the Wishing Tree, and next to the Moose home’s door, the little green pine was covered in painted circles, gold and red and white, all turned to the trunk.
Ricky stood up on a stump with his old bark roll. The one with all the Swap rules on it.
“Everybody,” he announced. “We are going to give the Swap pile away. The other way. Not a swap. Just giving. So I need new rules.”
“Oh no,” whispered Mr. Monkey.
“But first,” said Ricky, “I’m getting rid of the old ones.”
He unrolled the bark and read the first one out loud. “Rule two. All the presents have to be the same size.” He took a lump of charcoal from the fire and scratched it out. Skritch.
“Rule nine. No presents that are alive.” Skritch.
“Rule fifteen. No presents that are Bruno.” Skritch.
Bruno sat up very straight. “So now I CAN be a present?”
“I guess so,” said Ricky.
Bruno grabbed the biggest leaf he could find, wrapped it around his tummy, tied a vine around himself in a big floppy bow, and sat down in front of Mama Monkey.
“For you,” he said.
Mama Monkey looked at the big bear in a bow. “Bruno,” she said, “you’re just what I wanted.”
“Haw haw haw!” went Bruno.
“Hee hee hee… SNORT!” went Hazel.
Ricky kept going. Skritch. Skritch. Skritch. Rule twenty-two, no peeking. Rule thirty-five, all presents wrapped. Rule thirty-six, the size of a present is how far it came. He scratched out every single one, all the way down the bark, until there was nothing left but a long row of black scratches.
Then he picked up his brand-new bark, the one that said WHO NEEDS THEM? at the top. He held the charcoal over it. He thought. He thought some more.
“I don’t know what rule comes first,” he said.
Mr. Monkey and Mr. Moose looked at each other. Mr. Monkey could see that Ricky really wanted to get it right this time, and that he didn’t know how.
Mr. Moose was thinking about Thanksgiving. The Swap had fallen down, and nobody had minded. And what everybody had talked about, all night, was the leaves. The thank-you leaves had come first. And then, after, everybody wanted to give.
“Ricky,” said Mr. Moose. “What did we do at the Feast, right before the Swap?”
Ricky thought. “We opened the leaves.”
“And after the leaves?”
“We wanted to give the lantern away,” said Mr. Monkey. “And the presents.”
Ricky looked down at his bark for a long time. Then he wrote one rule, in big letters, right under WHO NEEDS THEM?
THANKS FIRST.
He looked at it. He didn’t add any more.
“That’s all?” asked Shiloh.
“That’s all,” said Ricky. “One rule.”
So they started the way the rule said. Thanks first.
Mama Moose brought out a tall new candle and set it on a flat stone by the fire, where everybody could see it. “This is the first one,” she said. “The first light of December. We get it from the lantern, and then we give it away.”
Mr. Monkey took a little twig, held it to the lantern, and carried the tiny flame across the snow with both hands, very slowly, so it wouldn’t go out. He touched it to the new candle. It caught. And now there were two lights in Sunny Square, the little lantern and the tall new candle, side by side.
“Now,” said Mama Moose, “everybody find the gold circles with your own face on them.”
So everybody went to the little green pine. Daddy Moose found his, with his frosty face on the front. Mama Monkey found hers. They took them down and turned them over, and sat by the candle, and looked.
Daddy Moose looked at the back of his for a long time: the big moose in the dark snow with a candle in his mouth, and the little dark house behind him. Then he looked at Mr. Moose and nodded, just once, slowly, the way he did when something really mattered.
Mama Monkey saw herself handing a little monkey a big, dripping honey spoon. “You remembered that?” she said, laughing, and she pulled Mr. Monkey into her lap and kissed the top of his head.
Then Sammy zipped up the little pine and found four red circles with her own face on them. She turned every one over, hanging upside down by her tail to read the backs. And for once in her whole life, Sammy stayed in one place for a long, long time.
Then Mr. Moose found one more gold circle on the little pine, with his own face on the front. He hadn’t made it. He turned it over. On the back, somebody had painted a little moose in the dark, with icicles on his antlers, and a little monkey sliding across the ice beside him.
“From me,” said Daddy Moose. “For coming out in the cold to see.”
Mr. Moose held it against his chest for a long time.
Then Tessie cleared her throat, very slowly.
“When I was small,” she said, “my grandmother told me a story. About somebody who had more than he needed.”
Everybody scooted in close.
“One winter,” said Tessie, “he heard about a family… who didn’t have enough. Not enough food. Not enough to keep warm. So in the night… when everybody was asleep… he crept up to their door… and left a gift. And he went away… before anybody saw.”
She stopped. She stopped for so long that Bruno, still wrapped up in his leaf and bow, fell asleep against Hazel. “Hrrrrrrr-snoooo,” went Bruno.
“Heh… heh… heh,” went Tessie, very slowly. Then she went on.
“The next night… he did it again. And the next night… again. But on the third night… the papa of that family was waiting by the door. And he caught him.”
Benji’s ears stood straight up. “What did he say?”
“He said…” Tessie looked around at all of them. “’Please… don’t tell anybody it was me.’”
“Did the papa tell?” asked Mr. Monkey.
Tessie thought about it for a long time. “Well,” she said, “somebody did. Or I wouldn’t know the story.”
“Hee hee hee,” went Mr. Monkey.
Ricky looked down at his list. He looked at the pile of presents. Then he looked at his new rule. THANKS FIRST.
“Then that’s how we do it,” said Ricky. “We give them at night. At people’s doors. And nobody knows it’s us.”
“Who’s going to get them?” asked Mr. Moose.
Everybody turned to look at Benji, because Benji had the best ears in the whole woods, and Benji had been listening all week.
“The hedgehogs,” said Benji softly. “I heard the little ones coughing when we were there. And the old badger past the meadow. His roof caved in under all the snow. And the birds at Munching Meadow can’t find anything to eat.”
Ricky wrote it all down under THANKS FIRST.
“Tomorrow, we help the birds,” said Mr. Moose. “And then, the night after, the doors.”
“And the night after that?” asked Mr. Monkey.
“We’ll figure it out,” said Ricky. “Rule one first.”
Then, because it was a Celebrate night, Ricky stood up on his stump one more time. “I have a joke,” he said. “Why did the candle go to school? To get a little… brighter.”
Nobody laughed. The candle flickered. Ricky looked very pleased.
“What a day!” said Mr. Monkey as everybody started home. “Ricky scratched out every single rule. Bruno wrapped himself up and gave himself to my Mama. I carried the light from the lantern to the new candle, and we opened the gold circles. Tessie told a story, and Bruno snored in the middle. And now Ricky has only one rule. Thanks first.”
Mr. Monkey whistled, and Mr. Moose hummed, and together they sang:
We are better together,
Moose and Monkey forever.
And in Sunny Square, the little lantern and the tall new candle burned side by side in the snow, two small lights where there used to be one.