The Nicholas Night

The Story

Supplies: a comfortable spot, with the room lights low if you're doing this on December 4. On December 4, also have the first candle and the lighter ready.

Instructions: A grown-up reads all six parts out loud. Each part ends at a natural pause, so younger kids can stretch, ask a question, or answer the one in the text. Read it straight through or stop between parts; both work.

Part 1: Nicholas's World

Tonight's story happened a very long time ago, about 1,700 years ago. That's so long ago that if you lined up your grandpa, and his grandpa, and his grandpa's grandpa, and kept going all the way back to Nicholas's day, you'd need about sixty grandpas in the line. It's also about as long after Jesus as we are after the American Revolution.

Nicholas lived in a town by the sea, in the country we now call Turkey. His world looked very different from ours. There were no cars and no electric lights. When the sun went down, the streets went dark, and the only light inside a house came from a small oil lamp or the fire. Every pair of shoes was made by hand, so shoes were worth taking good care of.

Life could be very hard for a family that ran out of money. There was nobody whose job it was to help them. If a family was poor, they mostly hoped a neighbor would notice and be kind.

Nobody knows for sure how much of Nicholas's story really happened. People have been telling it for more than a thousand years, and here is how it goes.

Part 2: What Nicholas Heard

Nicholas grew up with a mom and dad who followed Jesus. They told him about the things Jesus taught, and a lot of those things were hard.

Jesus taught people to love even their enemies. In kid words, if somebody is mean to you, fill their bucket anyway. That's a hard one. Jesus also taught that when you give something to help someone, you should keep it so secret that you "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing."

Jesus knew those things were hard to do, so he finished one of his talks with a story about two builders. One man built his house on sand. The other built his house on rock. When a big storm came, the house on the sand fell down, but the house on the rock stood strong. Doing what Jesus taught is like building on the rock, he said. Nicholas's family believed it was hard, but worth it.

Nicholas watched his mom and dad try to build on the rock. They didn't always get it right, but they kept trying, and Nicholas decided he would try too.

When Nicholas was still young, his mom and dad got sick and died. They left him a lot of money, enough that he never had to worry about having enough. He could have kept it all. Instead, he started looking for people who needed help.

Part 3: Two Ways to Give

In Nicholas's 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. He didn't know what would happen to them, and he was very worried.

Nicholas heard about the family, and he had more than enough gold to help. But he had to decide how to give it, and there were two ways.

The first way was the stage. Nicholas could gather the whole town in the square, stand up where everyone could see, call the family up, and hand the father a big bag of gold. Everyone would cheer, "Hooray for Nicholas!" The stage had a good side, too. When people see someone give, it often makes them want to give, so some of the other rich people in town might have reached into their own pockets that day. But then everyone would know how poor the family was, and everyone would know who had helped them.

The second way was the secret. Nicholas could find a way to get the gold to the family without anyone ever knowing it came from him.

If you were Nicholas, which way would you pick? Why?

(Let everyone answer. Both ways help the family, and the stage is a fair pick, since seeing someone give can get other people giving. Ask what each way would feel like for the daughters.)

Part 4: Three Dark Nights

Nicholas picked the secret way, and that meant he needed a plan.

He waited for a night when the whole town was asleep. Then he filled a bag with gold and crept through the dark streets. Remember, there were no streetlights, only the moon and the stars. When he reached the family's house, he found an open window. He tossed the bag of gold inside and hurried home before anyone woke up.

In the morning, the father found the bag. Gold! Now his oldest daughter could get married and start her new home. But who had left it? Nobody knew.

A while later, Nicholas did it again. He waited for another dark night, crept to the same house, and tossed another bag of gold through the window, this time for the second daughter. In the morning there was the gold, and once again, nobody knew who had left it.

By now the father had a guess. Two bags had come, and he had three daughters. Maybe it would happen one more time. So night after night, he stayed awake and waited by the window.

Then, late one night, a bag of gold came flying through the window. The father jumped up, ran outside, and caught the giver. It was Nicholas!

The father thanked 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. Then he asked the father to promise he would never tell anyone who had given the gold.

Part 5: Known Because He Hid It

Here's the funny part. Nicholas tried as hard as he could to keep his gift a secret, but we still know his name, all these years later. Somehow the story got out. Maybe the father was just too happy to keep quiet.

Think about the other way, the stage. If Nicholas had handed out his gold in the town square, people would have clapped, and then they probably would have forgotten. He might be one more rich man nobody remembers. But he hid it, and that's exactly why people have been telling his story for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Jesus said one more thing that fits right here. He told his friends to "let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds." That sounds like the opposite of hiding, but Nicholas shows how both can be true. He hid himself, but the good he did still shines. People could see the good deed, the gold that changed three girls' lives, without seeing who did it.

And remember, that gold was Nicholas's own. Nobody handed him a new bag every time he gave one away, so every bag he gave was a bag he couldn't keep.

Part 6: Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, and Santa Claus

When Nicholas grew up, he became a bishop, one of the leaders of the Jesus followers in a city called Myra. Long after he died, people started calling him Saint Nicholas, a title for someone remembered for living the way Jesus taught. December 6 became his day.

His story spread to many countries. In some of them, children still set out their shoes the night before his day, hoping to find a treat inside in the morning, a little like the gold that came through the window.

His name took a trip too. In Dutch, the language of the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas is Sint Nikolaas, and people shortened that to Sinterklaas. Say it with me: SIN-ter-klahss. When Dutch families settled in New York, they said it a lot like "Sante Klaas." Their neighbors who spoke English picked it up, and over the years "Sante Klaas" turned into a name you know: Santa Claus. The first time it showed up in an American newspaper, back in 1773, it was spelled "St. A Claus."

So the name has two halves. "Santa" comes from the old Dutch word for "saint." "Claus" comes from the end of his Dutch name: Nikolaas (NEE-koh-lahss) became Klaas, and Klaas became Claus. People shorten his name in other languages too. In German, Klaus is a short way of saying Nikolaus, and in English, people sometimes call him Saint Nick.

The Santa in stories and movies today grew out of stories like Nicholas's, with other stories mixed in over the years. Gifts that come at night, in secret, tucked into shoes and stockings, all started with stories about Nicholas. And the name Santa Claus still has Saint Nicholas's name hidden inside it.

Nicholas didn't make his gold. It came to him as a gift, and he passed it on in secret, to people who really needed it. He was a resource, and he knew who the source was. This week, our family gets to try giving his way.

On December 4: light the first candle now, with the short lighter passage and the words in Day 4, and go on to the Opening.

For the grown-ups (not read aloud):

• What's legend and what's history. A bishop named Nicholas led the Jesus followers in Myra in the 300s, and his tomb there drew visitors for centuries. The details of his life, including the three bags of gold, come from accounts written down hundreds of years after he died. That's why the story opens with "here is how it goes."

• The part left out. In the oldest tellings, the danger to the three daughters was much darker than not being able to marry. The kids' version leaves it out on purpose. A grown-up can fill it in for older kids who ask.

• Santa. The Santa Claus most of us know was inspired mainly by Saint Nicholas, with other traditions mixed in over the centuries, from England's Father Christmas to American poems and drawings from the 1800s. The version most of us grew up with makes giving look free: in those stories, elves make the toys, magic handles the delivery, and nothing runs out. Nicholas's gift came out of his own money, and that cost is the part of his story worth passing on. Day 1 made the same point about gifts that cost the giver something.

The Shoe Hunt

On December 4, this takes the place of Day 4's "check your shoes." It turns the shoes into a hunt.

Supplies: each person's shoes (or one sock each), and a little money for each pair: a bill, a few dollars, or a small bag of coins. Amounts can differ.

Instructions:

Before the night starts, a grown-up quietly tucks the money into each person's shoes and hides them around the house. Socks are easier to hide, if you'd rather use those.

When it's time, send everyone to find their own shoes and bring them back without looking inside. Then everyone reaches in at the same time.

Let the surprise land. Ask everyone to hold up what they found, and take ten quiet seconds to notice what it feels like to find a gift you didn't earn and didn't ask for.

Then tell them what it's for. Like Nicholas's gold, this money came to you as a gift, and it's yours to give away in secret on December 6, Nicholas's day. The Plan at the end of tonight decides who gets it.

The Secret Saint Workshop

Nicholas needed a plan to give in secret: how to move quietly, how to get the gift inside without waking anyone, and how to notice who needed it in the first place. The Workshop practices all three. It's silly on purpose, kind of spy school mixed with kindness practice.

Open it with the Workshop's line, said together:

All: We are Secret Saints. We do the good, but we hide the giver.

Station 1: The Window Toss

Supplies: a laundry basket or box, a pillow or folded towel, a few noisy things (crumpled paper, blocks, spoons), and a pair of rolled-up socks.

Instructions: Put the pillow in the middle of the basket and the noisy things around it. The basket is the family's house, and the socks are the bag of gold. Stand a few steps back and take turns tossing the socks onto the pillow without making the noisy things rattle. Move back a step after each success.

Ask: "Why did Nicholas have to be so quiet?" This is practice for December 6, when the gift has to get there without anyone catching you.

Station 2: The Ninja Walk

Supplies: a few crinkly or noisy things to scatter on the floor (paper, a plastic bag, toys), and a small note or folded paper.

Instructions: Scatter the noisy things across the room and mark a pillow or chair at the far end. Each person walks across, sets the note on the pillow, and walks back without a sound. Step on something that crunches, and it's back to the start.

Ask: "What's something you could do for someone in our house without them seeing you do it?" Quiet help counts as giving time, which is what December 5 is for: loading the dishwasher, folding someone's laundry, making a bed.

Station 3: The Detective Eye

Supplies: none.

Instructions: Sit together. Nicholas noticed a family with a real need and gave them what they needed. This station practices noticing.

First, ask: "How can you tell when someone is sad? Tired? Worried?" Collect the clues (a quiet voice, slumped shoulders, a long sigh).

Then read a few of these, or make up your own, and let everyone call out a secret move for each:

• A neighbor is carrying heavy grocery bags in the rain.

• A teacher stays late every day and looks worn out.

• A kid at school eats lunch alone most days.

• Someone in our house has had a really long week.

Ask: "Who do we know who might need a secret gift this week?" Keep the answers for the Plan.

Then make the Plan. On December 4, go back to Day 4's Ready and write the Plan for December 5 to 7. The Workshop's answers and the Shoe Hunt money go right into it. On December 5, add anything new to the Plan you already have.

For the grown-ups: the Workshop gets everyone thinking about who could use a gift. Before December 6, a grown-up checks that the delivery is safe and wise. A sealed envelope, a gift card, or a donation can be better than cash on a porch.