The St. Nicholas Pickle

Over the years our family started to see glass pickle ornaments in local stores more and more. Our son’s were always amused when we would come across them, so one year I got one on clearance and the St. Nicholas Pickle was born.

For several of the other liturgical living traditions in our home, like our Advent gingerbread houses for St. Barbara’s Day or Our Lady of Loreto, I took things that we wanted to include in our family and then worked them into our busy schedule through a Catholic connection that would benefit my children spiritually. The St. Nicholas Pickle is our family’s Catholic adaptation of the Christmas pickle tradition.

In addition to putting our shoes out for the Eve of St. Nicholas Day on the 5th of December, our brood also hunts for the St. Nicholas Pickle on his feast. Similarly to the finding of chocolate coins in their shoes in memory of the dowry coins St. Nicholas often provided, as part of our grizzly, Flannery O’Connor style liturgical living that our boys love, the St. Nicholas Pickle is a tangible reminder of his miracle of raising the three pickled boys from the dead after their gruesome murder. This event contributed to St. Nicholas becoming the patron saint of children and was often illustrated in medieval books of the hours making it a simple option for the week’s picture study as well.

This miracle of St. Nicholas is also why we make a charcuterie board of preserved and pickled foods for supper on his feast with our traditional Ginger Bend Speculaas cookies and “Bishopswill” (dutch mulled wine or warmed grape juice) typically called Bishopswyn by those not in our family.  Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, in the midst of this rare pre-Christmas merriment, we pause between impromptu reenactments of the heretic, and fellow bishop, Arius getting an episcopal knuckle sandwich, for denying the divinity of Christ, to recite the Nicene Creed.

Print, cut out, and hide the pickle on the first page and use the Nicene Creed print below as part of your St. Nicholas Day Celebration this year. In our home the one who finds the pickle in our Advent greenery opens a small gift for the family or receives the first warm Speculaas cookie.

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Your family may also be blessed by our:

• St. Nicholas Coins
• December Ordo of Liturgical Living Activities & Meal Plan 
• December Prayers Prints
• Meal Time Prayers Prints
• Christmas Novena Booklet
• Family Nativity Play: Gloria in Excelsis Deo

And you can have our family’s tried and true liturgical recipes sent to you _every_ month when you join the Feast + Fast + Feria Collective here.

“Let us therefore strive to preserve the holiness of our souls and to guard the purity of our bodies with all fervor.” – St. Nicholas of Myra

Ad majórem Dei glóriam,