This past Saturday was St. Nicholas Day. I have had a fondness for St. Nicholas Day since high school German class. I don't believe I have a drop of German blood in me, but I have always had a fondness for German food and folk culture. My husband strongly supports celebrating St. Nicholas Day because it is straight out of the Catholic liturgical calendar and because the real St. Nicholas punched a heretic at the Council of Nicea (and who doesn't love a jolly old bishop who would punch a heretic).
Saturday was also Meg's joint birthday party with two other children from her class. Our theme involved the North Pole, so we decided to throw a little St. Nicholas ornament into each guest bag. We mixed up an inedible dough, using flour, salt and water. We rolled the dough out and cut out small shapes. We then used the St. Nicholas cookie stamp I recently purchased to imprint a picture of St. Nicholas on the dough and then put a small hole at the top of the ornament. After baking ornaments at a low temperature for several hours, we added ribbon to them and they were ready to go.
We have a similar stamp for St. Lucy and plan to make St. Lucy ornaments over the weekend. Of course, these can also be used to make actual cookies. Hopefully we'll do that at some point soon as well.