Greeting Card Campaign: 12-06 St. Nicholas Day

Click here to download St. Nicholas Day card

December 6 is St. Nicholas Day.  The day commemorates the death in 345 or 352 A.D. of St. Nicholas and has been commemorated for centuries. Born in Greece in the latter half of the third century, Nicholas became a priest, and later, a Bishop of the early Catholic Church. Nicholas (later St. Nicholas) gave up all of his belongings and was well known for giving to needy people, especially children. One Christmas practice that originated with Saint Nicholas is the practice of hanging up stockings. According to the legend, Saint Nicholas would throw small bags of gold coins into the open windows of poor people's homes. One bag accidentally into the stocking of a child. When it was found, news around and kids began hanging up their stockings, at first by windows and later by by their chimneys hoping for a visit by St. Nicholas.

In American in the 1800's the legend of St. Nicholas evolved into the creation of Santa Claus, helped along by the popular Clement Clarke Moore poem and an editorial by New York Sun editor, Francis Pharcellus Church, in answer to Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the Sun asking whether there really was a Santa Claus. In becoming Santa Claus, St. Nick evolved into a secular character bringing presents to children and huge Christmas sales numbers to U.S. retailers.

Send your wife, girlfriend or favorite female person this free, downloadable, printable card to tell them how much you love and appreciate them. You may even want to use this opportunity to find out what they want for Christmas this year. 

Just click on the caption below the picture of St. Nicholas. Remember, instead of printing from Google Docs, click on "File" in the upper left corner, then select "Download" and copy the file to your own computer.  Open it with Adobe PDF Reader or whatever PDF reader you use and print the card from there. For some reason Google Docs doesn't handle fonts well, even though they are supposed to be embedded in the PDF document itself. 

This is a top fold card, so when it prints, be sure to tell your printer it's in "portrait" format so you get the whole file. Flip it on the short side to print double-sided. This also flips the inside upside down from the outside when you print in portrait mode, so that, when you fold it over, the inside comes out right side up.  If you're confused, I encourage you to give it a try with a practice sheet.

© 2013 by Tom King