Biscuit, Carmen and St. Nicholas

Today is St. Nicholas Day. It is celebrated in many countries. The real story of Santa Claus began with a real man named Nicholas born in the third century in a Greek village called Patara. He had wealthy parents and they raised him as a devout Christian. Unfortunately both his parents died in an epidemic when he was still young. Fortunately for the poor, Nicholas used his inheritance to help the needy, the sick and the suffering. He dedicated his life to God and soon became the Bishop of Myra. He was known for his generosity to those in need, his love for children and his concern for sailors and ships. Nicholas ended up suffering for his faith and was exiled and put in prison. After his release from prison he continued his good works until he died December 6th, AD 343 and the anniversary of his death became our celebration of St. Nicholas Day.
~~~~~
One story of St. Nicholas led to the custom of him being a gift giver. Mysteriously bags of gold or gold balls were tossed into some windows to provide dowries, landing in the shoes that were left by the fire to dry. So now on St. Nicholas Day, children leave out shoes or stockings hoping for some gifts from St. Nicholas, which is not unlike our Santa Claus custom with stockings.
~~~~~
Now, I think that if St. Nicholas liked children, he surely liked dogs also. These two are Carmen and Biscuit. They are my in-laws dogs and Biscuit has been featured here before. Carmen is new to the family this year and the two of them are so cute together.
~~~~~
I took these pictures at Thanksgiving and you can see that such good dogs
will definitely be getting some treats... or maybe some golden colored balls to play with. Until then, they have a lot of fun playing together!
I did take quite a few more of these pictures while they were playing,
but they were moving around way too fast to get clear photos!
Hopefully, I will do better at Christmas!