47 St. Nicholas Day Messages (for the Shoe, the Rhyme and the Card)

First, work out which St. Nicholas Day your person keeps

St. Nicholas Day is the feast of Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century bishop remembered for giving in secret. The feast is Sunday 6 December 2026 in most Western churches, and the part children care about happens the night before: shoes go out on Saturday evening, 5 December, and are found filled on the morning of the 6th. That decides your deadline. A card that arrives on 7 December has missed the whole event.

Two other dates are in play, and a household can keep either without being wrong. Dutch families often do the main gift-giving on the evening of 5 December itself, called pakjesavond, when adults exchange disguised gifts with rhyming poems attached. Orthodox families who follow the Julian calendar keep the feast on 19 December, which in 2026 falls on a Saturday. Ask which one your person keeps, casually and early. Guessing costs you a fortnight.

Keep it separate from Christmas in the card itself. A St. Nicholas card that reads like an early Christmas card tells a Dutch, Belgian, German or Polish reader that you do not actually know what their feast is. If you want to add one greeting in the family's own language, one line is plenty, and it goes at the end, not the top:

Fijne pakjesavond! (Dutch, roughly: have a lovely gift evening.)

Frohen Nikolaustag! (German: happy St. Nicholas Day.)

One line, spelled carefully, beats a paragraph of effort in a language you do not speak. Fenna corrected my Dutch spelling that night with a pencil, in the margin, without stopping the conversation. That is why you keep it to one.

Shoe notes for children, signed by the saint

These are not cards. A shoe note is a small folded paper that sits inside a child's shoe beside a chocolate letter, an orange or a handful of spice biscuits, and it is read first thing on the morning of 6 December, usually aloud, usually by a child awake since five. So it has rules a normal card does not. Four to six lines at most. Big, clear handwriting, because the reader may be six. And it is signed by St. Nicholas, never by you: the whole arrangement depends on the adult who wrote it at midnight staying invisible.

• Dear Lotte, you sang to my horse through the letterbox again this year. He remembers. There is a chocolate letter in your left shoe and it is the right initial this time. Be kind to your brother today. St. Nicholas
• For the boy who left me two carrots and one drawing of a boat: the carrots were excellent and the boat needs a bigger sail. Your shoes were polished. I noticed. St. Nicholas
• You helped your mother carry the shopping in the rain on Tuesday and you did not mention it to anyone. I mention things like that in my big book, on the good pages. St. Nicholas
• Dear singer at the window, I heard all four verses this year, including the one you made up about the cat. The cat verse was my favourite. Do not tell the others. St. Nicholas
• For Emma: one orange, because your grandfather says an orange at Christmas used to be a whole present, and he is right about most things. Eat it slowly. St. Nicholas
• You lost a tooth and gained a bicycle bell this year. A fair trade. Ring the bell once for me when the road is empty. St. Nicholas
• Dear twins, two shoes each this year, because last year's arrangement caused an argument before breakfast and I am too old for that. One letter apiece. Share nothing. St. Nicholas
• For the girl who left a note asking for nothing, only for her grandmother to get better: that page of my book is marked. Some wishes I carry myself. St. Nicholas

Read yours aloud before you fold it. If it sounds like a report card, start again.

Cards for children from grandparents, godparents and family far away

A different object entirely. This card is signed by you, it can run longer, and it is posted to arrive by 5 December, because on the morning itself the child has a shoe to empty and no patience for envelopes. Its job is to place you inside a morning you are not there for. Name the shoe, the staircase, the chocolate letter. A card that could be sent to any grandchild in the country will be read once and put in a drawer, like mine was.

• Happy St. Nicholas Day, love. Put the good shoes out, the ones with room in them, and think of me at five in the morning, standing in the cold hall in your pyjamas. I will be awake too.
• Your mother tells me you left a carrot out last year and ate half of it yourself by bedtime. Sensible. The horse and I have an understanding about carrots. Have a wonderful morning, sweetheart.
• Six years old and you can already write your whole name without looking at the card I sent last year. Put your shoes out tonight and I will do my part from here. The chocolate letter is coming with your uncle, so aim your questions at him.
• When I was your age my shoes went by the stove and my brother once got a potato, which he insisted was a joke and ate anyway. You are getting better treatment than a potato. Happy St. Nicholas Day from your godfather.
• I cannot be there on the morning of the 6th, so remember one thing exactly and tell me on the phone: what was on top, in the shoe, when you first looked. That is the whole report I want.
• Dearest girl, your great-grandmother put shoes out in a house with no heating and thought an orange was riches. You come from people who know how to be pleased.
• Happy St. Nicholas Day to the only person in this family who still sings the songs at full volume. Keep singing the verse about the boat. Somebody has to, and your father has retired from it.

Pakjesavond rhymes for adults, for the evening of 5 December

In the Netherlands the grown-ups get their own writing task. On pakjesavond, the gift evening of 5 December, presents are exchanged disguised or wrapped in joke packaging, and every gift carries a rhyming poem, read aloud to the room before the present is opened. The poem is anonymous and signed from Sinterklaas. Its licence is teasing: it names one true thing from the person's year, a habit, a small failure, a known obsession. Four to eight lines is plenty. In English, keep the rhyme simple and let the detail do the work.

• You bought a kayak in the spring of this year, and it has been on the water twice, I fear. It dries in the hallway, it leans by the door. This gift is small. The lake asks more.
• Three houseplants died under your expert care, though you talked to them daily and styled your hair. This one is plastic. It cannot be killed. Water it never. Your conscience is stilled.
• You fixed the fence, you fixed the gate, you fixed them both three weeks too late. The neighbours thank you, so do we. Now open this and make the tea.
• Your sourdough starter is four years old, older than the dog, if truth be told. You feed it, name it, tuck it in. This gift is flour. Let the loaf begin.
• You ran the marathon and told us for weeks, at breakfast, at dinner, to strangers, to geeks. These socks are for resting. Sit down. Eat cake. The medal is framed now. Give it a break.
• A spreadsheet for holidays, columns and codes, for two days in August on minor roads. This gift has no columns. It cannot be planned. It is soap. It is simple. It goes in your hand.
• You sing in the car with the windows down wide, one song, both verses, with feeling and pride. This gift is a playlist of songs you don't know. Learn one by spring. Put on a show.

Read a rhyme aloud before the evening. If the tease needs explaining, cut it and write about the kayak.

For the person who plays Nicholas, hosts the evening or fills the shoes

Every family keeping this feast has one adult doing midnight work: buying chocolate letters in November, hiding spice biscuits on top of a wardrobe, writing small notes in disguised handwriting. That person rarely gets a card, because the fiction requires them not to exist. Break the fiction privately, on 6 December, after the children are at school.

• Happy St. Nicholas Day to the household's entire logistics department. The shoes were filled, the handwriting was different, the carrots were eaten convincingly. I know. I have always known. Thank you.
• You have written a small rhyming note at midnight for nine years running and pretended to be surprised at breakfast for nine years running. Both performances were flawless. This card is your review.
• For the grandmother who still buys chocolate letters for grandchildren who are twenty-four and nineteen: do not stop. They check the hall before they check their phones. I have watched them.
• Somebody in this house polished a row of small shoes that were already clean, at eleven at night, so the morning would look right. That is not organisation. That is love with a cloth in its hand.
• Thank you for keeping a feast going in a country that does not keep it, with spice biscuits ordered in October and songs printed out because the children only know the choruses.
• To my favourite saint: the beard itched, the gloves were too big, the knocking was perfectly judged. The six-year-old believed, the ten-year-old chose to believe. Retire the gloves for another year.

Anonymous St. Nicholas cards, the ones you deliberately do not sign

Nicholas of Myra's whole reputation rests on giving without being caught, and his feast is the one date built for anonymous giving: a parcel left with a neighbour who has had a hard autumn, grocery cards in an envelope through a letterbox. The card in an anonymous gift has its own etiquette. It must explain that nothing is owed, not thanks, not a reply. It must not hint. The moment a line lets the reader work out it was you, the gift starts asking for something back.

• Happy St. Nicholas Day. This is from someone who has noticed your year and thought it deserved one easier week. No reply exists for a card like this, and none is wanted.
• These are for the children to find on the morning of the 6th, from the saint, as far as they are concerned. You are simply the person who put the bag inside the door. Thank you for doing that part quietly.
• An old story says Nicholas left gold at night so nobody could thank him. This is much smaller than gold and the arrangement is the same. Spend it on the boring bills first.
• For your table on 6 December, because a feast should not depend on how the month went. Nothing is recorded anywhere. Nobody will ask about this, including in January.
• You drove three people to hospital appointments this year and mentioned it to no one. Someone noticed anyway. These biscuits are not payment. They are just the feast, arriving at the right house.
• This card has no name on it on purpose, which is the most traditional thing about it. Happy St. Nicholas Day. Put your feet up on the 6th. That instruction is the gift as much as anything in the bag.

Short lines for a gift tag, a text or the top of a chocolate letter

Sometimes the writing surface is a tag two inches wide, or a text sent on the morning of the 6th. Short lines have to carry the whole feast in a sentence: the shoes, the morning, the saint who gives quietly. Keep one fact in the line, even at this length. A tag that only says happy St. Nicholas Day is a label, not a message.

• Shoes out tonight, magic by morning. Happy St. Nicholas Day.
• May your shoe be heavier than you left it. Happy 6 December.
• From the saint who gives quietly, to the person who does too.
• One chocolate letter, spelled correctly. I checked twice.
• For the morning of the 6th: get up before the children do. Trust me.
• Happy pakjesavond. May your rhyme land and your disguise hold.
• An orange, some spice biscuits and this note. The full traditional set.

Cards for friends and family who keep the feast far from home

A large share of St. Nicholas cards cross borders: to a daughter in Toronto keeping a Dutch feast in a condo, a Polish grandfather in Chicago whose parish keeps 6 December, a Ukrainian family whose feast falls on 19 December. Distance changes the writing in one way. The card has to supply what the person cannot get locally, the spice biscuits no shop near them sells, the songs nobody around them knows. Write the feast onto the page.

• Happy St. Nicholas Day from a house where the spice biscuits are still warm. A parcel is coming. It will smell right when you open it.
• Sixth of December here, and your shoes would be by the radiator if this house had any sense left. Since you are four thousand miles away, this card is standing by the radiator on your behalf.
• For the feast on the 19th at your end: the children here have had theirs, and the report is good. Chocolate letters correct, one potato incident, nobody cried. Your turn is coming.
• You are keeping this feast going in a city that has never heard of it, with songs on a printed sheet and a bag hidden on top of a wardrobe. That is how traditions travel. In luggage, carried by stubborn people.
• Happy Mikolajki, Grandad. The parcel has the biscuits you described, or the nearest thing this country sells, which your granddaughter tested twice. Her card is in the same envelope and outranks this one.
• To my favourite exile: may somebody near you learn the songs this year, even one verse, even badly. Until then you are a choir of one, and loud enough for a street.

What not to write in a St. Nicholas card

Three mistakes turn up every year. The first is merging the feast into Christmas: stockings, reindeer, a jolly Santa in a sleigh. A reader who keeps the feast will register every Christmas prop as somebody else's holiday pasted over theirs. The second is putting a long, signed card inside a child's shoe, which breaks the fiction and the physics at once. The third is the threatening note, written as a joke, which reads very differently to a five-year-old at dawn:

I know what you did in October. The switch is being cut. Be better by Christmas.

Skip all of that. No coal, no switches, no surveillance in the voice of a saint. The feast runs on a child believing the night brought kindness. Write the kindness.

Turn it into a group card

A household keeping St. Nicholas usually has one organiser and a ring of relatives in other postcodes who all want to be present on the morning of the 6th. A group card suits that shape: one card for the grandparents' house, or for the cousin hosting pakjesavond, with each faraway relative adding a line instead of sending six competing envelopes. A group card with multiple signers lets everybody arrive on the same page. You can create a card online in a few minutes and send the link round before December starts.

Keep the two December feasts in separate cards. The guide to Christmas card messages covers the 25th, and holiday card messages for every tradition helps when one card has to respect several December calendars at once. The step-by-step family e-card guide covers getting a whole family onto one card, and the same steps work with a shoe in place of a cake.

The small wooden clog I bought at a market stall in Ghent that week sits on my desk at home now, holding paperclips and one dead battery I keep meaning to recycle. It was sold as a shoe for a doll. Fenna's daughter claimed it was evidence the saint had visited a very small person, and argued the case so well, with the clog held up in one hand like an exhibit, that nobody at the table corrected her, and I find I still do not want to.