The Christmas Pickle Sept 24

The first year I heard about this I was in love with the idea.  The story is that this is an Old World German tradition, but a bit of research revealed to me that most Germans don't know anything about it. So, odds are this was a more recent invention that was attributed to German tradition just to get the consumer interested and sell these glass pickle ornaments.  Anyway, the story is that on Christmas Eve, after the kids are all in bed, the parents would hang the small glass pickle shaped ornament on the tree.  In the morning, the first child to find it would receive an extra gift from St. Nicholas.  For the more frugal family the finder was blessed with a year of good fortune.  Because my eldest daughter was the pickle queen we definitly had to have one.  Being crafty I decided that I would make our pickle instead of paying the $10.00 asking price of the pickle I found in a mail order catalog.  Pickles are a simple shape and it needed to be pretty small, so I made mine out of Fimo clay with a small eye hook threaded with some very thin ribbon for hanging.  If you're crafty in any way I'm sure you can come up with your own version. The processes that come to mind are crochet, knit, sewn, whittled...you get the idea.  For a very simple and inexpensive craft for children you can get them to make one from craft foam, modeling clay, or even just a simple construction paper pickle shape.  Let them give the "pickle" a little personality by adding a face.  Christmas is about traditions, but traditions have to start somewhere, so don't be afraid to add something fun to your holiday...someday your children will tell the stories of these "traditions" to their own children.