Christmas and the holidays are the season of giving. It’s a time when people are more kind and open-hearted.
Gisele Bundchen
Since the time I was a kid I was waiting for this day so badly. Today is st. Nicholas Day or st. Nikolay day as we call it in Ukraine. It’s a magical day which kids are waiting for. There is a tradition in Slavic countries, when kids wake up in the morning, they always look under their pillows. If they were nice the whole year, st.Nicholas brings them candies and other sweet presents. For the naughty children Nikolay brings a rod. This was the way parents make kids be good the whole year and look forward to receive candies. I remember this
day I used to look for candies under my pillow. And I always found some. Even now, being adult and not living with my parents, I still received a cake which my mother cooked for me for this day. So I still feel as a little girl. For me it always meant the start of Christmas and New Year holidays. I still had to go to school but the mood was different since that day. When I came to school on st.Nicholas day, we used to eat sweet porridge before the first lesson with all my classmates and we had a small performance. There was an angel 
and a devil – some of my classmates and the shown us the fight between light and dark side. This was about life, about challenges and contrast in everything. But the good always triumphs over the evil. It’s like in life – everything has this fight inside but we have all opportunities to make the good win. Teachers taught us that difficulties, temptations will be always in life. But it’s always up to us which side to accept. They tried to teach us how to be better and to fight with our fears, bad side which everybody has. Also this was the day when we 
started or even finished holiday decorations at school, home. Everything looked so nice, with beautiful lights. This was a time when everything was ready for holiday celebrations, people had a good mood and waiting for holiday’s miracles. There were preparations for celebration of a New Year at school, work, home, surrounding people we know and love. So let’s dove into this holiday mood and feel this atmosphere. And let’s make some small tasty presents to people we love. This is a start of a sequence of holiday events.
