Today is St Nicholas, celebrating the patron saint of children. The night before St Nicholas, we place out shoes outside the door in the hope that St Nicholas will fill them with apples, sweets, nuts and – hopefully! – a little present.
Before he became the official poster boy for a well-known beverages company, St Nicholas was a bishop in the 4th century. He lived in an area that is now in Turkey and was known for his generosity and for his kindness towards and concern for children and sailors. Hence his reputation as a giver of gifts, and as a patron saint for children.
Byzantine depiction of St Nicholas; Walters Museum, Baltimore
St Nicholas is a special saint in that he is – as far as I know – one of the only saints that is recognised both in the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe and in the Catholic Church in the West, which makes him a very powerful symbol of unity, at least in my mind.
Martin Luther, however, was much less impressed with him than I am, seeing that he was part and parcel of what he rebelled against in the Catholic church at the time: the worship of saints. For Luther, there could only be one God, and the numerous statues and chapels and what-nots that cluttered the churches at the time bothered him greatly. A shrewd political thinker like Luther, however, knew that you couldn’t simply take away the guy who gave gifts to children, so he simply replaced him with the ‘Christkind’ the ‘christchild’, the bearer of gifts at Christmas.
Whether it was Luther himself who tried to demote St Nicholas is disputed, but the Christkind is most certainly a by-product of the Reformation. And a successful one at that, as today German Catholics and Protestants alike celebrate its arrival on Christmas Eve.
Nevertheless St Nicholas visits children on the 6th of December, often accompanied by his helper Knecht Ruprecht (‘farmhand Rupert), a much darker figure who checks the children have behaved well during the past year, in order to deserve a present. My mum always told us the story that when she was a child, in her village they had abandoned the whole notion of a St Nicholas and only had a Knecht Ruprecht who would go from house to house, get some Schnapps from the parents and threaten to take any naughty kids with him in his large bag. One time he arrived rather drunk and took one of my uncles along with him – my granny had to run after him, armed with a broom, to force him to hand him back!
Our own children are spared those violent excesses. St Nicholas always remembers to visit them three weeks before he comes to everybody else: no Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer for us! Even the Simpson’s pet ‘Santa’s little Helper’ had to be re-named in the German version as nobody would have understood the link. He’s called ‘Knecht Ruprecht’ instead.
Our only concession to living in Santa territory is that we placed our boots in front of the fireplace instead of outside the front door: as the little one is playing ‘Santa who’s stuck in the chimney’ in her nursery’s nativity play she insisted that’s where they needed to be.
Ginger&Bread 
Interesting, we (in Uruguay, and I believe the rest of Latin America and Spain) also put our shoes out for presents, but we do it a month later, on January 6th. And the presents aren’t brought by St. Nicholas, but by the 3 Kings. We also leave some refreshments out for them (and grass and water for their camels). Funny how the traditions are so similar!
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I didn’t know that! My partner is Chilean, and they are definitely following the United States in their Christmas traditions (albeit with some German cakes thrown in, for good measure). I still haven’t managed to make another Rogel – but your recipe is on top of my New Year’s resolutions 😉
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Awww, I always remember St. Nicholas Day as my little brother is called Nicholas!
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It’s such a lovely name 🙂 It always surprised me that St Nicholas wasn’t celebrated in Ireland, though!
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Happy St Nicholas Ginger! I love that tradition. In Frech Canada we also had a shoe for santa to fill but at Christmas. I was told St Nicholas was actually Greek, born in then Turkey…correct or not?
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You are absolutely right, he was Greek! It’s been really interesting to hear that the shoes are used in Canada as well as in parts of South America – who would have thought that! Canada must be quite intriguing in that some of your traditions are probably of French origin, and you might even have different ones in the rest of Canada?
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Happy St.Nicholas dearest Ginger! It’s such a lovely, kind and magical tradition! I envy you a little bit, because in Russia we don’t have such lovely tradition about shoes; children get their presents at new year eve under the Xmas tree.
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Thank you! I think we do overdo it a bit with Christmas – it’s basically three weeks of constant presents, biscuits and fun … But then I am a tad bitter, because all our birthdays – including that of my mother-in-law who is visiting – fall into these three weeks 😉
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I love learning about all of the traditions that people grew up with.
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It’s really amazing – so many different traditions and stories!
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Ginger, you keep on opening my eyes to new christmas traditions! I had never heard of St Nicholas day before. I don’t know anybody here in Australia who leaves their shoes out or receives presents December 6th. We do all of our gift giving on the 25th. It’s lovely to learn about different traditions.
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I think it’s all because it’s so dark and dreary here in December – days are short (it’s now dark at around 5 pm) and cold. All these traditions are just a desperate attempt to prevent us all from going crazy! My partner, who is from Chile, doesn’t really celebrate Christmas that much as it is hot and sunny there. Like in Australia, where a bbq on the beach is such a brilliant way of celebrating anything, not just Christmas! (Here in England you’d invariably end up with a cold, even in the summer …)
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How interesting…thank you for the little bits of history.
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I am a teacher, after all …
😉
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We have Krampus down here, truly terrifying!! My son is quite fond of his idea of him though and now I have to write a “hello from Krampus” on the note that I leave them. Sorry I mean St Nicholas leaves them! 😀
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How hilarious is that! Apparently all those dark sidekicks were invented in the 17th and 18th century to scare kids into behaving better! Clearly that one didn’t work with your son 😉
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Brilliant post – love the history. And as someone pointed out earlier, in Spain we leave our shoes out on Epiphany and the naught children get “carbon” or coal which is now little bags of black lumps of sugar!
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Whatever happened to punishment?! My mum had St Nicholas come to our house one year, with his golden book in which all our good deeds and trespasses are listed, and his sidekick with a broom to beat us with, in case we had been too naughty. We were so terrified that we forgot the lines of the poems we were meant to recite to receive our presents! Needless to day, he wasn’t invited again 😉
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We have completely failed as parents this year on the St Nicholas front… but then, I’m not the German one, so I’m taking no responsibility for it 😉 The Mini Dietz has celebrated by putting his shoes repeatedly into his dad’s though 😀
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Mini Dietz knows a thing or two about optimisation strategies: bigger vessel = more sweets 😉
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Love this post, you made my day. By the way, I hope the poor uncle wasn’t too traumatised after the whole kidnapping story 😉
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He probably was! But knowing my Granny, I bet the guy dressed up as Knecht Ruprecht ended up shell shocked, too 😉
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Ihhihii I love that!!
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