St. Nikolaus Day in Germany…

Did you Know….

That today is St. Nikolaus Tag in Germany? What is St. Nikolaus Day??

In Germany Santa Claus isn’t coming Christmas eve he is coming on December 6th..

When I grew up, each year on December 5th we cleaned our boots and lined them all up outside the house in hope for St. Nikolaus to fill them with goodies, I remember some years we had a “Real” Santa show up at our house and he was reciting a poem and telling us if we were good or bad… other years we just heard a knock on the door right after dinner time. It was always fun to see lots of Santa Claus to walk through the street to surprise the children ( of course they were in real life college students hired by the parents..lol)

It is a fond memory of home and I keep that tradition alive with my Children here in the US. We clean our boots on December 5th and sit them at the door and St Nick flies in for a quick visit to bring some goodies… the goodies aren’t usually a HUGE present rather some Candy, Nuts, fruit the traditional things that I was brought up with, sometimes I add a little book or some pencils necessities usually.. The kids love it and get all excited to check the door in the morning.

One Year, a few years back, already living here in the US,  we woke up and had Stockings at our front door filled with candy and goodies.. to this day I have no clue who did it, I have a feeling but no one ever came forward and told me who put them there. I thought it was very nice and thoughtful and things like this are the Holiday Spirit.

So if you are looking for a tradition to start with your family, why not start the tradition from Germany called St. No=Nikolaus Tag ( St. Nikolaus Day)…..

Here is some info that I pulled from Wipipedia, This St. Nikolaus is celebrated differently in different countries like Italy, Central Europa etc….

Germany

In Germany, Nikolaus is usually celebrated on a small scale. Many children put a boot called Nikolaus-Stiefel (Nikolaus boot) outside the front door on the night of 5 December to 6 December. St. Nicholas fills the boot with gifts and sweets, and at the same time checks up on the children to see if they were good, polite and helpful the last year. If they were not, they will have a tree branch (Rute) in their boots instead. Sometimes a disguised Nikolaus also visits the children at school or in their homes and asks them if they have been good (sometimes ostensibly checking his golden book for their record), handing out presents on a per-behavior basis. This has become more lenient in recent decades.

But for some children, Nikolaus also elicited fear, as he was often accompanied by Knecht Ruprecht (Servant Ruprecht), who would threaten to beat, or sometimes actually beat the children for misbehavior as using this myth to ‘bring up cheek children’ for a better, good behavior. Any kind of punishment isn’t really following and just an antic legend. Knecht Ruprecht furthermore was equipped with Tree branches. In Switzerland, where he is called Schmutzli, he would threaten to put bad children in a sack and take them back to the dark forest ( I heard the same story in Germany being told by my grandmother). In other accounts he would throw the sack into the river, drowning the naughty children. These traditions were implemented more rigidly in Catholic countries and regions such as Austria or Bavaria.