St. Nikolaus

I'm finally on my final Christmas post!  For the first time we celebrated the German holiday, St. Nikolaus Day....

I got this from Wikipedia...

In Northern 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. St. Nicholas fills the boot with gifts and sweets overnight, 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. (I should add that in some legends it says that the tree branch is for the parents to beat their bad children with!  Oh my!  I'm glad we just get coal in the States!)  Sometimes a Nikolaus impersonator 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 the basis of their behavior.  (Click here to read more in depth about St. Nikolaus)  The rest of the article is pretty interesting considering St. Nikolaus is where the modern day Santa Claus stemmed from...

I decided to do this last minute and since we hadn't really talked much about it, I explained to the girls at dinner the night before that we'll celebrate it since we live in Germany, but since we aren't German, then I'm going to be the one to fill their boots.  I hate all of the lies tied into Christmas and like I said earlier, we tried to not emphasize Santa too much this year.  An American friend of ours who lives here does ONLY St. Nikolaus on the 6th and not Santa at all, keeping Christmas Day about Christmas and not Santa!  I love that idea but I'm not sure I can cave in that much!  :)  Me telling them kind of backfired though because kids in their classes talked about the real St. Nikolaus coming to their house which in turn, I just had to make up more lies!  :) 

 

Kai dug right into the Kisses!  I'm glad I only put a handful in!  Chocolate at 7am would brighten anyone's day!  :) 

They got some glitter foundation, books, Pollys, Kisses, and a Princess Lollipop. 

Happy St. Nikolaus Day!