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On Saturday was St. Nicholas Day (Nikolaustag). In Germany, kids usually celebrate this day by putting a boot (or shoe) outside the front door on the night of December, 5 for St. Nicholas to fill it with gifts and candy.
Well, usually it is small gifts and candy, but traditionally if you didn’t behave during the year, there was also the possibility of getting a switch (made of twigs and branches) in your boot. I’ve never personally seen that happen, but there was always the “threat” of getting one.
Some of the Christmas traditions are rather cruel. Ha.
Do you know of the St. Nicholas traditions? J and I didn’t really acknowledge St. Nicholas Day and we didn’t put our boots out (don’t know if we would have found something in them anyway), but I did make up for an empty boot by purchasing some (imported) German Christmas goodies like Glühwein (mulled wine) and Lebkuchen (gingerbread) from the World Market on Saturday. Didn’t I mention that I am going to make our Christmas time as special as possible?
I had a lot of errands to run this weekend, the usual household chores and it also was laundry week. This made for pretty full days and I don’t really know where the weekend went. But the good news is, I got pretty much all of my (in-store) Christmas shopping done, I already sent out some packages (the ones that need to go overseas) and I am starting to make a dent in my Christmas card stack. I also found time to crochet, take a nap and watch not one, but two Christmas movies over the weekend. Overall, it was stressful, but good and christmassy. As I like it.
Other good things this weekend:
Christmas shopping ♥ vanilla-cinnamon tea ♥ Sunday nap ♥ candles ♥ the first holiday cards from dear friends ♥ blankets ♥ yoga ♥ baking ♥ pizza ♥ holiday coffee ♥ cookies ♥ our lit-but-not-decorated small Christmas tree ♥
Tobia | craftaliciousme
December 8, 2014 at 12:53 pmWow, this sounds really busy. And I am a bit jealous that you ve got your shopping done already.
Your mentioning of St. Nicklaus day… I don’t know what a switch is for us it was always a coal when we are bad. And yes I remember a year when we only had coals in our boots. That was tragic but a day later we found candy in the shoes we had in the closet. But it did give us a big scare.
Have a great week, Tobia
Marie
December 10, 2014 at 12:15 pmI LOVE mulled wine! It’s so so delicious. I usually just buy the mulled spices from Whole Foods and then put them in wine with a bit of sugar in a pot and let them boil, then simmer. SO SO good.
I have heard of the St. Nicholas tradition, but never done it myself. You’re so good in getting everything done!! I’ve put up four little ornaments in a fake tree we have year round in our house. So, ummm, that’s about it….
Cait
December 10, 2014 at 6:05 pmI guess the “switch” in your shoe is similar to the concept of coal in your stocking from Santa – a major threat for bad behavior, but sometimes that rarely ever happens. We learned about St. Nicholas Day in elementary school. Later that day, each of us left one of our shoes outside of our classroom before we went to music class and when we came back, we all had treats. Funny how I still remember that!