Tuesday, December 20, 2011

St. Nikolaus came to town

We have quite a lot of Christmas books, and they are well loved!

On December 6th, German children leave their shoes outside, to be filled by St. Nikolaus.  What is pretty interesting to me is that German Lutherans also honor the St. Nikolaus tradition, not just Catholics- woot!  I didn't know about this until a few days before it happened, and promptly forgot to put the children's boots outside that day.  Luckily our landlord has adopted us in more ways than one, and she came knocking on the door while the children were napping, with goodies for them!  She covertly handed me a bag and said "From Saint Nikolaus, for the Kinder!" (As in, hello you silly American, I don't see any shoes outside, so your poor kids obviously didn't get any candy today!)  Ah, this family- we are so blessed!  I quickly grabbed Maddox's boots and filled them will chocolate coins, and put them somewhere she'd notice them.  Mav doesn't own boots, and wouldn't care anyway.


A sack for each child, and a big family gift!  The family gift was a large family calendar, by a German artist named Janosch.  

When Mdx came down from her nap I didn't say anything about St. Nikolaus coming, I just let her find the boots- which she found immediately!  This kid has a built in candy radar!  When she asked where it came from I said "It must have come from St. Nikolaus!  He comes to the houses and brings gifts for the children!"  She accepted that answer this time, I'll need to do better next year!

A coat hook, ginormous chocolate Santa, chocolate nutcrackers, oranges, and walnuts!

1 comment:

adrienne_sakura said...

seems to me like Germany is the place to be at Christmas time. i'm glad its already turning into a great experience for ya'll.
ps: we got your package today. its under the tree with the presents that we have had time to wrap. haha.
thanks a lot. ya'll didn't need to do that. but we are excited to open it!!