In Germany, the 6th of December is Nikolaustag. The night before, children will clean their boots, and put them outside the front door. Nikolaus puts sweets, nuts, oranges and maybe small toys into those boots.The cleaned boots prove that the children were good.
This picture is from a Nikolaus-Party showing not just Nikolaus (who looks like Santa Claus here), but also his companion, Knecht (Farmhand) Ruprecht who punishes children if they misbehaved (This is just in theory of course. For children it's usually enough if they see him. =) At this party he pointed out the bad behaviour of the children and told them to be good from now on.)
If you want to read more about this traditon, check Wikipedia.
PS: Congratulations to my mum, who celebrates her birthday today!!! =X
4 comments:
Ha! That photo was taken in the lobby of building C7.3 in the university (the institute for computational linguistics).
Cheers :)
Hi MoonSoleil,
sorry...this is NOT "Nikolaus"! This Guy is "Weihnachtsmann"!
Nikolaus, or should I say St. Nikolaus is a holy person and was a bishop in Myra ( now Turkey). So he should wearing a Bishop outfit...not this red suit ;-)
Weihnachtsmann is a invention of Coca-Cola (to cut a long story short).
Take a look at my blog ;-)
greetings
thomy (e saarbrigger) ;-)
Hey Thomy,
I know this, I can assure you that I do.
But I also know that at this party, he was supposed to be Nikolaus. (that's why I said that he looks like Santa Claus in this pic)
And to be fair, who has one of those bishop outfits at home?
You can only buy the Coca Cola ones in the shops, so he obviously bought one of them. In that Wikipedia entry, all of this is explained as well.
thomy, in the articles you linked from on your blog, it is made pretty clear that Santa Claus is not a Coca-Cola invention and that the red-white dress was in use over ten years before the first Coke Santa.
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