A little St Nicholas Day anyone
Last night, we celebrated St Nicholas Day here in Germany for our very first time and I have to say – Wow. Now I am not much for crowds so that is why the Christmas season became a little easier for me with the advent of the Internet. I could then do my shopping online. Well, last night all the children and their parents met down at the Bahnhof (also known as the train station) to start the Saint Nicholas parade. Other than being cool and rainy – this part was pretty neat. Each child got a hat (just like the Santa Claus hats in the States) with a little bell on the end (probably so that we didn’t loose any). Also, each child then got a little sack. After singing some songs about Saint Nicholas (some were even in English), we started heading down the street towards Hauptstrasse (Main Street). It was nice that the police were stopping traffic as hundreds of kids came charging down the street. The organizers were dressed in St. Nicholas costumes (pretty much the same as a Santa suit in the US) – even the women. They had bull horns and were lined up trying to hold back this massive group of kids. As we came to each little store in our small town, the store owner would be in their doorway handing out gifts for each child. I watched in amazement as this store owner came to the door and took in the amount of red capped young’ens charging towards her. At first I thought she was just going to throw her basket of goodies in the air and shut-n-lock her door. But she didn’t and then I lost sight of her once the mob got there. All you could see were red and white caps bouncing and hands out stretched for whatever goodie was being distributed. Then to my amazement, out of the crowd pops my son who had jumped in the middle to make sure she didn’t run out of the goodies (later to be known as a styrofoam airplane). After about six shops, Alex finally said he was done. It was just too much pushing and shoving. He figured that this was suppose to be more like Christmas where it was about “peace on Earth” and “good will towards man” and he wasn’t experiencing that. He said he didn’t want to lose the Christmas spirit.
In the end, I was shocked and impressed. I was shocked that he wasn’t trying to get more free goodies and I was impressed that he sees the distinction so well between the true meaning of Christmas and all that chaos that people can make Christmas be about.
Image courtesy of St. Nicholas Center