I feel I have to start with a little disclaimer: *There\u2019s a lot of humor in everything I say and there\u2019s a lot of truth in humor. I leave it to you to figure out what\u2019s what. Overall I think you shouldn\u2019t take things too seriously here.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Humor is a difficult thing to convey over cultures. Which is why I – in good German tradition – abstain from it completely. I\u2019ll just focus on facts that can easily be proven wrong or right if so desired. If humor or science are not your thing, no worries. Just ignore this message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did you know that Santa and his helper are only sidekicks in the whole Christmas story in Germany. They got the time slot that nobody really cares about, the 6th of December, Nikolaustag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saint Nicholas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Real Santa, whose long name is \u201cSaint Nicholas\u201d or in German: Nikolaus von Myra, hinting at his origin in today\u2019s Turkey near Antalya, seems to have been quite a good fellow as amongst others he gave away his heritage to those in need. After all he was sainted, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Knecht Ruprecht<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n His sidekick is the rather feared Knecht Ruprecht (Farmhand Rupert) which Santa found as a child in the wild and raised him to reward good kids and punish the baddies. Wikipedia says: \u201cAccording to tradition, Knecht Ruprecht asks children whether they can pray. If they can, they receive apples, nuts and gingerbread. If they cannot, he hits the children with his bag of ashes.\u201d In my times, Rupert would use a \u201cRute” (f), a rod. Possibly a lot easier to clean up after using that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00dcbrigens, Knecht Ruprecht is also called a Kinderschreck (=child scare).<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was young, my uncle Udo would dress up as Santa (we couldn\u2019t afford another bad actor at that time that could have played Rupert) and he would ask whether we\u2019ve been \u201cbrave Kinder\u201d (that\u2019s a common false friend and means, \u201cwell behaved\u201d which has got nothing to do with \u201cbrave\u201d (=mutig)).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Becoming Santa<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For a moment I thought this tradition was dead in Germany but then I remembered that 20 years ago when I lived in Freiburg, there was a Santa service which was looking for students to play Santa and I looked it up and found this homepage: https:\/\/nikolaus-zentrale.de<\/a>. So if you are into scaring your kids into behaving well, don\u2019t hesitate and sign up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think that\u2019s a lot of German culture to take in for one mail. And you might wonder what does this all have to do with Santa German uh, SmarterGerman. Well, I don\u2019t mind whether you still believe in Santa or not. Fairy tales are wonderful examples for the power of the human mind which you can make use of when learning German with SmarterGerman. And if you love to take a look behind the scenes, we got you covered as well \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n PS: The Swiss are beating us Germans on that Ruprecht story by far. Just search for \u201cKinderfresserbrunnen\u201d (literally: child eater well)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have talked about the lovely German Christmas tradition of punishing naughty children with bags full of ashes and rods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess it\u2019s time for a more cheerful story of the Christkind, who brings the gifts to all children and doesn\u2019t seem to be concerned about whether they behaved in the last year or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In many German families today, the Christkind is the one bringing the presents to all children. During the middle ages, it was still Santa (=saint Nicholas) that brought the presents (if you behaved well that was) but due to some pressure of the Protestants, who didn\u2019t like saints, that event was pushed to the birthday of Jesus Christ and associated with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, children are writing letters to the Christkind in which they express their materialistic wishes which may or may not come true. I have good reasons to assume that the Christkind heavily relies on the donations made by the child\u2019s parents to fulfill those wishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDas Christkind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n