Spanking holiday

The true story of Santa Claus begins with Nicholas, a Catholic saint. In many places St. Nicholas is the main gift giver, in others people today celebrate both St. Nicholas and Santa Clause.

St. Nicholas brings gifts to children on his feast day, December 6th.

On the eve of St. Nicholas Day, children polish their boots until they gleam before placing them on a windowsill to wait for the good saint.

St. Nicholas fills good children's shoes with candy, fruit, and gifts.

Krampus (a strange and frightening demon) usually accompanies him. This devil figure, often in chains, is dressed in fur with a scary mask and a long red tongue.

Krampus carries wooden stick or switches to threaten children who misbehave or do not know their lessons.

He leaves twigs for naughty children—the worse the behavior, the larger the twig in their boots.

Every child gets a twig as a warning; each gets sweets as well.

Talk about a spanking holiday, ;).

I was always more interested in Krampus than St. Nicholas and Santa Claus....guess that explains a lot, :d.

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p.s. who says its only for children, ;).

Krampus is called 'Schmutzli' where i live and i used to be sooo scared of him. Apart from the switches he also carries a big bag in which he puts the bad boys and girls to 'reeducate' them during the next year.

I was never too much afraid of being put in that bag, though. Because i knew that when my brothers were still around you had to be reeeeaaal bad to be put in the bag :)

We do that here too (France). We bake spiced gingerbread cookies and mannala, brioche shaped like Saint Nicolas.
When my son was younger we sang St. Nicolas songs and painted St. Nicolas pictures and crafts - he says he is too old for that this year. He also says he doesn't believe in Saint Nicolas or Santa, but he still expects gifts and will put his shoes near the chimney before going off to bed, LOL.