Friday, December 6, 2013

Believing in Nikolaus

Today Finland is celebrating Independence Day, but here in Germany the day is all about Nikolaus.

I wrote about Nikolaus two years ago in my blog post Odd German Way No. 4, but I have now learned something new. Even though Nikolaus looks like Santa Claus, he is not the 'Weichnachtsmann' after all. You can check the details *here*

I had thought about doing this Nikolaus tradition with Fräulein, as I knew they would be talking about him in the kindergarten. But we were very busy yesterday evening so the girls were already in bed when I remembered that we were supposed to clean our shoes!

At that point, I thought that we could skip the tradition this year. But in the morning I changed my mind and sneaked out to the staircase to fill Fräulein's boots with little gifts (our boots are usually so muddy that we store them outside the apartment).

But to my surprise, Nikolaus had already been there! And he had not cared that we had skipped cleaning our shoes!



*****
Suomessa juhlitaan itsenäisyyspäivää, mutta täällä Saksassa nautitaan Nikolauksen tuomista lahjoista. Aloin itsekin uskoa kyseiseen ukkoon, sillä myös minun likaisista saappaistani löytyi aamulla herkkuja!