St. Nick came by!

St. Nick came by today. No, not “that” St. Nick, but St. Nicholas from Catholic tradition. According to legend, there were three Italian maidens whose families had fallen on hard times. Because their father could not afford the dowries necessary for them to marry, he was considering selling one of his daughters into slavery to get dowries for the other two. When the good saint heard of the family's plight, he went to their home late one night and anonymously tossed three bags of gold down the chimney. Miraculously, a bag fell into each of the sisters’ stockings, which were hanging by the fire to dry. His kindhearted gift made it possible for all three sisters to marry.

You see, here they didn’t used to do the Christmas gift giving. That’s a novel thing started by the marketing machine just two to three years ago. I grew up waiting for the saint named Nicholas and at the same time feared his mean assistant “Krampus”. Good kids would receive a gift from Nicholas; bad kids would receive a silver or golden switch with a red ribbon on it, with which they could (presumably) be spanked by their parents… or Krampus. I don’t know. I just know that he looked scary and as a kid I didn’t care to see him. Nicholas carried a tall staff and was dressed in Catholic bishop (or similar) garb. Invariably, every year, I got both the gift and the branch. No, I was never spanked with the branch. It was nice and decorative. My mom was creative enough to come up with some other spanking device, be it hand or something else. I never felt that I deserved the spanking, but that’s a story for another blog. :)

On Dec 5, we would polish the biggest shoe of ours that we could find and put it in the window. During the night, St. Nicholas would come by and drop off some goodies for us – maybe candy or a small gift. What fun! My sister now uses stockings for her kids. The stocking custom probably stems from the shoe idea anyway. Couple of weeks later, we would decorate the Christmas tree. Not at the end of November, but on Christmas Eve. The tree was for Christmas and decorating the tree used to be reward enough. Christmas was then reserved for going to church and visiting family and yes – eating cake. We didn’t get to get up at 3:00am to wake up our parents so we could open gifts. By the way, at our house, kids aren’t allowed to open anything until Chris and I are up and conscious enough to take a few pictures. We have to stick to some rules after all.

Now there seems to be some confusion over the whole gifting thing. Marketing is pushing the Christmas gift giving hard which means parents are left with two expensive visitors – St. Nicholas and Santa Claus who seem like the same guy to me anyway. Hardly seems fair to the parents. Don’t know if you read about it but at one of the largest Christmas fairs in Europe held in Germany this year, they have forbidden the use of image of Santa Claus. No Santa ornaments, no Santa pictures, no jolly old man at all. May sound harsh, but I agree with it. They noted that they wanted to return Christmas to baby Jesus. Plus most of Europe already has Saint Nicholas. I suppose that in Croatia this year jolly old man (religious or not) will have to work twice as hard to take care of the kids. We’ll see what happens next year.

No, we’re not going to turn into Grinches here. My American roots are too strong now and we will reward the little children (and big ones) on Christmas morning and sleepily go through the usual commotion that the Christmas morning brings. Pictures to document our generosity will follow at appropriate time.

For the curious ones, here is a link to the history of how St. Nicholas turned into Santa Claus http://www.northpolesantaclaus.com/santahistory.htm.

Here are some pictures of the event. We went to the elementary school where my sister works as a teacher and met St. Nicholas there. Since we know people in high places, St. Nick brought both Mia and Ivor a treat (carefully prepurchased by the parents but kids need not know that). Mia got a little scared but did fine because I held her. She figured that it's safe if I hold her. :)