Sunday, December 6th, was St. Nikolaus Tag in Germany. Here, though, he is called Samichlaus. Normally, we go up in the evening for a walk in the forest with the other families, and Samichlaus comes down with his donkeys and Schmutzli, his helper. Then the kids sing songs or tell him little poems, and he passes out bags of treats to everyone. But since it was on a Sunday this year, we didn't feel it was appropriate to join in the festivities, so we told the kids that we would set out the empty bags when we left for church and when we came back, he would probably have filled them.
I had the empty bags, that we reuse every year, all ready to lay out as we walked out the door. But imagine my complete and total surprise when I heard the kids screeching with delight already. Sarah opened the door to get her Sunday shoes, (we have a really nice shoe cabinet in the house, but with so many people all the shoes don't fit, so some are left outside the front door on the landing) and found that Samichlaus had already come!
There were 5 golden plates filled with all the usual goodies. He even brought them little chocolate figures of himself. What a wonderful, fun surprise. We brought the plates into the house, and then went to church all excited about our fun discovery.
Thank you, Samichlaus, for the wonderful treats! Since it was Fast Sunday as well, the kids ate many of their goodies for lunch.
The next day they took whatever was left of their Grittibaenz and ate them for Znueni at school. Grittibaenz are what they call the bread man you see on the right of the plate. It's made from a slightly sweeter Zopf dough and sprinkled with sugar chunks. I know, it looks like pretzel salt, but I promise, it's just sugar.
In their Advent calendars, the girls got Samichlaus ponytail holders, and wore them to church. You can see on in Sophie's hair. I couldn't resist, they were just too cute, and the beards are sooo soft! (I am very much a tactile person.)