For many of our mainland European neighbours, tonight the 5th of December is the night that St. Nicholas (Santy) will visit their home and leave a little present.

This evening in Holland, Germany, Poland, Austria and a host of other countries, young children will leave out their shoe/boot at night and in the morning it will contain a little present. I have found examples of this in Ireland too of late when visiting primary schools, as many of the children will have parents from these counties and the tradition is carried on in a private way. As usual, if you’ve been good you’ll get something but if you haven’t, you could get a piece of coal or worse.

Here’s a brilliant little film from Lienz, Austria from 1934 documenting and illustrating this 'good v's evil' idea on this night. This is full on mind you, as we see St. Nicholas calling to a house to leave a present for a child however he is accompanied by a group of evil-characters (Krampus).

As St. Nicholas is leaving a little boys misbehaves and he’s quickly grabbed by the evil devil characters and fecked into a basket on their backs and taken away. Not sure how that will play out these days but you get the idea behind the story.

What I find interesting here is I've shown this little film to children in schools when doing Christmas folklore workshops and they find it hilarious.

Text: Michael Fortune
Credit: Pathé

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