Advent Calendar - December 6
Christmas Fact: Children in the Netherlands receive Christmas presents on St. Nicholas’s Day, December 6th. According to old Dutch folk beliefs, each year St. Nicholas and his helper, Swarte Piet, or Black Peter, sail from Spain to Holland in a ship loaded with presents for good children. Nowadays Black Peter not only carries St. Nicholas’s sack of presents, but also brandishes a birch rod which he uses to discipline undeserving children. Truly troublesome youngsters face sterner punishment. Black Peter tosses them into his sack and carries them back to Spain with him.
Encyclopedia of Christmas p. 54.
Wikipedia on Black Peter
Saturday, December 06, 2008
only 19 more sleeps
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