Nikolaus Boot) Outside the Front Door on the Evening of the 6Th of December
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In Germany children put a boot called Nikolaus-Stiefel (Nikolaus boot) outside the front door on the evening of the 6th of December. St. Nicholas fills the boot with gifts and sweets and at the same time checks up on the children to see if they were good, polite and helpful the last year. If they were not, they will have a tree branch ( Rute ) in their boots instead. Sometimes a disguised Nikolaus also visits the children at school or in their homes and asks them if they have been good (sometimes checking his golden book for their record), handing out presents on a per-behaviour basis. But for some children, Nikolaus also elicited fear, as he was often accompanied by Knecht Ruprecht , who would threaten to beat, or sometimes actually beat the children for misbehavior as Any kind of punishment isn't really following and just an antic legend. Knecht Ruprecht furthermore was equipped with deer legs. In Switzerland, where he is called Schmutzli , he would threaten to put bad children in a sack and take them back to the dark forest. In other accounts he would throw the sack into the river, drowning the naughty children. These traditions were implemented more rigidly in Catholic countries and regions such as Austria or Bavaria. In the folklore of Germany, Knecht Ruprecht , which translates as Farmhand Rupert or Servant Rupert , is a companion of Saint Nicholas. According to tradition he appeared on Christmas Eve, and was a man with a long beard, wearing fur and sometimes carrying a long staff and a bag of ashes, and wore little bells on his clothes. Knecht Ruprecht is know to give naughty children useless, ugly gifts such as lumps of coal, sticks, and stones, while well-behaving children receive sweets from Saint Nicholas. Ruprecht was a common name for the Devil in Germany, and Grimm states that “Robin fellow is the same home-sprite whom we in Germany call Knecht Ruprecht and exhibit to children at Christmas...” Knecht Ruprecht first appears in written sources in the 17th century, as a figure in a Nuremberg Christmas procession.