Procession

_{5 minutes read – cozy and easy;)}

St. Nicolaus and his helpers during a procession that we go to watch every year.

There are many processions happening here on a normal year (obviously last two years are the exceptions). Since we live in the middle of Europe, many cultures meet here and so we took customs from each. Therefore, most households here are visited by 3 different gift-bearers in December!

The first gift-bearer here is St. Nicolaus.

And that is not all! They each have their own procession! The first one is St. Nicolaus and the procession happens on the 5th of December, the eve before his day – as is the custom in german-speaking countries (we took many customs from them). On the parade, there is St. Nicolaus, accompanied by angels who hand out sweets to kids and devil-like creatures, like Krampus from Austria, that we call “parkelj” (which is one of the names for the devil (we have many)). I believe it is called Black Pete in English. It is red and black, have horns and a tail, a devilish smile etc… They (many times it’s more than one) have chains and sometimes sticks and coal and they are always very loud. St. Nicolaus brings presents to “good” kids and “parkelj” (or Krampus in Austria) bring a stick or coal for the naughty ones.

Traditionally “parkelj” is a bad figure that scares the naughty children (and my mom still has PTSD of how he took her pacifier) but nowadays they are actually much more fun than angels in my opinion 😀 – they are usually played by young boys, full of energy, running around, who are very friendly but mischievous – they have hands dirty from coal and try to make everyone else dirty;). They give kids mandarines (which ours prefer to candy – go figure – they really like this fruit) – so our kids prefer them to angels (that probably says a lot about our parenting :D)… But really – “the devils” hand out fruit and the angels give sugar candy… who’s the bad guy here? Ask your dentist :D.

Our kids love these devilish creatures – they used to be afraid of them due to the noise but now they are their favourites!

Then we have Santa’s processions – they are very much like in the movies with elves and everything in red – it is usually pretty commercialized (often happening in shopping centres) and with no traditional elements because this figure is relatively new here. Religious people often don’t like the “red-dressed Santa” here saying it takes away from the real meaning of Christmas and Jesus. On the other hand – my mom got gifts from him – but he wasn’t like the one from Coca-cola, just the name was the same because he came at Christmas.

Since they like him and he was missing in our home procession kids got a wool “parkelj” (Krampus) in their advent calendar a few years ago

And at the very end of the year, Grandpa Frost has his own procession and he is accompanied by forest animals (they are his main helpers), elves and winter fairies. He is not preachy like St. Nicolaus, he likes all the kids, doesn’t care how good they have been, usually only asks them to wash their teeth and he is always very humorous so adults have a very good time at the procession as well – yes, you can tell he’s our favourite;) – but more about him on the 31:).

St. Nicolaus procession on our window sill – made from felt and wool rowing, accompanied by angels from wool rowing and the devil-creature (parkelj) from wool. Our elves hid behind him.

Other types of processions are happening in many religious homes, where Mary’s and Joseph’s figurines are walking down a path of 24 stars to reach the manger in the nativity on Christmas day. Other count-downs include a shooting star coming down from heaven in 24 steps etc. This is a fairly new tradition here but I have no doubt kids love it.

A scene from Nativity – where Mary and Joseph and the three kings were traveling – it was too far away to capture them all because this fair (in Waldorf school) takes place at the beginning of advent so they were across the room…

If you know of any interesting procession I’d love to read about it! Our biggest is probably Mardi Grass and it’s also the most fun – but more on that in March – stay with me, I promise, that one is fun, full of whimsical creatures, satirical masks and alike! So what do you go out to see this time of year -on a normal year;)?