Today is December 6! Which means very little in the part of the world I come from but a great deal indeed to Swiss children. See, it’s the closest they get to Santa Claus- today, a man named Samichlaus and his evil assistant Schmutzli comes to visit. In Benno’s hometown and all over Switzerland, a whole crew of volunteer Samichlaus/Schmutzlis from the community go from door to door, visiting the children and rewarding them if they are good (Samichlaus) and threatening to take them off to the woods in their sack if they were bad this year (Schmutzli). I have inside information that occasionally a cheat sheet on naughtiness vs niceness for the S & S duo is left on the door.

I just google imaged Schmutzli und Samichlaus (above) and seriously. I think I’ll have nightmares tonight about that guy carrying me off in his sack and I’m 32 years old. I’ve asked various adult Swiss about this and they admit to being terrified as a youth but still somehow continue to inflict this on future generations of children. I’m sure there is lots to unpack about the Swiss psyche there. The other St. Nicholas Day must-have are these Grättima:

Which are actually pretty good but creep me out when I imagine them being handed out by Schmutzli. I think that’s not really how it goes but they have become irretrievably linked in my mind (could they be the symbolic children from the wood?? Some of them look suspiciously like they are screaming).

I was reading a bit about the origins of Schmutzli as this tradition seems both strange and vaguely racist (um, blackface). Interestingly enough, it seems to derive from pre-Christian pagan festivals that occurred around the same time of year and seemed to involve driving out demons that would abduct children. The Christians tried to Catholicize these rituals by tossing the bishop figure St. Nicholas into the mix. source

The weirdness does not end there, however. Those of you thinking ahead may be wondering who is coming on Christmas if Samichlaus already did his parading and house visiting on Dec. 6. The answer is a character called the Christkind. Which literally translates to Christ child. Aha, you may be thinking, that makes sense, it’s the original religious meaning of the holiday. But in fact, this is what the “Christkind” looks like:

Yes, that is a girl. No, no Swiss person has been able to satisfactorily explain this to me. This is the creature that allegedly brings all the gifts at Christmas time, although it is considered very bad form I guess to try to see her. By the way, my google image search for the above brought to my attention that Christkind costumes seem to be very popular…now trying to figure out when one would wear one of these:

I have actually only really unpacked this in its entirety as of this weekend, as I was selling sausages as part of the Samichlaus celebration party in St. Urban, which of course comes after the Samichlaus parade with all the village children carrying lanterns and looking generally adorable. Anyway, it involved a lot of Samichlaus/Schmutzli exposure and I realized that, as usual, I had no idea what was going on.

Why I was selling sausages is another story entirely. Upcoming blogpost.