EDIT: (Folklore question. Ever heard of this?) Partly crossposted on another board.
It’s early for a thread related to the Christmas season especially since it’s a full three months until December but I’m asking on here because I’m curious about something someone told me.
I’ve got a German friend who was an exchange student here in Sydney at the girls’ high school I went to. We talked on Facebook at the end of last month and I asked her about whether she’d heard of the character of Knecht Ruprecht who I was reading up about because I happen to love folklore and Norse/Germanic mythology. She said she had and also told me a story about who Ruprecht is and where he and St. Nicholas come from. Apparently Zwarte Pieten are the same as Knecht Ruprecht, and Santa comes from Africa in a boat with his Black helper Ruprecht. She did believe they sailed from Africa. There are stories of Ruprecht being African but they’re very uncommon.
I’ve got an account on Reddit and crossposted a similar question to the English-language Germany subreddit and myths and legends one. The German posters had almost never heard of the Black version of the character, but the person who replied to the thread in the other reddit said they were asked to translate German stories about a Black Ruprecht
for high school German homework.
My friend lives on the German-Dutch border and says that “Dutch people” also believe Santa comes in a boat, but AFAIK the usual Dutch story is that Sinterklaas (St Nicholas as opposed to the standard Santa Claus), comes from Spain, not somewhere in Africa. And I think she probably isn’t the only one who believed this, going by how she worded it. Saying “also believe” pretty much says that other kids were told this too. Of course she could have just remembered “Spain” as “somewhere in Africa”. Problem is she’s not online that often so I can’t ask her right now. I’m not actually a folklorist but I’m pretty sure you can’t claim something is folklore unless you have more than one source. She also called the character Ruprecht helps out “Santa” not “Nikolaus” or St. Nicholas.
So do any German Dopers living near the Dutch border know this “Santa/St Nicholas and Ruprecht sail from Africa every December” story? Or is it possible my friend didn’t remember it correctly?
EDIT: Here is a source for a version of the story where Knecht Ruprecht is African. Another is an old thread on the alt.fan.cecil adams USENET newsgroup and an old snippet of a magazine article on Google Books.
I was referring to the usual Santa Claus image: the one every person in an English-speaking country knows; older man, plump, red suit and red nightcap, that’s featured everywhere in movies, TV shows, posters etc. Basically what everyone who’s been exposed to American culture in some form thinks of when they hear the term “Santa Claus.”
Exactly, but does a German variant of the “sailing from Spain” story exist with (somewhere in) Africa instead of Spain?
I’ll add something here which may be important; my old school friend’s from Gronau, on/near the Dutch border.
Maybe a better way to put it would be “the most common image in English-speaking countries.” Unless you mean something else-- could you please explain, I’m getting a bit confused.
You’re Dutch right? IIRC (this may be relatively recent, I don’t really know) and AFAIK, don’t a lot of European countries including the Netherlands have a tradition in which both St. Nicholas and Santa Claus give gifts in December, and where the two figures are clearly separate with Saint Nicholas dressing in Catholic bishop’s robes and carrying a staff and giving out or filling kids’ shoes with little gifts and sweets on December 5/6 depending on the country, and Santa Claus (called some variation on “Christmas Man” and dressed like he is in English-speaking countries) giving out presents on Christmas Eve?
That quoted comment is counting from next month onwards actually. Counting from this it’s four months until December. For some reason I don’t count the current month. I’m weird like that. The point is it’s still pretty early.
Exactly, but the German companion/helper is Knecht Ruprecht and a German person told me this story. She also lives in a border town.
So I’m not asking about the Dutch helpers, just wondering whether anyone is familiar with a similar tradition from the German-Dutch border involving a Black helper. Sorry if I wasn’t too clear in my OP.
That would be better. Internationally, Santa is not in any way standard, and historically he is derived from Saint Nicholas traditions, not the other way around. From the wiki on Santa: “The modern figure of Santa Claus is derived from the Dutch figure of Sinterklaas…”.
Since your thread places Santa in a comparative context, referring to him as the standard suggests that other traditional forms are variations, when in fact the Anglo-Saxon form is a variation. So let’s not turn history around here.
People know of the Kerstman, and recently, mostly because of pragmatic reasons, some people have shifted to gift-giving around Christmas as opposed to 5 December because they have more time off for shopping. Not a lot of people celebrate both traditions, however, and not a lot of people with children will them them about the Kerstman, not Sinterklaas (although, of course, there’s no knowing what lies people tell their children). So the traditions don’t really exist in parallel, and while people now give gifts around Christmas, they don’t hold up a pretense that there’s a Kerstman involved. IME, it’s mostly people that don’t have small children who switch to Christmas for gift-giving.
To be sure, historically the way it went is that we had Sinterklaas and only that, we then exported that elsewhere and the Santa tradition developed, and now we re-imported (kind of) Santa and now have a choice between two dates for giving gifts. So to the very limited extent that there are two traditions, it’s a recent thing. It’s not like we always had a ‘standard’ Santa figure and then had Sinterklaas as a spinoff; it’s the other way around.
Just to sum up what Svejk is saying: in Holland most small kids think Sinterklaas is real, but very few (if any) believe that Santa is flying around in his sled.
When kids grow up, families may decide to do the present thing during christmas instead of sinterklaas.
Well, that’s more understandable. I was using standard to emphasise the fact that while Santa Claus and Sinterklaas are connected (both are based on the legends around Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, but Santa Claus has ) I have a feeling that outside the Netherlands, its former colonies and Belgium, Sinterklaas is not that well-known but more people would know who Santa Claus is and recognise the Santa Claus image.
There’s also a bit of confusion when people refer to the figure of St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra as Santa, like my friend who mentioned in the OP. I think that she actually means “Nikolaus” or St. Nicholas when she’s talking about Knecht Ruprecht as “Santa’s helper” because Santa doesn’t visit on December 6 with Knecht Ruprecht, that’s St. Nicholas and as a hunch I’m pretty sure “Santa” dresses in bishop’s robes and she actually believed he existed.
Just to clear up anything that might not be clear in that 8.40 post, what I meant wasn’t that people shouldn’t call legendary gift-givers whatever they want, but that there could be (and if what I’ve read in terms of blog posts and confusion for outsiders between “Saint Nicholas/Sankt Nikolaus/Sinterklaas” and “Santa Claus,” both because the two figures are depicted as old men in red-and-white outfits and because not only is the name “Santa Claus” derived from “St. Nicholas,” but “St. Nick/St. Nicholas” is an alternate name for “Santa Claus.”
