Day six

No story about the song but about Santa in general ;-)
In Switzerland we have "Samichlaus" and his helper, "Schmutzli", who is all dressed in black. Children are told that Schmutzli will take them into his bag and take them to the forest if they haven't been nice during the year. Nice kids of course get some reward for being nice, like peanuts, chocolate and "Gritzibänzen" which is a sweet bread in the shape of a man. Normaly, Samichlaus und Schmutzli have a donkey with them.

The first Samichlaus I've seen when I was three was a bit a dissapointment, as his donkey was called "Toyota"... But it came even worse when he wanted to take my grandfather with him as helper and little me hidded under the sofa instead of telling him that I need my grandad for myself.

The topic Samichlaus was put aside, till years later my aunt started to organize a Samichlaus-evening for her kids and their friends and somehow we were invited as well. For the next few years we always met on a December weekend and went to the forest to meet Samichlaus, Schmutzli and their donkey. The donkey, however, was the one of my uncle and we were told that Samichlaus does not have an own one and is renting our donkey...
I was very sure from the first moment on that Samichlaus has the same voice as my godfather, but my parents and everbody where constantly telling me that this could not be him. The next year we even went to his place before we went to search Samichlaus and he was sitting in front of the TV.... As soon we had left he left as well....
Years and years later when I told my parents that I'm no longer believing in Samichlaus and that they should tell me now if it was my godfather or not, they told me that they had tried to tell me all these years that it was him but that I did not believed them... Thats the way parents change things!